There’s just something magical about a guy who knows how to stay calm in an emergency. On CBS’s ratings-dominant show “Tracker,” the weekly episodes involve one of life’s most alarming scenarios: when a loved one goes missing.
Star Justin Hartley became the king of prime time playing a guy who finds those people – often, for a hefty reward fee. But today the handsome star is on a slightly more low-key mission: to help this writer find the perfect analog pedometer. A tracking watch, if you will.
“I love watches. I collect watches, – says the star of “Tracker” via Zoom. “I think I have a hack for you. Give yourself a nice watch. One that doesn’t count your steps. And just get one of those pedometers, like the size of a quarter. Put it in your pocket.â€
Hartley knows a thing or two about steps. He’ll get 30,000 or more in a day – and that’s not counting all the on-screen action. “I’ll look back at the end of the day and be like, ‘Wait a minute, I did a whole scene running up a hill where I didn’t have my phone with me. !” he says laughing.
If you’ve seen the show, you know that Hartley’s character, Colter Shaw, does one LOT of running. Running to find missing people, running from other people who don’t want him to find missing people, running to find clues to his father’s mysterious death, and often, getting into trouble (sometimes figuratively, but not always).
Hartley, who shot to fame as Kevin Pearson, one of the Big Three on This Is Us, takes a turn from emotional drama to action hero — albeit with a side of emotional drama — in the procedural thriller, whose first season saw his character gradually learn more about his family secrets.
As Hartley’s Colter knows, time is of the essence: his best chance of finding a missing person is in the first 72 hours, according to many criminologists. (Of course, it gets trickier when that person doesn’t want to be found, like the new cult member in one of the series’ first episodes.)
So we thought: Who better than Hartley to model the watches in our new issue? “I always switch them out depending on what I’m wearing or how I’m feeling,” the 47-year-old actor tells Alexa. On the morning we speak, he’s wearing the classic combination of a simple white T-shirt and his Rolex (a Cosmograph Daytona). It feels so right that it ends up being included in our cover photo.
And he is particularly concerned with how some Van Cleef & Arpels watches tell a story. “There’s one where there’s a bridge in the middle of the face, and on the side of the clock is a woman with an umbrella, showing the time, and on the other side is a guy with a cane showing the minutes. And then at noon and midnight, they they meet and kiss under the bridge. Very, very cute.â€
After all, storytelling is his bread and butter. From his first paying gig on the soap opera Passions and two years on The Young and the Restless, to his turn on the beloved This Is Us and his current show, he. It has always kept the viewers glued to the narrative. In the second season of “Tracker,” which debuted in October. 13, Colter expands his search for answers about his past while taking on a wide variety of new cases. The season trailer also hints at a UFO-tinged plot, which Hartley says they intentionally left “open to interpretation.”
“I don’t judge,” he says. “There are people who think it’s total BS that there would ever be aliens out there. And there are people who think there are. I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything, but I don’t know. That kind of agnostic position is consistent with that of to his time-tested action icon, who doesn’t dig too much into his feelings Colter was pushed to open up a little.
“We had to build an event where he would be forced to speak [his past]”, explains Hartley. “We introduced another character, a retired police officer, who is also haunted by a case that went cold. And they forget this friendship based on that, and that’s what makes Colter talk about it.
Another important aspect of the new season for Hartley was keeping the story fresh. “People find comfort in knowing characters, but I also think there’s an appetite for discovering new things and new characters. You don’t want people to go, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve seen an episode of Tracker.’ , you see one, you’ve seen them all. “I don’t like such shows.â€
A second season also gives them a chance to delve further into the backstory of several characters, including a rival tracker named Billie, played by Sofia Pernas, Hartley’s real-life wife and former “Y&R” co-star . But Pernas isn’t playing her husband’s love interest; this is actress Floriana Lima as Camille, a character who years ago put Colter on an already cold case that he can’t seem to shake.
Both performers share a genre past: Lima played Maggie Sawyer on “Supergirl,” while Hartley played Green Arrow on “Smallville” as well as voiced Batman on the 2023 podcast “Harley Quinn and the Joker.” Hartley sure has the good looks of a superhero guy; at this January’s Golden Globes, the Hollywood Reporter mistook her for Twisters star Glen Powell (leading to Powell remarking to X that the two would star in “the most boring body-swapping movie of all time” . )
He may not be on the road claiming bounty money with an Airstream in tow, but Hartley, an Illinois native, loves a good road trip — thanks in part to his dog. “My wife and I have a wonderful and beautiful dog. But she is a doodler. They have anxiety!” he says. “We can’t fly him. So last year, I had a movie and we drove from LA to Savannah, like 30 hours for this dog! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “We drove to Vancouver, to Atlanta, we’ve driven almost everywhere. We love it
The gig that brought her to Savannah was “Bride Hard,” an upcoming comedy starring Rebel Wilson, with a supporting cast that included Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Stephen Dorff. Shot mostly outdoors during the middle of summer in the Deep South, it was sweaty work – but worth it. “The rebellion is big. I’ve worked with him before,” says Hartley. “And we all had a really good time.”
The actor is known for his dramatic roles, but he definitely has a good sense of humor. I wonder what we can see on a “Tracker” blooper reel. “You know, you might see some misses, some trips,” he says with a laugh. “It was a flight of stairs I was running in the middle of the night. When you light a dark set, you have these lights shining directly into the actors’ eyes. I’m running with my gun, up the stairs, and I just bit him, bad. it happens You fell off the mountain the wrong way. Or it’s raining heavily, and now everything is slippery, and you just hold it with your arms.
His appreciation for life’s more absurd moments shines through on late-night appearances, like when he told Jimmy Fallon about his daughter’s habit of deliberately embarrassing him in public when she was younger. (Isabella is his daughter from his first marriage, to “Passions” co-star Lindsay Korman; he was then married to actress and “Selling Sunset” star Chrishell Stause before marrying Pernas in 2021.)
Isabella is a junior in college now, he says, and they plan reunions whenever they can, despite their busy schedules — though he tries to avoid showing up on campus and making a scene like a popular TV star. “It’s her world, so I try not to do that really,” he says. “But she comes to Vancouver and visits him. And there’s lots of FaceTime!
Hartley’s years in daytime TV taught him some valuable lessons about dedication and acting. “It can be a great training ground,” he says of the soap opera world. “Or it could be a great career.” Then again, he says, “it can also be a big trap. You get really comfortable, and you get a really good check, and you just say words.”
“You read the script” you are reading that you are at the base of a waterfall. And you show up and you’re like, “Oh, we’re actually at the base of a waterfall!”
Hartley on the set of “Tracker”.
Don’t expect Hartley to get too comfortable. One of his favorite things about Tracker is that he serves a different task almost every day, at locations in and around beautiful Vancouver. “It’s a dream. You read the script — you’re reading that you’re at the base of a waterfall. And you show up and you’re like, ‘Oh, we’re actually at the base of a waterfall!’ It’s surprising. You never know that where will you be
And then he goes to his next case – on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, where he will help the host find a lost coffee cup. “It’s good to be busy!” Hartley says with a smile.
To which we can only say: Yes, this track.
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