‘Sheriff Country’ Star Matt Lauria Breaks Down Explosive Crossover With ‘Fire Country’ and Boone and Bode’s ‘Fraught’ Situation (Exclusive)

The Sheriff Country and Fire Country crossover was as intense as ever, and Matt Lauria broke it down with PopCulture.com.

In Friday’s crossover, Cal Fire and the Sheriff’s office worked a bus explosion together that turned into the kidnapping of nine children.

This was the first big crossover between the two shows since Sheriff Country premiered in October. And it certainly brought the fire, literally. Sheriff Country’s hour included search and rescue, Mickey communicating with the kidnapper and digging deeper into what they truly want, and Boone and Bode working together to figure out what happened with the explosion.

Meanwhile, in the Fire Country hour, Boone and Bode found themselves in a tight situation, while Mickey was still trying to find out the identity of the kidnapper. It’s discovered that they had a connection to a cul-de-sac the county took back in the ’80s by eminent domain and got raised to make way for the quarry.

This then leads to both the Sheriff’s office and Cal Fire getting caught in the crossfire since both departments had a hand in it. Meanwhile, Cal Fire was tasked with saving the kids and two of Edgewater’s finest and Sharon nearly got into trouble after stepping on a pressure plate. It was a roller coaster, and Lauria, who plays Deputy Nathan Boone on Sheriff Country, shared his thoughts on it all. (Interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

PopCulture: In the Sheriff Country hour, which is the first episode of the crossover, there’s some really fun and intense banter between Cal Fire and the Sheriff’s office during the baseball game. How was it filming that scene, especially since it comes before everything has turned up a notch with the explosion?

Matt Lauria: It’s a blast. The best part of it, of course, is the trash talk. And that was actually a wild day because it was an extremely, extremely tight schedule, because both shows were in the middle of their seasons, filming. And so somehow in there, they had to find weekends and spare days to be able to fly people out and squeeze in this extra stuff. And so we had that baseball field location, I guess, for one day only. And guess what? It’s like torrential downpours. You can’t really see it on the screen. You can see the rain, but it was torrential downpours. So that really added, I think, a dynamic ingredient to the getting in there and getting dirty and knocking the pretty off our uniforms and getting out.

PC: During the game, a school bus explodes, but it’s discovered that no one’s on it, and it’s very likely that all the kids were taken. Everyone immediately jumps on the job. Three Rock is on search and rescue, and Mickey tries to get more information and deals with a kidnapper while Boone and Bode are forced to work together. And they don’t seem to be very big fans of each other, but they have to learn to work with one another, especially later in the crossover. What was it like playing off this dynamic with Max [Thieriot]?

Lauria: I mean, we had a blast. I get along with, like, gangbusters. We played the ticket scene at the beginning so many different ways and just had a blast doing it. And it was really fun. Max is a really good dude. He’s really humble. He’s really fun. He’s just a good, solid guy. And so I felt really lucky to spend the entire crossover hanging out with him. And we had some late nights. We were out in the elements. We’re getting dirty, like, literally dirty and soaked. And yeah, it was a lot of fun.

PC: At one point, there’s a livestream of the kids, and the kidnapper is asking for a ransom. And it’s eventually made public to the worried parents, who were appropriately upset at Mickey for not saying anything earlier. In your own opinion, do you agree with how Mickey handled that in terms of not saying anything to the parents about the ransom and the livestream?

Lauria: Of course, I do. Because Mickey’s the boss. And Boone has her back no matter what. And like Boone said, that was an impossibly hard decision to make. You don’t know all the variables. We’re still playing catch-up and trying to get a beat on what’s happening. And she had a tough judgment call, and she made it. And in some of these situations, there’s no perfect approach.

PC: The first hour ends with Mickey, Boone, Sharon, and Bode going to the quarry to try to look for the kids, convinced that they’re somewhere. And Boone and Bode ultimately figure out that they’ve been buried alive and soon find the hatch. But as Bode tries to open it, Boone discovers that it’s connected to a bomb, but it’s too late. As soon as Bode opens the hatch, there is a big explosion, and it ends on a cliffhanger. What was it like filming those big explosion scenes?

Lauria: I’ve never had that experience like that ever before. Real explosions. Unbelievable. Effects technicians who were setting up all that pyro. It was all real. I think that they do that quite a bit on Fire Country. Probably not that scale, but they’re used to real pyro. We don’t do something like that. And we filmed all that pyro once because it was late in the day, super late at night. It took a while to set up because you have to make sure it’s safe. There’s people in the vicinity. We go over the safety protocols, go over them again, practice with stunts. And then so I know what I’m gonna do.

He and I kinda practice what the tackle’s gonna look like. We can’t actually do the tackle because the ground is all wet and we’ll soak up. We’ll get our costumes all muddy. So you’re just standing there, and they’re counting down. “Three, two…” And I was thinking to myself, “Focus. Focus. Focus. Don’t mess this up. Don’t mess this up. It’ll take another hour or whatever for them to set up.”

So we only got one shot. That’s a lot of pressure. You don’t wanna screw it up, and everybody’s worked so hard to make it work. So that was exhilarating and intimidating. And it was a lot of fun.

PC: Fire Country immediately picks up with the cliffhanger, of course. And we find out that Boone and Bode are alright, and they’re actually with the kids underground now. Not surprisingly, Bode and Boone argue about what had just happened with the explosion. How do you think they handled the whole situation, especially as more time passed and things started getting very serious, the more time they spent underground?

Lauria: I think you see it all. I think that’s exactly how it was handled. And I think that’s what’s cool about the way that it was written, the way that it was ultimately shot is that they’re kind of these long continuous scenes that are uninterrupted. If you were to take out, or we cut to what else is going on in other parts of the town or the quarry, those scenes kind of play almost straight through. And so you really get a pretty clear sense of all that has occurred down in that container and see how it all transpires.

PC: As they’re trying to figure out how to get out and keep the kids safe and alive, it’s discovered that the kidnappers had actually left a first aid kit, water, games, which also proves to be helpful the longer they spend down there. What do you think was going through their minds when they realized that the kidnappers didn’t seem to have any plan to kill the kids, and that it might have been something much bigger, as we later learned?

Lauria: It’s already a really fraught situation. It’s a pretty desperate situation. Add to that Boone’s claustrophobia and lack of faith initially in his teammate. And then you throw into the mix this other curiosity. This other mystery. It’s just like one more challenge in an already challenging situation. Because if it was that these kids are potential victims and how do we save them, we would have a pretty singular aim at that point. But when you add in this gigantic question mark, it’s just more that we don’t know. And so the kids are just a piece of a bigger agenda. And there’s so much that’s out of control at this point, and it just adds another uncontrollable variable.

PC: As you were saying, while Boone and Bode are trapped underground, we find out that Boone has claustrophobia. And with help from Bode, he’s able to get it under control until he has to dig a way out. Luckily, he pushed through, saving himself, Bode, and the kids. What was the hardest part about doing that storyline and seeing him face his claustrophobia?

Lauria: We moved at a really fast pace. We filmed all the scenes kind of continuously in a really tight space. And the camera operators, a lot of it was handheld. And I think all of was handheld. So what you get with that is real intimacy. They’re right in the container with you. And we filmed it all sort of continuously, so it was kind of relentless. And we were at a really fast pace. We had to film all those scenes in, I don’t know, I wanna say maybe six hours or something like that, or close to that. Which is a breakneck pace for that amount of content.

And then you’re down there, and you’re out of breath and breathing heavy for hours like that. It’s like you got your work cut out for you because you don’t wanna put off the gas. You wanna make sure that you’re serving the story. So it’s pretty demanding. And you’re in a tight space with all those people for a long time. So, hopefully, we were able to keep the beach ball up in the air and tell the story properly.

PC: By the end of the crossover, it seems like Boone and Bode are somewhat friends. What can we hope from the two of them in future episodes if there’s another either big crossover or mini crossover?

Lauria: He’s got the brothers. I think he’s friendly. I think they’ll probably still be a friendly rivalry. But it’s friends at this point. And we’re brothers in arms now. We’ve gone through it. Our lives have been in one another’s hands. And that’s fused a bond, I think, for a lifetime.

New episodes of Sheriff Country and Fire Country air on Fridays at 8 p.m. ET and 9 p.m. ET, respectively, on CBS, streaming the next day on Paramount+.