Line of Fire Boss Teases What that Deadly Sibling Premiere Twist Means for the Hollingsworths' Future

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the series premiere of Line of Fire. Read at your own risk!

We are one episode into NBC's new crime drama Line of Fire, and bodies are already dropping! The show follows the Hollingsworths, who are all part of various government law enforcement agencies. Patriarch Mike (Peter Krause) is a Secret Service agent on the verge of retirement, while his son Micah (Tommy O'Brien) is also a secret service agent and eager to climb the ranks. Mike's estranged wife, Jane (Hope Davis), is a U.S. Marshal who often finds herself collaborating with their FBI agent daughter, Clare (Kat Cunning), to track down America's most wanted. Russ (Taylor Bloom) is the baby of the family and is trying to make a name for himself as a lawyer at the Department of Justice, but instead finds himself constantly in the middle of his family's need to constantly one-up each other. 

Egos and secrets threaten to tear the Hollingsworths apart at every turn. Clare has a new boyfriend, Logan (Pico Alexander), whom she's loath to introduce to the family. Micah is trying to prove he doesn't need his dad to supervise him at work, especially because that would make continuing his affair with the president's daughter (whom he's been charged with protecting) even harder. Russ wants to make a good impression at work, but that's hard when his parents and siblings keep calling him for favors that skirt the law. It's a lot of double-dealing and manipulation for a family that claims to love each other. 

That love will be tested. Logan winds up dead at the end of the premiere, and the audience knows that his supposedly friendly neighbor, Joel (Charlie Barnett), was the one to kill him. Joel claims he committed the murder because Logan "isn't who he said he was," but Joel isn't who he claims to be, either. He's Mike's eldest son, Jack, from a previous marriage, who the Hollingsworths all believe is dead. So why is he back, committing murder, and leaving tiny silver origami cranes for his family to find? That's the mystery at the beating heart of Line of Fire.

TV Guide spoke with Line of Fire showrunner Josh Safran about the complicated Hollingsworth family dynamics, keeping lines of duty separate, and whether any member of this family is trustworthy. 

Everything you need for fall TV:

• The complete guide to fall TV
• The most anticipated shows coming this fall
• All the new shows coming this fall
• The ultimate guide to what to watch in September

How are you keeping track of these law enforcement agencies and which family member would be working on specific types of cases?
Josh Safran: We have really great consultants. We have a U.S. Marshals consultant. We have an FBI consultant. We have a Secret Service agent, and we have a federal lawyer who consults on DOJ cases. Every two writers were paired with a law enforcement agency to read and research, and they follow that through. If we have an episode that starts with a U.S. Marshals case, we have two writers who did a lot of research on U.S. Marshals, and they are the ones that talk the most to our consultant. It's kind of amazing how much they overlap, because that's been really fun too. 

Our Secret Service consultant was a Secret Service agent for Barbara Bush Jr. He also worked with Obama and Clinton. He's been very helpful because he interfaced with all these different divisions. We'll have an idea and we'll pitch it to him first. He will tell us what's real and what's not. The show is a little unique because it deals with how doing these jobs impacts you as a person. It's not just about doing the job, so I feel like that allows us a little more leeway to build plots based on emotion first and case second. If you are doing a straight procedural, then it is very much case first. Here, it's more like, "Clare and Jane aren't speaking. What case can we put them on where they can deal with the fact that they aren't speaking?" 

How are you balancing the mystery of Jack and what he's really after with each episode's case-of-the-week?
Safran: There's no prescriptive thing in the writers' room. We know that we need to have a case every week, but sometimes the case could be the B-story. We have Sam Waterston playing President Barnes. We have a whole arc that deals with this assassination that's spoken about in the premiere. That is not a case, per se, but it might take on an A-story level. So there might be a story where the case is more prevalent, or if it's a smaller case, it'll be the B-story. Every six episodes or so, we break the room out, and everybody comes in with cases, and we'll have about 50. I go through and say, "Not that one… maybe that one," and then we put them on our wall of cases. When we break an episode, we ask which case fits the dynamic. Russ and Micah are angry at each other; what case would the Secret Service and DOJ work on together? We build the emotion stuff first. 

This is a show where everyone has secrets. How much of that do you need to know beforehand, and what are you discovering through the season?
Safran: I knew the pilot very well, and I knew where all that stuff was leading. I did a show called Quantico where it was a lot of plot. We burned through plot really quickly. I did not want to do that again. I want to live with these characters. I want to learn them more. We made a choice to slow down the storytelling, the soapier aspects. A lot of what I initially pitched for four episodes, we've actually spread out. Then the writers came in and brought new things that happen and take us into other areas. So It's been really easy to find a balance. 

I think the dynamics are so clear. You really know who these kids are and how they relate to each other. Clare and Micah have sh** to deal with, and Micah and Russ have a lot. They keep coming up against their problems. It's not resolved in one episode. Russ was the baby, and Micah was close to his dad. Clare was closer to Jane, and Russ was left out. That's a season-long thing that he's dealing with. We really dig into these dynamics and ask how we can pull them out in each episode. 

Speaking of that, there is no shortage of resentment from these kids about their parents and the way they do their jobs. What has drawn them to law enforcement and the Secret Service when the attitude seems to be, "I hate everything about the way that you do this job"? 
Safran: That's really well said because part of some of it is hubris. Micah is like, "I can do this job better than my dad." Mike's dad did it, and Mike's grandfather did it. It's in the family line. Micah is driven by a lot of hubris, or by his ego and his ability. He thinks he can sleep with the president's daughter and no one will know. He went in that way, but Clare actually really looks up to her mother. You'll see in future episodes where Clare will ask to borrow one of Jane's outfits that's been sitting in the closet. She really wants her mother's approval. She wants to be like her mother, but she also wants to be her own person… I wanted to show that even if you disagree about something, you still feel very close to your family member. 

Poor Russ is on the outside. He was the closest to Jack because he was the baby, while Micah was so obsessed with proving to his dad that he's better than him. Clare was really tied to Jane as the family's only daughter. Jack, who was older, would come back and take care of Russ. They have a really strong bond that you'll hear about as the season progresses. As far as Russ knows, Jack is dead and Russ has been adrift. He doesn't really know who he is. He's the one who isn't entirely in the family business. He wants to do something related because that's all he knows, but he's trying to do something different because he doesn't really want to be like his family. 

OK, let's talk about Jack. He's alive and killing people! Do you want the audience to see him as the villain after this premiere episode?
Safran: That's hard to say. You definitely see him kill somebody, and killing is bad. However, who Jack is and what he's up to, and why he's doing it, is a season-long mystery. I'm so grateful to have Charlie. Poor Charlie, because everyone has been able to give interviews and he hasn't been able to talk. But he brings so much without saying anything. Even if he has one scene or if he has an entire storyline. In Episode 3, he's not playing the neighbor. It's a new alias, and it's fun to watch. Charlie gives you so much, and I think the audience really shouldn't know. They should have no idea what to think about him. We're toeing the line fairly well, but I can't say too much without giving it away. 

Can we trust any member of this family? I'd like to think that Russ, at least, is a good egg. 
Safran: Russ is a good egg! He's such a puppy dog, and he's so open to the world, and he's so easy to get hurt. I think Jane is trustworthy. Jane's problem is that she's so afraid of what information might do to other people that she holds too much in. I actually think they are all pretty good people. They have just made choices for their jobs that they thought wouldn't impact their lives, and they didn't realize how much those choices actually were bleeding over. You can trust all of them, I can say. But I can't say if you can trust Jack. 

Line of Fire continues Mondays at 10/9c on NBC. Episodes are available to stream the next day on Peacock.