FBI: John Boyd Previews Scola Risking ‘Life and Limb and Career’ to Stop a Terrorist Attack

On the Tuesday, December 7 episode of FBI, the team has to figure out how to stop an upcoming terrorist attack. For Scola (John Boyd), who is still grieving the loss of his brother on 9/11, the case hits close to home.

“Just on a personal note, this is the episode that I’ve been hoping and waiting to get to do since I started the show,” Boyd says. “I love this, because our showrunner Rick [Eid, who also wrote the hour], he worked on Wall Street, and he left it to pursue something that was more important and deeper to him. Getting to play a character that you know represents some sort of personal thing in one of your writers is a really interesting thing; it’s such an honor to get that. So, really, the only thing Rick needed to tell me was, ‘Hey, it’s coming.’ And I said, ‘I’m ready.'”

Though the basics of Scola’s backstory were known, “Fire and Rain” goes deeper into his history and the pain he’s lived with over the past two decades.

“They really set the stage for what Scola was carrying around with him,” Boyd acknowledges. “We knew previously that he’d left a life as a Wall Street guy after his brother had died on 9/11. But he was a bit mysterious. He was someone who didn’t wear that on his sleeve; he carried it…I think it’s interesting to play someone that’s a little locked up, but likable, and in control on the surface.”

“So when there’s this potential terrorist attack on a building [in this episode], he basically risks life and limb and career to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he continues. “And it’s just a really awesome thing to get to play. He comes to a point where he’s not willing to let that happen again. It’s a really great storyline, it’s going to be a really cool episode. It’s super wild.”

As Scola is grappling with this, he’ll have his partner, Tiffany (Katherine Renee Turner), by his side…even if their approach to things can frequently conflict.

“I think that’s what’s so great about their relationship: Tiff really gives him room to feel what he feels, because he doesn’t always process things clearly,” Boyd notes. “And she understands that. The time where Scola overstepped the boundary [in a previous episode], and she had to tell him, ‘I don’t walk in your shoes, so you don’t walk in mine.’ Scola immediately feels bad about overstepping, but she’s so understanding.”

“She really understands her partner well enough to know that he has to fight his own battle here,” he continues. “They’ve just done such a great job of setting up that partnership: You don’t fight the person’s battle for them. You support them and protect them, even when it may cost your relationship—there’s times where your own partnership will be on the line because someone’s trying to protect the other one.”

But that trust is important, and proves to be vital for the duo. “What’s cool to see is how Tiff reacts to Scola just sort of reeling,” Boyd notes. “It’s not like he chooses, ‘Oh, I’m gonna start sharing all of this.’ This is a guy who’s never told anyone what happened to him. She knows that there was the death. She knows that Scola’s brother died in [the] 9/11 [attacks]. But no one knows this is now going to be the time that he’s going to start talking about it. It’s really cool the way they worked in how the case  pulls that out of him. And he starts needing to tap into that and talk about it in order to get the job done. It’s interesting how Tiff navigates that and sees that happening.”

Scola won’t be the only one struggling in the hour, though. Janel Moloney plays a 9/11 widow, Hannah Thompson, who accidentally became a pawn to the terrorist organization.

“Janel had a really interesting line to walk: She had to play a 9/11 widow, but she also had to play someone that unwittingly is dating someone that’s a member of a terrorist organization—and taking advantage of her and her resources without her knowing,” Boyd previews. “And she had to play someone who’s mourning, but also smitten. What’s cool about the episode is Tiff points out to Scola in the end, she was someone that took this risk after a loss, and still feeling grief after that tragic event, in order to try to open up and love again. That’s the lesson that Scola needs to get from this episode…that’s what partners are for, in the end. It’s really cool how Rick wrote it.”

And viewers will get to see a bit of Scola’s life outside of work in the episode, too. “There is there is a very brief exchange with his brother’s widow,” Boyd teases. “And then there’s also an exchange with [his brother’s] gravestone.”

FBI, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS

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