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FBI: MOST WANTED Post-Mortem: Milena Govich on Showing the ‘Gray Area’ in Some Cases

February 11, 2025 by  

FBI MOST WANTED Milena Govich directing

“Do You Realize??” – The Fugitive Task Force is sent on a hunt in Philadelphia to investigate a double homicide and the abduction of a 14 -year-old girl in the foster care system. Meanwhile, Ray’s father is hospitalized after an accident while helping out around the house, on FBI: MOST WANTED, Tuesday, Feb. 11 (10:00-11:00 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): Roxy Sternberg as Special Agent Sheryll Barnes and Director Milena Govich.
Photo: Mark Schafer/CBS ©2024 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, February 11 episode of FBI: MOST WANTED.]

The Fugitive Task Force’s attempt to find a kidnapped foster teen, Bre, took a heartbreaking turn on the Tuesday, February 11 episode of FBI: MOST WANTED, “Do You Realize??”—they realized the girl had been abused by her foster parents, and Jake, the young man who took her (and crossed a line by killing the foster parents), was another kid in the system.

“That’s one of my favorite things about FBI: MOST WANTED is that we, unlike the majority of the other Wolf shows, get to see the bad guy perspective,” director Milena Govich tells Give Me My Remote. “And sometimes that perspective is a tragedy. Those are honestly my favorite kinds of cases because, as a director, I really try to show the audience emotionally why this character is doing what they’re doing. And hopefully there’s some sort of gray area, like in this episode.”

“It’s revealed that this young girl was being abused by her foster parents, so he came in,” she continues. “He sort of took extreme measures by torturing and killing the foster parents to then take her, but he felt like he had no other recourse. There was no way to get her out of the system, to get away from the abuse. If the parents had stayed alive, they would have called the police. That would have been a disaster. So, you know, you can see how in a young mind that this seemed like the best option. And, tragically, it’s not. But it’s really important to me to show that to the audience, so that they really feel that emotional pull.”

One of the key moments in the hour was when the FTF cornered Jake at the house of Syd, another girl from the foster system who Jake and Bre had previously bonded with. The duo came to the home intending to save her and take her with them to Canada—only for Bre to discover Sydney was happy with her new family. 

Jake, meanwhile, had captured Sydney’s foster parents and tied them up in the kitchen. Add in Hana (Keisha Castle-Hughes) and Remy (Dylan McDermott), who were trying to control the situation and it was a lot of moving pieces for Govich to work with as the characters’ emotions boiled over in the episode’s climax.

“When you have that many actors involved in a big emotional scene like that, with a lot of dialogue, it is challenging to shoot,” Govich acknowledges. “When I’m working with my actors that are going to have these big emotional moments, I try to inform them at every step of the way: ‘Okay, right now, we’re going to do this shot, and it’s going to be wide. I probably won’t be in it for that long in the scene, so if you want to be a little more reserved here, it’s up to you.’” 

“I don’t ever tell them what to do, because every actor works differently,” she continues. “But then I’ll say, ‘Okay, so we’re going to do that, then we’re going to come and we’re going to come and we’re going to do this angle, the medium shot, and this is what I’m going to see in this angle. And then once we do that, then I’ll be in your close-up.’ So then I say to them, ‘Do with that information what you will.’”

The actress-director notes that she’s “generally working with very experienced and well-trained actors,” and she uses her own experience when helping figure out who should be in episodes, especially when the emotional beats are as intense as they can be on FBI: MOST WANTED. 

“Often, when I’m casting, I often look for theater background in my actors,” she says. “That’s really a plus for me because I also started in theater. It’s a level of discipline and respect for the craft and the process that only helps us on set when we have such a tight timeline. So I find that the actors really appreciate that, so that they can regulate themselves and modulate themselves, so that when we do get to those really intense shots where we know we’re going to be right up in there with them, they’re ready for it.”

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

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