‘CIA’ Star Necar Zadegan Previews ‘Fast-Paced’ New Series With ‘Fantasy Spy Stories’ (Exclusive)

FBI’s newest offshoot, CIA, will be premiering soon, and star Necar Zadegan spoke to PopCulture.com about what to expect.

CIA premieres on Monday, Feb. 23 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, following the midseason premiere of FBI.

In CIA, “When by-the-book FBI Special Agent Bill Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss) is loaned out to a clandestine CIA/FBI task force, he finds himself teamed up with secretive and roguish CIA Agent Colin Glass (Tom Ellis). Together, they will work covert operations in New York, uncovering international plots, terrorist cells, and geopolitical secrets. On CIA, Bill will learn the rules of this murky world on the fly as Colin leads him deeper into spy games where only one thing is clear – their work keeps America safe, even if no one will ever know what they did in the shadows.”

Zadegan is playing Deputy Chief of Station Nikki Reynard, taking over the role from Michael Michele after she departed last fall. Natalee Linez rounds out the cast as CIA Analyst Gina Gosian. CIA is the fourth series in the FBI franchise, and after some delays and behind-the-scenes changes, the series is finally right around the corner. Keep reading to see what Zadegan had to say about it. (Interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

PopCulture: What can you tell me about CIA?

Necar Zadegan: I have just started. I kind of joined them this January, and I couldn’t be happier. We’ve kind of hit the ground running, and we just started shooting. And it’s really fast-paced, and we get to shoot here in New York at a lot of iconic places everywhere. New York is so beautiful. It gives you that opportunity, and we’re having a really good time.

PC: Going off of that, actually, what have you loved most about filming in New York and filming at so many different locations?

Zadegan: Well, I mean, that for sure. We were shooting some place in the Financial District on Wall Street, and the backdrop was just… it’s glorious down there on Water Street, even, and the bridge behind you and all the lights, it was nighttime and it’s just epic. It’s just the vista of so many movies and so many actors you’ve seen standing in front of before. So it just immediately drops you into the idea that you’re trying to execute. And so I love that about it.

PC: You are playing Nikki Reynard. How would you describe her?

Zadegan: Nikki’s a great character because she has a really kind of tough past as kind of a La Femme Nikita backstory with our position in the field, and has made a decision now to kind of take this position, which is more stable, but there’s that kind of uncertainty she has about this new life. And so we’re gonna get to see that duality exercised in some of her choices and some of the stories, and for kind of the world she’s come from and the new world she’s walked into. But as a result of that, she’s very smart, very high level, very capable of being an incredibly private person and very international, and we’re gonna discover a lot about her personal life as the world unfolds. She’s got an array of kind of interesting personal relationships that will come into play in this series that she’ll call on.

PC: Even though you haven’t been filming for long, what has it been like working with the cast and playing off those new dynamics?

Zadegan: The cast is fantastic. Tom, Nick, Natalee, we just immediately kind of got on like gangbusters and the guys are great. My character, Nikki, and Colin have a history of knowing one another from the field. And so there’s not a lot of people for these kinds of people that they get to really share their lives with in an honest way because they’re so wrapped up in in the secrecy of their assignments.

And so that makes their relationships kind of intimate in just being able to understand one another. And we’ve gotten to see the relationship between Nikki and Colin just from the very first scene that introduces my character, actually, where you think you’re coming upon a duo, and you think you know what the relationship is, and then very quickly you understand they’re playing a relationship that is outside of their real relationship. And I mean, the whole idea is that we play that history. And because of that history and the care that Nikki has for Colin, the deep care she has for Colin, and she’s part of the reason that Bill comes into the fold, and she very much believes in Bill.

And by virtue of that, the relationship between Nikki and Bill is one of deep respect for Nikki’s part and rooting for him very much. And Bill might be unaware of that in the beginning, but that is the case, which is really nice.

PC: What has it been like exploring her and learning about her each week?

Zadegan: Oh, it’s so fun. I mean, this is classic American storytelling. We’re doing fantasy spy stories every week. Oh, we get to have a good time.

PC: What are you most excited for fans to see with this new series?

Zadegan: I think that it is a very, like I said, just a fantasy spy story that we get to do. And I think that that is what will keep fans tuning in and what’ll be exciting for fans to see.

PC: Is there anything else you can tease about CIA?

Zadegan: In the subsequent episodes that we have yet to shoot, there’s gonna be, specifically for Nikki, like I was saying, there’s that kind of uncertainty she has about this new role she’s taken on. And because of that, she’ll get sucked back into the field. And so we’ll get to do a lot of undercover kinds of stories, and I think that’s really fun. I’m really looking forward to that, and I like to watch that kind of… You just picture it with that Mission: Impossible music, and so that’s what we’re gonna get to do.

CIA premieres on Monday, Feb. 23 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, streaming the next day on Paramount+.