Tom Ellis Previews Latest FBI Offshoot, His CIA Agent's ‘Large Dose of Moral Ambiguity' — Watch Video
Tom Ellis' character in CBS' CIA sounds like a bit of a devil.
CBS' upcoming 'expansion' of the FBI universe (airing Mondays at 10/9c this fall) is centered on two unlikely partners — a fast-talking, rule-breaking loose cannon CIA case officer (played by Lucifer vet Ellis), and a yet-to-be-cast by-the-book, seasoned and smart FBI agent who believes in the rule of law.
More from TVLine
Patti LuPone Skips Tony Awards Amid Audra McDonald Controversy - Watch Oprah Winfrey Joke About It On-Air
Tonys 2025: Hamilton's Original Broadway Cast Reunites for Sleek Medley - Watch
Matlock Season 2: Is Matty's Marriage in Trouble? EP Previews 'Negotiations' Ahead
'When this odd couple is assigned to work out of CIA's New York Station,' the official synopsis reads, 'they must learn to work together to investigate cases and criminals posing threats on U.S. soil, finding that their differences may actually be their strength.'
Speaking with TVLine at CBS' recent Upfront event, Ellis said that CIA will take its cue from 'the format set up on FBI' and 'explore the notion of why these agencies don't normally work together' — despite the fact that the events of 9/11 suggested that the Agency and Bureau should share more information.
Ellis says that the unlikely partnership proves to be 'productive but also very difficult, because they have very different philosophies on how to achieve goals.'
When we first meet Ellis' CIA agent, the British actor reveals, he is 'stuck in the 'boring' end of the job, on home soil in New York,' and thus perhaps is open to any set-up that gets him more action.
All told, though, 'he is someone who has to use guile and deceit and lies to get what he wants,' Ellis shares. 'There's large dose of moral ambiguity that comes with him.'
CIA is executive-produced by showrunner David Hudgins, FBI franchise overlord Dick Wolf, Nicole Perlman, David Chasteen and Peter Jankowski. Eriq La Salle will direct and exec-produce the first episode.
An exact premiere date has not yet been set, but CIA will air Mondays at 10 pm, leading out of the FBI mothership.
Want scoop on , or for any other TV show? Shoot an email to InsideLine@tvline.com, and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line!
Fall TV Grid 2025: What's on When? And Versus What?
View List
Best of TVLine
Yellowjackets' Tawny Cypress Talks Episode 4's Tai/Van Reunion: 'We're All Worried About Taissa'
Vampire Diaries Turns 10: How Real-Life Plot Twists Shaped Everything From the Love Triangle to the Final Death
Vampire Diaries' Biggest Twists Revisited (and Explained)

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


New York Post
40 minutes ago
- New York Post
Brilliant airhead! Conman scored 120 free flights in clever ‘Catch Me If You Can'-style scam
Paging Frank Abagnale, Jr.! A Florida conman scored more than 120 free flights by posing as a crew member with at least seven different airlines in a wild, 'Catch Me If You Can'-style scam, according to federal prosecutors. Tiron Alexander, 35 — whose scheme echoes that of the real-life imposter pilot who inspired the Leonardo DiCaprio movie — was convicted of fraud June 5, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida. Advertisement Alexander took swindling to new heights by submitting scores of fake flight attendant credentials, including phony badge numbers, to book free flights between 2018 and 2024, federal prosecutors said. The scam echoes the one featured in the 2002 movie 'Catch Me If You Can.' Svitlana – The clever airhead turned in the bogus paperwork, complete with roughly 30 fabricated hire dates and ID numbers, to get aboard flights without paying — a perk only offered to pilots and crew members, prosecutors said. Advertisement All told, Alexander went on at least 34 free flights and booked a total of at least 120 without ever working for any of the airlines involved, authorities said. The fraudster previously worked for an unidentified airline in Dallas but was never a pilot or flight attendant for the firm, according to the prosecutors. Crew members and pilots are given free flights by airlines. Svitlana – He was found guilty of wire fraud and entering secure airport areas under false pretenses and faces up to 20 years behind bars. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 25. Advertisement By contrast, 'Catch Me if You Can' tells the true story of conman Frank Abagnale, Jr. who impersonated a Pan Am pilot, a doctor and a lawyer — all before turning 19 years old. He was eventually caught in 1970 and later used his expertise in fraud to work with the FBI.


Chicago Tribune
43 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Kimberly Akimbo' arrives in Chicago, a moving musical about a teenager facing mortality
At the Tony Awards this year, a delightfully quirky little musical called 'Maybe Happy Ending' beat out big competitors and walked off with the big prize. Although it's about family dynamics rather than robotic romance, 'Kimberly Akimbo,' a similarly small and unusual show that won best musical in 2023, paved its way. Nearly three years after its Broadway bow, the touring version of director Jessica Stone's original production of that Jeanine Tesori tuner has finally reached downtown Chicago. Carolee Carmello, who has graced this city's stage several times with outstanding success in Stephen Sondheim musicals and elsewhere, is on the road in the title role originally played by Victoria Clark. And the rest of the nine-person cast includes at least two long-standing romantic couples, which might explain why much of the cast seems to be so close up there. 'Kimberly Akimbo,' the musical, is based on a play of the same name by David Lindsay-Abaire, which I first reviewed at A Red Orchid Theatre back in 2005, with Roslyn Alexander playing the lead. As Broadway fans will know, the show is about a teenager with progeria, a rare medical condition that causes the human body to age at over four times its normal rate. When she is 16, as she is in this show, Kimberly's appearance suggests a woman in her 60s. And, as logic would suggest, life also blossoms and expires for Kimberly at a far accelerated rate. Most of us, of course, don't know our likelihood of dying early so the play, and thus the musical, with book and lyrics by its original author, allows us to see life through the eyes of someone who knows more than most of its unavoidable brevity and the importance of living in the present, rather than the past or the future. In the musical, Kimberly's schoolmates (played by Grace Capeless, Skye Alyssa Friedman, Darron Hayes and Pierce Wheeler) become a little Greek chorus of show-choir nerds, trying to reconcile their adolescent angst with the problems faced by the young woman aging before their eyes. Kimberly has yet more to deal with, too. Her family is composed of narcissists: a mostly clueless mom, Pattie (Laura Woyasz), an alcoholic dad, Buddy (Jim Hogan) and a whack-a-doodle aunt, Debra (Emily Koch), who interjects a criminal caper plot into the days around Kimberly's Sweet 16 birthday. I greatly enjoyed 'Kimberly Akimbo' on Broadway and this first national tour is in excellent shape. It's never especially helpful to most people to compare performances, but if you were to twist my arm, I'd say that whereas Clark focused intently on achieving the inner life and spirit of a teenager in her portrayal, Carmello leans more into the character's sense of her own mortality. Both takes strike me as legitimate, although they are quite different. Carmello's Kimberly is a little sadder and more careworn, although she certainly also makes the final carpe diem number work quite beautifully and, as her perhaps boyfriend, Seth, Miguel Gil is a true, thoroughly guileless delight. I'm a big Tesori fan. Lyric Opera audiences heard her extraordinarily potent music quite recently in the opera 'Blue,' with the stirring Tazewell Thompson libretto. Although she clearly remembers what it is like to be young and have fun, Tesori's 'Kimberly Akimbo' score makes no easy choices; it focus intently on the show's complex emotional landscape as Kimberly strives to teach those far older than herself, and wishes for that one great adventure we'd all like to have before we go. Review: 'Kimberly Akimbo' (3.5 stars) When: Through June 22 Where: CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes Tickets: $35-$125 at

Business Insider
4 hours ago
- Business Insider
OceanGate's former chief pilot says he was 'cut out' from the Titan project after telling CEO Stockton Rush the sub wasn't safe
The former chief pilot of OceanGate said the company's CEO ignored his warnings that the Titan submersible — which was destroyed in a deadly implosion — was unsafe. David Lochridge made the claim in Netflix's new documentary, "Titan: The OceanGate Disaster." It examines what went wrong in the run-up to the Titan's visit to the wreck of the Titanic, which ended in the CEO of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, and four others dying onboard. Lochridge recalled just how determined Rush was to achieve his goal of making deep-sea tourism a reality. The documentary features archival footage of Rush and his team building submersibles, including the Titan. In one clip taken from an interview with CBS, Rush says: "By the time we're done testing it, I believe it's pretty much invulnerable." Lochridge was OceanGate's director of marine operations and the company's chief pilot from 2015 to 2018. He recalled how in 2016, Rush chartered a dive with the Titan's predecessor, the Cyclops 1 submarine, to see the SS Andrea Doria wreck off the coast of Massachusetts. The ship sank in 1956 after colliding with the SS Stockholm due to heavy fog. Lochridge said he had to persuade Stockton to let him accompany him on the voyage, which included paying passengers, after he decided to pilot it himself. Footage from inside the Cyclops during the dive, featured in the documentary, shows Rush piloting the submarine into a debris field underneath the bow of the Andrea Doria. The craft gets stuck, and Lochridge takes over the controls to pilot it to safety. "He had us jammed good and proper. I said to him, 'Please don't do anything. Just give me the controller.' He didn't have a lot of experience in piloting subs," Lochridge said. "At that point, I got us clear, I motored us 50 meters away, turned us round and I said 'That is what we were supposed to have fucking done on the dive,'" he added. Lochridge said that after the crew resurfaced, Rush's attitude toward him changed. "The passengers were hugging, but with Stockton, it was a complete turnaround for me. He never really spoke to me the rest of the trip. The dynamic changed. After the Andrea Doria, I started getting cut out by senior management from the Titan project. I was dropped from all email communications, verbal communications. I was totally out of the loop," he said. Lochridge said he was fired two years later in 2018 after he discussed his safety concerns with Rush in a meeting about the Andrea Doria incident. In 2023, OceanGate threatened to sue Lochridge if he didn't withdraw his allegations to the US Department of Labor that he was fired in retaliation for raising these concerns. In the documentary, Lochridge said that he was worried about the stability of Titan's carbon fiber hull and the caliber of the design team working on the project. He said: "I was seeing every single piece, and pretty much every single piece had an issue. The engineering director, Tony Nissen, we used to argue on a regular basis. He brought in people with very little experience from the manned submersible industry. A lot of them were fresh out of college." "At the time, I had no experience with carbon fiber, but for the untrained eye, it was like Swiss cheese. You could actually see the porosity, you could see the delaminations, you could see all the voids," he continued, referring to the separation of layers. Nissen also appears in the documentary and said he was pressured by Rush to "make sure nobody spoke up." Footage from 2018 also shows Rush arguing with Lochridge as he believed that the submarine could handle pressure at the extreme depths. "What you do is you set a testing program where you do it incrementally. It's not just going to go to 3100 [metres] and be perfect, and at 3200 [metres] it all goes anyway. That ain't going to happen, and I will put my life on the line to say that ain't going to happen," he said. OceanGate ceased operations in July 2023 and could not be reached for comment.