‘Tracker’: Sofia Pernas Teams up With Husband Justin Hartley—Scoop on Characters’ Messy Past

There’s a new reward seeker coming to Tracker, and both Colter and Justin Hartley know her well. Sofia Pernas—who’s also Hartley’s wife—guest stars in the March 24 episode (airing at an earlier time, 8/7c), and the characters’ history is going to make this next job a bit difficult.

In “Lexington,” Hartley and Pernas’ reward seekers, Colter and Billie, team up to track down a missing racehorse, but the nemeses share a history, one that causes (more than) a little tension. Below, Pernas previews what to expect and talks about working with Hartley.

This isn’t the first time you’ve worked with Justin. What do you enjoy most about doing so, and what excited you about doing so on the show and as these characters?

Sofia Pernas: It’s always cliché to say that your partner is your best friend, but he really is. So going to work with your best friend is about all it’s chalked up to be. It’s awesome. And he’s so prepared as an actor, and he knows all of his lines, and he really, really, really takes all of this so seriously because he’s so committed to it. So it’s nice to work with someone who does that and it feels like you can play. You don’t feel like you’re so regimented and stuck in a rut performance-wise. Take-to-take, he and I play. We might even, if the writers allow it, squeeze in an ad-lib every now and then.

But especially with these characters, both of them being so strong and Billie being a fellow reward seeker as well with a chip on her shoulder… As an avid viewer of TV and just in cinema in general, I love when people—it’s that thing when you don’t give fully into the emotion and you’re watching someone get choked up by tears rather than give fully into them. It’s so nice to see strong people try not to show their vulnerabilities, even though the vulnerability’s sometimes fighting to come out of them in certain moments, and it’s fun to play that nuance for me.

Billie seems so layered from what we see of her just in this episode. What should people know about her going in and about her history?

She wasn’t always a tracker. She and Colter crossed paths a while ago, and she was working at some firm, and Billie’s like, “I want to do this.” It was supposed to be a mentor-protégé thing, and I obviously got a chip on my shoulder and was like, “I can do this on my own. Watch this. Watch me now.” And I kind of might’ve screwed him over. That’s what we’re dipping into at the head of 106, because he’s like, “Oh, you, traitor,” and she’s like, “Well…” So it’s been really cool to play those moments without her being such a shyster and then find those moments where you can redeem her, where the audience sees she’s not all bad and there’s a reason why she did the things that she did, and that’s what helps give layers to her.

Michael Courtney/CBS

I agree. And I feel like you can see that in the way that she reacts to him and certain things in the episode.

Yeah.

They are both reward seekers, but in what ways is she better at the job and in what ways is he better?

It’s not necessarily being better. It’s more we both have our respective bag of skills. He’s very good at doing what he does, which is legitimate survivalist stuff—finding footprints and maybe it rained on peat moss, like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings kind of stuff. I am more of a tech person. I go for the higher paying jobs because I feel like, with Colter, who’s so big and imposing and he’s got the muscles and he’s got the stern disposition, people just automatically go, “You, find my child.” Whereas someone like Billie, who’s a woman who’s more slight has to kind of wear her status on her a little bit, wear her success so people can see that she’s successful at her job, if that makes any sense. So to do that, she has to make money. She goes after the bigger purse jobs.

How would you describe their relationship in the present and what we’re going to see? I feel like she kind of has some fun messing with Colter a bit.

Yeah. It’s nice because when they first met, obviously there was this huge disparity in their job positions. He’s been doing this for a long time and she had just started and now she’s got a legitimate conquest belt in terms of case numbers. I’m a contender in this world, and you have to take me seriously. Not wearing the chip is difficult with someone like Billie because she has such a transparent chip on her shoulder. So that was cool to play. And I think the way she hides it is in those zinger moments where she’s teasing him and poking him and provoking him and trying to get a reaction out of him.

Colter has this team to help him, but I feel like Billie is more of the lone wolf type, which could speak to whether she really trusts anyone else?

Yeah, definitely. It’s so funny because they’re so similar—it’s why they repel [each other] and both have trust issues. They both are lone wolves in their own, except I really don’t have a Velma [Abby McEnany] and Teddi [Robin Weigert]. I’m just kind of operating flying by the seat of my pants in a way. And yeah, I think especially as a woman—I wasn’t trying to play the woman card so much—in probably a very male-dominated field, I was trying to maybe present the image that she has to try harder in certain aspects of the job when Colter might not need to. I was wanting to find the moments where she could convey that without it beating you over the face.

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Because she has to be everything for herself.

Yeah, exactly.

A missing racehorse is what brings them back together. What can you preview about their attempts to track down this horse?

It’s a really cool meeting of the minds because we’re sort of crossing paths at each moment in this horse search. At first, obviously they’re not teaming up, so they keep running into each other in these case points, and finally they’re like, “You know what?” I just kind of walk up to him like, “Listen, why don’t we just work together? We obviously don’t really like each other, so let’s work together. Let’s get this squared away so we can just go our separate ways and say bye.” That’s sort of her manipulative way of getting him to team up with her.

Tracker, Sunday, March 24, 8/7c, CBS