"Line of Fire" Cast and Producers on Protecting the World and the People You Love

NBC’s new drama Line of Fire follows a family of law enforcement agents who bridge personal differences and cross professional boundaries while working cases for the FBI, U.S. Marshals, Secret Service, and Department of Justice. When a seemingly cut-and-dried case turns into a deadly conspiracy, they must use a lifetime of expertise protecting civilians and politicians to protect one another and bring the killer to justice, even if it means betraying their sworn code. Stars Peter Krause and Hope Davis were joined by series creator, writer, and showrunner Joshua Safran, plus executive producers Jenna Bush Hager and Ben Spector during NBC’s second annual Backlot Pass Day.

“They’re not living in the same house when the show opens,” Hope Davis revealed about her character, U.S. Marshal Jane Hollingsworth, who is married to Karuse’s Agent Mike Hollingsworth. “We have some secrets from one another and some things that we never could agree on, but are we done with each other yet? I don’t think so.” Davis said she knew she wanted to do the show “the second I met Josh [Safran],” and that hearing Krause had been cast made her “absolutely sure.” Having gone through “a three-day weapons camp” for an earlier NBC series, Davis said the production is working to get the details right “respectfully for all of the people who really have these jobs.”

Peter Krause described Line of Fire as a show that “works in so many different ways.” “It’s suspenseful,” he said. “There’s some action-thriller elements. There is crime solving by crime solvers. And there’s also a lot of  family dynamics to explore, and there’s some surprising comedy in the show as well.” What drew him in was “a fantastic script” and a virtual meeting with Safran that made it “very clear to me that we would be able to work well together.” He also praised the younger cast members, saying Tommy O’Brien, Kat Cunning, and Taylor Bloom “are all just fantastic in their roles, but they get along so well and can get really loud.” Krause recalled Davis coming out of her dressing room one day to ask them to keep it down while she learned her lines. “When your mother’s a federal marshal, and she tells you to shush, you shush.”

The ongoing family saga also reminds Krause of soap operas. He recalled his mother watching Another World while she folded laundry. “You want to see what’s going to happen between these two people because they’re kind of on the outs, but yet they’re really in love with each other,” he said, adding that “we have a kid who may or may not be having an affair with the president’s daughter.” Asked whether his character’s looming retirement made him think about his own, he did not hesitate. “No. I like having a job. I like having a place to go and a thing to do. I’m not ready to retire just yet.”

Joining virtually, Joshua Safran called the series “a little bit of a throwback,” citing The West Wing and The Good Wife as touchstones and describing the goal as “talking around the world of politics but not being a show about politics.” Asked whether the show tackles the headlines, he said: “It’s 2026, but it is not related to the current political world.” “It’s about people who do everything to protect their family, the world, and what toll that takes on them,” he said. “It’s a human story, not a political story.”

On procedural structure, Safran said the series aims for the feel of a show where “you can watch an episode and feel like you saw a story — a beginning, middle, and end — but there still is stuff that will drive you to the next episode.” He put the balance at “80-20, sometimes 90-10, sometimes more,” with a conspiracy element that continues throughout. The idea began with life away from the job: “that was the initial genesis of this show, is what happens at home.” Consultants, including people from the Department of Justice, read every script and are called on for every episode.

Jenna Bush Hager said she first connected with Safran when he lived across the street from her sister, and that the two bonded over “this dynamic of these family of people that are, putting other people first in many circumstances and therefore, what happens in their own family is complicated.” She said she recognized that dynamic from experience: “I had secret servicemen who would leave their family to protect mine.” With Safran’s encouragement, the show brought on a former Secret Service agent “as a consultant to work with Josh and the writers so that there’s real authenticity to it,” because “we’ve all seen the shows about our industries where you’re like, wait.” Safran’s reply, she recalled, was, “Listen, some of it has to be made for TV.” “So we’ll have the drama and the fun,” she said, “but … we’ll also have some real truth to it.”

As a member of NBC’s Today show, Jenna Bush Hager said she hopes morning viewers will stay for the evenings, as they have with Carson Daly and The Voice. She also praised the show’s dialogue: “these characters have this fast-talking, sort of almost like a dance that I don’t feel like we’ve seen on network TV in a while.” Before Krause was even cast, she said, she compared the series to Six Feet Under “in the way that it really is about a family and sort of how their business affects their dynamics,” and she does not think there has been a family show since This Is Us that feels like this one, with elements “that only really Josh could do.”

Ben Spector pointed to a line Davis delivers in the pilot, “How do you protect the world and the people you love,” with Davis finishing, “At the same time.” “That sort of encapsulates what the show is about, is how does this family keep its core when the world is calling on them every and each day to save it?” he shared. FBI and U.S. Marshals consultants, along with people like the Secret Service veteran, are part of the production “for the verisimilitude,” noting that people like them “have worked across multiple administrations. They are putting their country first, apolitically.” On casting, he credited Cassandra Kulukundis, “the first Oscar-winning casting director,” who he said only casts Safran’s shows. “Casting a family is its own chemistry,” Spector said, explaining that Davis and Krause were cast first as the matriarch and patriarch, and the rest of the family came from “finding actors who felt like they belonged with these two.” He also credited Safran with the show’s tone, noting that his earlier series Gossip Girl and Quantico are “two shows that are very different tonally yet elements of those come together in this,” and pointing to “a 15-minute dinner scene in the pilot where people cross in and out, and they’re on phones, and it really captures something.”

Line of Fire premieres tonight 10/9c on NBC, with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock.