The Practice and Law & Order: Organized Crime alum Dylan McDermott says viewers will get to see a more personal side of his character, Special Agent Remy Scott, on Tuesday's episode of FBI: Most Wanted.
The latest installment of the CBS show, which McDermott joined in 2021, shows Remy attending a parole hearing for the man who killed his brother and then going undercover as a Catholic priest to catch two men who have been abducting and murdering teens.
"Remy is really invested. It's personal for him [because] there are echoes of his brother and his killer possibly being paroled and getting out of jail, and these kids being kidnapped," the 61-year-old actor told UPI about this week's case in a recent Zoom interview.
"We are now at a boiling point with Remy," he said. "There is a need inside of him to get these guys, and that always goes back to his brother. As long as I am on the show, that will be a huge part of it for me as an actor and for Remy -- this need to have justice in the world."
He said this is his favorite episode of Season 4.
"I do enjoy the undercover work and being a character within a character, especially this mad priest," McDermott said.
"Remy says [the priest] is 'dark and smooth like a cognac.' That was an improvised line, and that's what he's like. He's dark and smooth and scary, and he gets the job done."
McDermott thinks Remy's personal tragedy makes him a better investigator and more credible liaison to the families of victims.
"He knows. He identifies. He's not just an FBI agent," McDermott said. "The fact that Remy is specific about what he is doing fuels the episodes and fuels the character."
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He added: "When I took this role, I really wanted to have that loss in his life. ... It's proven to be gold for me each and every episode because I can always refer to that. I think in this episode, in particular, we really see it."
The actor said that years on American Horror Story prepared him to play a man dealing with the sort of next-level depravity on display in this week's case.
"This is right up there with an episode of American Horror Story," McDermott emphasized.
"Sometimes I think, 'Oh, my God, there's so much evil on this show that we have to tackle every week,' but then you open up the Internet or the paper and you see it right in front of you. We are dealing with it all the time.
"I do believe there is more good in the world, and I think a show like FBI: Most Wanted comforts people in a strange way -- that there is justice and resolution in the world."
McDermott said he had no trouble transitioning to the role of good guy Remy after playing ruthless New York mobster Richard Wheatley on NBC's Law & Order: Organized Crime for two seasons.
"It was great. For me, it was seamless because it was still the Dick Wolf Universe, so they knew who I was as an actor going into this," he recalled.
"I knew it was time to play 'good' again. I had played 'bad' for a while. I think I heard the clock ticking, and I knew it was time to go back over and be noble again," he said with a smile. "So, when this opportunity arose, it felt right to me on so many different levels."
The veteran actor -- who also starred in the films Hamburger Hill, Steel Magnolias, The Cowboy Way and Olympus Has Fallen, as well as in the TV shows Big Shots, Dark Blue, Hostages, Stalker, LA to Vegas and Hollywood -- said the entertainment industry has changed tremendously since he started out in the late 1980s.
"Back then, it was all about the movies and being a movie star. If you did television, then maybe that signaled your career was not what it should be, and now it's just the opposite," he said.
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"Everyone's rushing toward television, and movies have taken a back seat to television. I never thought in a million years that would actually happen," he added. "People really enjoy seeing characters week-to-week over years in story lines. I think that is something that has really taken off."