CIA is only three weeks into its run on CBS in the 2026 TV schedule, but the network's new Monday night drama is already putting one agent in life-or-death danger without any backup by their side to help. With the odd couple of FBI Agent Bill Goodman (Chicago Med's Nick Gehlfuss) and CIA Agent Colin Glass (Lucifer's Tom Ellis) an ocean away, Necar Zadegan spoke with CinemaBlend about Nikki having to lean on her team from afar with impossibly high stakes.
Zadegan opened up ahead of the third episode, airing on March 9 and streaming next day with a Paramount+ subscription. Called "Bridge of Lies," the episode will see Nikki insisting on traveling to Hong Kong to bring home a U.S. intelligence officer who had been deeply embedded. Unfortunately for her, Nikki's cover will be blown, and her team back in NYC will have to find a way to help her.
Well, here's hoping that Bill and Colin are able to work as a team this week, because Nikki is going to need their A-game! When I spoke with the NCIS: New Orleans alum about the big episode for her character, she weighed in on the importance of trust in such a high-stakes but shadowy business. She shared:
Article continues belowTrust is everything for everybody, always in every relationship. If you don't have trust, you have nothing, and that's kind of across the board. So it's no different in this relationship, in fact, because these characters are so private and so unable to really share so much, the trust becomes paramount, even more so because you can't even ask for it.
In a normal relationship, trust is 100% something you can expect and even request. In the spy business... well, it's a different story, which CIA made abundantly clear over the first two episodes. That doesn't mean the relationships aren't important, however, and Nikki's predicament is going to hit Colin particularly hard.
Of course, Colin may be hiding the biggest personal secrets of the entire series so far, depending on whether that life with a wife and child is real for him or just another layer of deception. He has seemed the most sincere with Nikki, while Nikki has been the most diplomatic about including Bill in the team.
Nikki has also spent a lot of her screentime in the CIA's NYC headquarters so far, with Necar Zadegan sharing that her character feels a "push and pull" about wanting to be "as hands-on as she can be" despite being the leader of the team from the office, a la Jubal (Jeremy Sisto) and Isobel (Alana De La Garza) on FBI. (CIA's Nick Gehlfuss shared why the pairing with FBI is "perfect" for the new drama.)
As a woman who is both the leader of the team and also craves hands-on work, how much is Nikki able to lean on the team vs. rely on her own wits while her cover is blown in Hong Kong? I asked the actress that very question, and Zadegan responded
That's such a good question, because Nikki is forced, in this story of this episode, to rely on her team. A character like Nikki is a woman who is not used to asking for help and does not regularly do it, and so her back is up against the wall, and she is forced to be helped. And that's a very vulnerable thing for a character that isn't used to asking for it. I think where she thinks she's failed, she's suddenly supported very strongly by a team that's not only doing their job, but has prioritized her as very important, and that impacts their relationships for sure, for down the road.
Based on the promo for "Bridge of Lies," Nikki having her cover blown doesn't exactly mean just being detained in a comfy cell across the ocean from Colin and Co. Take a look at what she's going to have to endure, as well as Colin's desperation to not have to add her to the list of people he's lost:
Tune in to CBS on Monday, March 9 at 10 p.m. ET for the new episode of CIA, or stream via Paramount+. Each week so far has proven that despite similarities and a couple of character crossovers, CIA is not just FBI 2.0, so it should be interesting to see if the new drama will hold on to the time slot for a second season or go the way of FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International.
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