‘FBI: International’: Jay Hayden Previews Agent Tyler Booth’s ‘Checkered Past’ (Exclusive)

FBI: International is getting a new agent with Station 19’s Jay Hayden, and the actor spoke to PopCulture.com about his big debut in tomorrow’s episode, “Keen as a Bean.” Hayden portrays Agent Tyler Booth, a former colleague of Jesse Lee Soffer’s Wes who enlists the Fly Team’s assistance in helping him capture an American on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list “by luring him out of Russia with the help of the perp’s conflicted ex-wife.”

Hayden tells PopCulture that Tyler has “kind of a checkered past.” He continued, “It’s not all roses and rainbows coming out of what they used to do together. So he’s coming out to chase a bad guy, and he needs Wes’ help. Will they get along? I don’t know. Will Tyler listen to Wes? I don’t know. I mean, it is a really fun dynamic to play.”

Going from playing a firefighter in Seattle on Station 19 to now an FBI agent who winds up in Budapest is not so easy, so what exactly drew Hayden to the role? He shared that executive producer and writer Matt Olmstead “wrote the character so well, but I really connected to his relationship with his daughter and how much he cares and then sometimes how reactive he can be about her safety. So, I connected to that quite a bit. And also how his daughter sometimes has to advise her father and kind of parent her dad. That feels kind of familiar to me in real life. So, I really, really love that and connected to that quite a bit.”

Even though playing a new character in a new country sounds like fun, it wasn’t all that easy. In fact, it was “really hard,” Jay Hayden admitted. “I’m not gonna lie. It’s a 9-hour time difference. So people are waking up, and they’re doing all this stuff and vice versa. And it was like, you know, I have kids in real life. So I try to check in with them and FaceTime them. They’d be like, ‘Dad, I’m going to bed,’ or like, ‘Dad, I’m not even awake yet.’ Like, ‘Okay. I just miss you so much.’”

“And on one hand it’s beautiful there and there’s a ton of great restaurants and it’s awesome,” Hayden continued. “But it is an adjustment, you know. I never found a Whole Foods, and I looked all over that street. No. It’s cool. I got there. The whole cast knows everywhere to go. They know where to eat, where to hang out, the shopping. Jesse obviously has found every golf course in a 100-mile radius. So it was an adjustment. It took me a week and a half to sleep through the night out there. And today marks I’ve been back for one week. I’m still waking up at 3:30 in the morning.”

It sounds like it’s going to be an interesting ride with Jay Hayden as Tyler Booth, and fans will be able to see what he is all about in his first episode of FBI: International airing this Tuesday, Dec. 10, at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.