FBI: MOST WANTED Post-Mortem: David Hudgins Breaks Down Jess’ Emotional Exit

[Warning: This post contains major spoilers for the Tuesday, March 8 episode of FBI: MOST WANTED, “Shattered.”]

The Fugitive Task Force’s latest case took a brutal turn on the Tuesday, March 8 episode of FBI: MOST WANTED.

As the team tried to track down Harley (Toby Hemingway), an abusive man who tormented and killed anyone standing in the way of him finding his on-the-run ex, they realized they had an even more complex situation on their hands: Harley was also trying to find his daughter, who had been given up for adoption and he had only just discovered.

Harley tracked down his ex and forced her to take them to their now-sick daughter. As the team tried to find him at the hospital, Jess (Julian McMahon) found the woman, promising her she’d be safe…but Harley fatally shot Jess. (The team did take out Harley.)

It was up to Jess’ longest-running colleagues, Barnes (Roxy Sternberg) and Hanna (Keisha Castle-Hughes) to break the news to his girlfriend, Sarah (Jen Landon), who had just bought tickets for the duo to head on a dream vacation to Bali. Instead, Sarah and Jess’ dad, Byron (Terry O’Quinn) were left to tell the news to Jess’ now-orphaned daughter Tali.

Though MOST WANTED has lost a number of regulars during its three-season run, this marks the first time a team member has been killed off. How will the remaining team members deal with this massive loss? MOST WANTED boss David Hudgins looked back at how they came to the decision to kill off Jess and what comes next…

At what point did you know that Julian would be leaving, and how did you come to this particular ending for Jess?
Julian had come and expressed an interest to move on to do other creative pursuits. So we started talking in the writers’ room about how do we exit Jess from the show? What does that look like? We spent a lot of time considering every possible avenue and way to do it.

Ultimately, what we kept coming back to, was the premise of the show, which is most wanted—we’re chasing the most dangerous of the dangerous, the baddest of the bad. And inherent in that job is the constant risk that you can get hurt or killed in the line of duty. The more we discussed, the more we thought about it, we just decided this is true to the premise of the show. We thought it was emotional, we thought it was dramatic, and also tragic, all of which we felt were good things for story. And so we decided to have this be Julian’s ending.

We also decided…there’s a version of this episode where it could have just ended with his shooting, but we wanted to play the emotion, the fallout, the drama of it. Which is why you have those scenes at the end of Barnes and Hannah coming to tell Sarah [about Jess’ death], and [Sarah] and Byron going to tell Tali. So the [combination of the] shock of the moment, with also the reality and the fallout from it, and, frankly, the emotion, we felt like that was the way to do this exit.

And just to 100% confirm, because this is TV and you can never be too sure: Jess is dead-dead?
He’s dead. He was killed in the line of duty while trying to save the woman they were rescuing.

To go back to how Jess died, in addition to him dying in the line of duty, at what point did the writers know that he would also go out while protecting a civilian?
It was something that was brought up in the writers’ room from the beginning, that if he’s going to go this way, let’s have him do it in a heroic way. It feels true to his character.

Not only that, because of the subject matter of this episode, which obviously Jess has a history with that with Sarah and the storyline we did last year with [her abusive ex,] Hugh. So we felt like the combination of those two things just made this the way to go.

We got to see Byron for a moment, though Tali was obviously not told on-screen. What was the balance like in getting closure with Jess’ family, while having some restrictions in which actors you could actually use?
The balance was I fought for [seeing that]. If you think about it, Byron is in the episode for one scene. And to have an actor agree to come and do that, it just speaks to Terry. Personally, I think he’s amazing actor, but he’s a good man and a good guy. And he understood the story, and he understood the need for that.

And, by the way, he’s not done. We are going to be playing the fallout from this over the next couple of episodes. And Terry’s got some more scenes and some more story as [Byron] and Sarah—and also our team—are trying to process the absence of Jess.

This is a show is by nature of its format can be very standalone in its episodic storytelling. As everyone is dealing with the loss of Jess, will it be a bit more serialized than normal?
Part of the reason that we as creators we chose this path was we were interested in exploring what happens when they lose Jess? What does that do to the team? What does that do to his family? So filtering through the next couple of episodes is grief and how Barnes and Hana are dealing with it. How Kristin and Ortiz are dealing with it. How Sarah and Byron are dealing with it.

One of the interesting elements of this show is that Jess really had two families: he had his work family and he had his real family. So what we’re doing is we’re taking this grief, this loss, and we’re seeing how it affects the team as they keep going. They have a job to do, they can’t just stop; but at the same time, they’re human beings, right? So, inevitably, it’s going to be affecting them psychologically, emotionally.

We have, coming into the next episode, Alana De La Garza, checking in with the team and trying to temporarily guide them while they look for a new person to come in. So the stories in the next two episodes are about exactly that: It’s about how the team is processing this loss, how they’re dealing with a vacuum in leadership. Who steps up? Is it a team effort, literally? I think there is a little bit of exposure of fault-lines. With grief, people can get very emotional and lash out. They can also get very internal and just clam up. So we just were very interested in exploring all of those angles over the course of the next two episodes.

As you noted, this is a dangerous job, and it hit the team earlier in the season with Kenny’s major injury. But is the loss of Jess making anyone second-guess their career?
I wouldn’t say second-guessing careers, at all, but, in fact, it’s one of the things that Isobel is talking about in the next episode: you can’t second-guess yourself. You can’t let something like this get in your head, because if you do, it puts not only yourself, but the rest of the team in danger. And Isobel is very much on top of that and wants to make sure that everybody…she’s not going to send the team out into the field if she doesn’t think they’re okay.

And the team is okay, thinks they’re okay, they are okay, but it’s sort of this permanent thing percolating under the surface of, “How can I do this when all I can think about is Jess used to be standing over there making his tea with his honey bear?” So that’s part of the story that we’re playing in these episodes: You’ve got a job to do, but you gotta deal with this at the same time. It’s hard.

Looking ahead, Dylan McDermott is joining the series. What can you share about his character and how he’ll fit in with the team, especially in the aftermath of this incredible loss?
For right now, I don’t want to give away too much, because he doesn’t come in until April in episode 3×17, but I can say this: As part of this whole process, and [figuring out] Julian’s exit from the show and thinking about who was going to be coming in, we were talking in the writers room early on about who the new person would be. [We were] doing rough strokes, broad strokes, thinking about it as sort of the closing of one chapter and the beginning of the new one. And so we got very excited about this new character and started thinking this is a great opportunity. We can shake things up, we can change the dynamic; this person could have a different style, could have a different background. So as we were formulating the broad strokes of that character, Dylan’s name came up. I got very excited, the writers got very excited; I think he’s amazing. And now that potential is a reality.

So Dylan is filming, and will be coming in [to the show] in a couple of episodes. But I’d prefer to keep any details about his character [to myself]…I don’t want to talk about that just quite yet.

This might also be looking ahead, but with Roxy Sternberg pregnant in real-life, will you be having to work around her maternity leave at the end of the season?
We are going to have to work around her a little bit. Which, by the way, I’m so happy for her. And that’s another [shifting team dynamics] that we will be dealing with.

Before I let you go, is there anything else you want to say about working with Julian or crafting this farewell?
“Thank you” is just one thing I would say to Julian. People love Jess LaCroix on this show. And I thought he did a terrific job. And I tried to honor that in the way we exited him in the episode. And he was on board with it, and did a great job in it. So “thank you” is one thing I would say to Julian.

I was not there for the [filming of the episode], but it was incredibly emotional on the set, as you would expect it to be. And it was shot at night, near the end of the day, near the end of the week. So it felt like a completion, both from a production standpoint and a story standpoint. And it was just, by all reports, incredibly emotional.

FBI: MOST WANTED, Tuesdays, 10/9c, CBS

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