FBI Post-Mortem: Jeremy Sisto on Jubal’s Traumatic, Boundary-Pushing Hour

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, September 28 episode of FBI.]

On the Tuesday, September 28 episode of FBI, Jubal (Jeremy Sisto) found himself in an unfathomable position: a hacker broke into the hospital system, effectively shutting it down…and making it impossible for his sick son to get a needed surgery.

The team worked to get to the bottom of things, finally discovering a hacktivist, Lydia Ryan (Bess Rous), who was desperate to get officials to look at mysterious deaths of mental health facility patients after they left the compound.

But as the agents worked the case, things got worse for Jubal’s son, Tyler (Caleb Reese Paul), whose surgery became urgent—and also a situation where he couldn’t be moved to a functioning hospital, without risking his life.

Jubal, along with the team, was able to get results, finding the man responsible for poisoning the patients…but having to kill him in self-defense. Lydia doubted they found the real man, but Maggie (Missy Peregrym) was able to convince her they were telling her the truth.

Ultimately, Tyler was able to get his surgery, saving his life.

“Playing it felt like he was definitely in a state of shock, and the focus obviously was just on rectifying the situation,” Sisto says of Jubal’s mindset in the hour. “[His goal was] to get back to the status quo.”

“What is strange about it is that he is working really hard to get his situation with his son back to a place that is already unpredictable and uncertain [with his son’s illness],” he continues. “So he’s working very hard and the goal he’s working towards is just getting back to the new normal for this time—which is operations and testing and treatments; stuff that is very uncertain and very difficult. While there is a resolve at the end, it’s just a battle within the war that he’s entrenched in.”

Because of Tyler’s illness, “he is able to invest and engage in the work of his job. But there’s just something underlying with Jubal, where at the end of the day, he’s never fully settled; you can’t be.”

“It was nice to see how he kind of tries to stay positive, and also have compassion for and encourage his son’s situation,” he continues. “And he encouraged him to use his thoughts as a way to stay positive.”

With Jubal spending so much time out of his comfort zone (literally and figuratively), it allowed viewers to see a different side of the agent.

“These episodes are fun for the viewers and for the actors, as well,” Sisto says. “And obviously this is a very special circumstances. Sometimes when something happens that is so unbelievable, you just start going through the motions.”

Having his son’s life on the line also led to, understandably, deeply heated confrontations with Lydia.

“He didn’t know how it was going to be resolved,” Sisto notes. “I think he saw pretty clearly that the woman that he was dealing with was not going to see reason. He’s known for having one of his team members do some of the dirty work: go get me these answers. He’s aware of protocol, for sure, and is careful to follow it—it’s important. But he doesn’t have to deal with that firsthand as much because he’s not the one on the front lines, doing the interactions very often.”

“So I think, in this particular situation, it was interesting to see him on the other side of things,” he continues. “Where he was shouting at himself internally go do this, go get this information from this guy, and do what you have to do. He would not normally have done something that wasn’t by the books, unless it was necessary.”

“There’s always that question with the FBI, it’s always the conversation: When can you cross which line? How high do the stakes have to be in order to tap into people’s personal lives and look at things that if it turns out that it wasn’t the right lead, you would be breaking civil liberties?” he points out. “And so, that’s always a conversation. In this particular one, because the stakes were obviously much higher, he wouldn’t have done what he did if it wasn’t for his son. That’s the truth of it. It’s very possible that his higher-ups, Rina or Isobel, could have said you need to step aside. But they didn’t do that. And I think they trusted that I wouldn’t push it too far…and Jubal didn’t.”

FBI, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS

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