With ‘Tracker,’ Justin Hartley Charts a New Path in His Hollywood Career
After more than two decades of playing supporting roles in big-name ensembles, Justin Hartley is venturing out on his own and entering a new phase in his career. The self-described handyman actor is the star and executive producer of “Tracker,” a series that is a throwback to classic private-detective shows from the 1970s and ’80s, and it premieres in primetime — after the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Based on Jeffery Deaver’s best-selling novel “The Never Game,” the new CBS series produced by 20th Television follows Hartley’s Colter Shaw, a lone survivor who loves to hunt for rewards, as he roams the United States in an Airstream and uses his expert tracking skills to help solve mysteries for private citizens and law enforcement. But while he can help others get closure, Colter is forced to reckon with a mystery of his own: the circumstances leading up to his father’s suspicious death, for which he believes his estranged brother is responsible.
The role is a significant departure from Hartley’s famous role as Kevin Pearson on NBC’s “This Is Us,” in which he played the eldest of three siblings born on the same day who form the show’s emotional core. The acclaimed series, which ends in 2022, has garnered nearly 40 Emmy nominations over six seasons.
“I wasn’t particularly looking for this kind of genre, but it’s nice to do something that’s wildly different from what you’ve done,” Hartley said on a recent Zoom call from Vancouver, where he was filming the first season of “Tracker.”
During the finale of “This Is Us,” Hartley and executive producer/director Ken Olin began discussing their next collaboration. They didn’t have a specific genre in mind, but they agreed that their next project would have to be character- and story-driven. When they stumbled upon “The Never Game” in early 2021, Hartley acquired the property and worked with Olin to develop a series.
Olin said he initially noticed a striking resemblance between Hartley and Colter’s description, which led him to believe the role would be a perfect fit.
“He’s a handsome guy who looks like an actor, but he gets into these places. He’s more emotionally complex than you think. He’s always underestimated how good he is and how smart he is,” he said.
The series is in the same vein as “The Rockford Files,” “Mannix,” “Baretta” and “Kojak” — shows with eccentric, quirky protagonists that Olin said he watched on TV as a kid.
“What I like about it is, it’s a way to do a detective show without having to reboot anything,” Olin said. “It may have some of the traditional DNA of a detective show, but the character himself has a very contemporary psychological context. One of the great things we like about this show is that he’s free to move around and doesn’t have to abide by all the restrictions of law enforcement.”
Hartley said his character uses old-fashioned surveillance techniques to figure out what he’s looking for.
“We really have to be careful about asking ourselves, ‘Oh, why isn’t he on the phone?’ So our writers have to be smart enough to figure out why you wouldn’t or couldn’t do that in that situation,” he said.
And unlike most procedurals, where a team of skilled people are often assembled to help solve a case or answer a call, Hartley said, “Colter is almost always alone.”
“I like the idea that his backstory and his family history dictates how he acts in that regard, in that he’s very reluctant to commit [and] he’s really cautious around other people,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like that, where a guy is wandering from town to town and doing all that stuff on his own, and he’s really not tied down to anything.”
Like his character, Hartley has followed an unconventional career path. Born in Knoxville, Ill., to a plumber father and an English teacher mother, he grew up wanting to be a professional baseball player. As a child, he loved telling stories and watching TV and movies — he counts Sylvester Stallone, who guest-starred on “This Is Us,” as one of his acting inspirations — but never considered it a viable career path.
By college, Hartley’s acting experience consisted of a school production of “Frosty the Snowman” (he was frustrated when he learned he had no lines and had to stand still while his classmates sang and danced). He attended Southern Illinois University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, majoring in history and theater. He enrolled in
