FBI: INTERNATIONAL: Eva-Jane Willis Reflects on Smitty’s Bonds with Booth and Wes, Previews the Emotional ‘Veritas Fidelis’

February 7, 2025 by Marisa Roffman

“Keep Calm and Deliver the Biotoxin” – When a Russian biochemist is assassinated for trying to defect with his highly sensitive biotoxins research, the Fly Team springs into action to protect his daughter, whose father’s last wish was that she get his research to a trusted American microbiologist. Meanwhile, Mitchell stays behind to help Vo during her recovery, and Booth clashes with Smitty when he finds out she could jeopardize his promotion, on FBI: INTERNATIONAL, Tuesday, Feb. 4 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on-demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on-demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs). Pictured (L-R): Eva-Jane Willis as Europol Agent Megan “Smitty” Garretson and Jay Hayden as Agent Tyler Booth. Photo: Nelly Kiss/CBS ©2024 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

FBI: INTERNATIONAL’s Smitty (Eva-Jane Willis) almost left the team in the most recent episode of the CBS drama.

When Agent Tyler Booth (Jay Hayden) was up for a long-awaited promotion in “Keep Calm and Deliver the Biotoxin,” Smitty was faced with two options: Tell the truth and torpedo his chances or lie for him. Unable to live with either, she opted for a curveball—she’d quit Fly Team and avoid being put in that position. Ultimately, Wes (Jesse Lee Soffer) made it clear Smitty was needed; Booth also took matters into his own hands and quit the team and decided not to go for the promotion, leaving Smitty off the hook.

After, Booth made sure Smitty was staying with the Fly Team. When Smitty confirmed she would, Booth reiterated that he had no regrets about leaving and that “friends are harder to come by than jobs.” Smitty, for her part, had a surprise for Booth when he got home: A visit from his daughter and a note acknowledging they are indeed friends.

“I loved working with Jay, who played Tyler Booth, and I really loved the story that they gave us,” Willis tells Give Me My Remote. “The arc over the three episodes…was a really lovely arc to play. And I think the way that they ended it between us, the way that Wade McIntyre wrote episode 10 was so beautiful. It actually brought a tear to my eye, even though I knew what was going to happen…and also my husband’s eye, so not just mine!”

“What happened for Smitty in episode 10 was that she, for the first time since [Wes] Mitchell has joined, she really got that approval that she needed,” she continued. “I think she was really longing for that, actually. And I don’t think she knew she needed it until that conundrum came up with Tyler, and she realized that she was going to be in this situation where either she was going to have to lie for him, or she was going to have to [get] him in trouble by telling the truth. So she chose option three, which is, ‘I’m just going to step out of this. Clearly, I’m not the person that these guys need on their team. They want to do things a certain way. It doesn’t necessarily fit with what Smitty wants, which is more of a kind of straight down a line, by the book approach.’”

To have Wes—who was friends with Booth long before the duo worked together on the Fly Team—make it clear she was needed on the team was especially meaningful, too, for the Europol agent.

“To have Mitchell sit her down the way that he did and say, ‘I’m not letting you leave this team. I need you, and this works, and you’re a valued member of this team,’ I think that really took her back,” Willis notes. “And I don’t think she even realized how much she needed to hear that until she heard it. And him saying that meant so much that it did have the power to make her stay.”

Smitty’s gesture to Booth was also meaningful, both to Booth who reunited in person with his daughter, and an acknowledgment of how the agents’ own dynamic had shifted.

“That final moment in episode 10, being able to use her position to bring him closer to his daughter and to make it easier for them going forward, was such a lovely touch in the writing,” Willis praises. “And in terms of its effect on Smitty, I just think the word ‘friend’ meant so much to her when he said, ‘Friends are harder to come by than jobs.’ And the way he looked up at her at that point, I think she was like, ‘Friend? I have a friend? Wow.’”

“I don’t think that Smitty lets people get that close,” she continues. “I think Raines is the only one who’s got that close to her. And the word friend in this instance, again, affected her deeply. And I think going forward, hopefully, it will allow her to bring down those walls a bit more and let people in a bit more.”

“Veritas Fidelis” – When an American student is found dead at a prestigious UK university, the Fly Team investigates an infamous secret society. Smitty’s personal history with the school comes to a head when she’s confronted with the same old-world elitism, on FBI: INTERNATIONAL, Tuesday, Feb. 11 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on-demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on-demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs). Pictured (L-R): Eva-Jane Willis as Europol Agent Megan “Smitty” Garretson and Jesse Lee Soffer as Supervisory Special Agent Wesley “Wes” Mitchell. Photo: Nelly Kiss/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

And Smitty will need all the help she can get on the Tuesday, February 11 episode, “Veritas Fidelis.”

“An American student is found dead on campus at a prestigious university in the UK,” Willis previews. “What we find out is that Smitty happened to be visiting family nearby in England and heard about this tragedy and [then] went to the university to see what the situation [was]. When she gets there, she decides that this is not an accident; something terrible may have happened to this girl. She calls the Fly Team to come and investigate. When they say, ‘Where are you?’ She says, ‘At my old school’—and that’s when we realized that this isn’t just a university that she happens to know about, this is actually somewhere that she studied, as well.”

Unfortunately for Smitty, being at her former school isn’t exactly a happy reunion. “It becomes a kind of dual storyline in terms of what they need to do to solve the case and to make sure justice is served and then also a personal kind of injustice for Smitty that we learn about,” Willis shares. “And how she handles that, and how that affects her during her time on the case.”

By her side during the emotional roller coaster? Raines (Carter Redwood). “Last season when Smitty had to go home for a case, it was Raines that went with her,” Willis points out. “That was the start of her really allowing him into her personal life. He obviously met her parents. He learned a bit about the fact that her father wasn’t her real father. And he was there holding her hand when she cried about that discovery and when she left her house behind with a kind of sense of not wanting to go back for a while.”

“I think because he was there at that moment that she was most vulnerable, he has since become the person that she can be vulnerable in front of,” she continues. “So he’s definitely the one in this story that she confides in, and yet again, at the worst moment for her, he’s the one that’s there to give her a shoulder to cry on.”

FBI: INTERNATIONAL, Tuesdays, 9/8c, CBS

RELATED:

Follow @GiveMeMyRemote and @marisaroffman on Twitter for the latest TV news. Connect with other TV fans on GIVE ME MY REMOTE’s official Facebook page or our Instagram.

And be the first to see our exclusive videos by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made through links/ads placed on the site.

Filed under FBI: International

Comments Off on FBI: INTERNATIONAL: Eva-Jane Willis Reflects on Smitty’s Bonds with Booth and Wes, Previews the Emotional ‘Veritas Fidelis’

Comments

Comments are closed.

FBI: INTERNATIONAL: Eva-Jane Willis Reflects on Smitty’s Bonds with Booth and Wes, Previews the Emotional ‘Veritas Fidelis’

Related Posts

Comments

Recent Posts

GMMR Favorites

Matched content