Following the critical acclaim and ratings success he experienced on six seasons of “This Is Us,” Justin Hartley kept his winning streak going.
After the the beloved NBC drama concluded in 2022, he re-emerged as star and executive producer of “Tracker,” his action-packed CBS hit.
With “Tracker” set to return to the CBS lineup this fall with its fourth season, Hartley recently dropped by the “I Am an Actor” podcast to discuss the series.
‘Everyone Was There For the Baby’
During the expansive conversation, Hartley discussed what it was like transitioning from being part of an ensemble drama to headlining his own series.
As he shared, “This Is Us” was truly a team effort, its success coming from all the actors putting the show first and setting their egos aside.
“The feeling that we had on ‘This Is Us’ was where everyone was there for the baby. The baby was the show,” Hartley explained, admitting that had been a rarity for him.
“I said, ‘I want to keep that for the rest of my career,’” he added.
No Yelling of ‘Weird Stuff’
When he got “Tracker” off the ground, Hartley was insistent on bringing the ethos that contributed to the success of “This Is Us” to his new project.
“I want to make sure that that comes with me to ‘Tracker’ and we’ve managed to do that,” he said.
“There’s no yelling and none of that kind of weird stuff that tends to happen sometimes on sets,” he explained. “They get high stress, and we try not to do that.”
In his experience, on-set histrionics never make a bad situation better. “That doesn’t help,” he said. “It doesn’t help people very much.”
While he conceded that there will always be conflicts in a creative environment, he believes the key to maintaining a smooth-running show is to handle disagreements calmly and respectfully.
“[We try to] just protect it,” he said. “Stick up for yourself and all that kind of stuff. Things can get heated, but we’re grown-ups. We still [have] respect, and all this is very, very important.”
A Major Hit
That philosophy has served Hartley well, as evidenced by the massive success that “Tracker” has experienced sinces its premiere in 2024.
In fact, CBS was so confident the show would connect with viewers that the network launched the show in the year’s best time slot: immediately following the Super Bowl.
That strategy proved to be a winning one; the series premiere of “Tracker” wound up becoming the highest-rated premiere in three years — not just on CBS, but on all broadcast networks.
An Ever-Evolving Series
Interviewed by Deadline earlier this year, Hartley explained why respecting the “Tracker” audience has always remained top of mind.
“I always say this,” he said, discussing his insistence that every episode deliver the goods.
“Everyone’s so busy, and for someone to take an hour out of their day or their night, or even if they’re watching it on a rerun or streaming, or however people consume this stuff. It’s an hour of people sitting there and watching this thing, and we’re asking them to take time out of their lives and and we’re hoping that we entertain them,” he continued.
“There’s got to be a payoff at the end of every hour of television that we’re showing people,” Hartley explained. “That’s sort of what we do.”
