In the fifth season premiere of FBI: Most Wanted, Shantel VanSanten makes her series regular debut, reprising her role of Special Agent Nina Chase from FBI. Make sure to tune in tonight at 10 PM ET/PT on CBS or stream the episode on Paramount+.

FBI: MOST WANTED is a high-stakes drama that focuses on the Fugitive Task Force, an elite unit that relentlessly pursues and captures the notorious criminals on the Bureau’s Most Wanted list. The team’s charming but formidable leader is Supervisory Special Agent Remy Scott, who started his career in the New York FBI field office before rising through the ranks of the Bureau in Philadelphia and Las Vegas. The team includes: Special Agent Sheryll Barnes, a former NYPD detective and forensics expert who is raising two young children with her wife; Special Agent Hana Gibson, a gifted millennial computer whiz with a sharp wit and mad hacking skills; Special Agent Ray Cannon, who is a former New Orleans cop-turned-junior detective and worked Violent Crimes in Albany after following in his retired FBI agent father’s footsteps. The newest member of the Fugitive Task Force is well-seasoned Special Agent Nina Chase who, most recently, worked assorted cases with the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Originally from the Houston field office where she specialized in undercover work, Nina is a standout agent who is skilled with cars and has a penchant for driving fast. Always in the field and always on the run, FBI: MOST WANTED is a weekly adrenaline shot about the thrill of the chase.

I had the opportunity to speak with the actress over Zoom about the different paths that were laid out for Nina, why she’s excited to tell this particular story, how she continues to learn from the characters she brings to life, and more. Keep reading for everything she shared!

I’m a big, longtime fan and I appreciate your time today. I know you’re filming, thank you so much for talking to me. 
Shantel VanSanten: Of course. I’m so happy that I get to. This is great. Some days you’re so immersed in work that you forget what you do and then, you get to kind of take a step back and talk about it and you’re like, “God, this is so cool.”

Right? I’ve been a TV watcher and lover for my whole life. My favorite thing has been hearing about the behind-the-scenes process. That’s why I became an interviewer because hearing how it all comes to life is the most fascinating thing ever to me. I think being on set must be so cool. 
I love it. Yeah, there’s a little bit of that idea and then there’s times I’ve like, I brought my sister to set once when I was doing a show and gave her a peek behind the curtain and instantly, she’s like, “This isn’t very glamorous. I’m bored, why are you doing this so many times?” And so, there’s this idea that I also want to shelter people where I’m like, “Yes, it’s so fantastical and amazing,” and then I want to be able to call my mom on a hard day and complain about it. She’s like, “But you’re living your dream,” and I’m like, “But it’s still a job and it’s really hard some days!”

You are killing it on FBI: Most Wanted, which I’m not surprised by because you killed it on FBI, but one thing I read recently that I do want to ask you about was you mentioned that originally in the FBI finale, your baby didn’t make it. You read it in a script, but then once you got that change and came over to Most Wanted, the baby lived. Before saying yes, did you take a step back and think about those two different paths for your character? I feel like it’s rare that you don’t have the writing in front of you and having those two paths must’ve been interesting to consider.
Yeah, when I initially took the job, I was coming in for ten episodes, Missy was on pregnancy leave and I knew it was temporary. It was never, “Hey, if you do a good job, maybe you can stay,” it was this, “You’re just coming in for ten, you’re going to play Nina.” And so, I knew that they weren’t gonna plant me in with deep roots to the show. Then we started season five and they instantly pulled John, who plays Scola, and myself aside and they said, “Well, see you’re gonna get pregnant before you leave.” I said, “What? We’re not even together!” And they’re like, “No, but we’re gonna find out you’ve been together secretly off-screen, and then you’re going to get pregnant.” I was like, what? I mean, it was like, ‘Okay, let me wrap my head around this.’ So then, there’s this tiny moment that happens in episode one of season five, where we’re inside the van doing the stakeout and you’ll go back and watch this, my hand touches his hand and we were like, ‘We’re gonna plant the seed where maybe people will notice that we’ve already been together here and we started this up again.’ So, I knew that I was gonna get pregnant and I didn’t know where they were going to take it. Now, my tenth episode is the episode where I tell him I’m pregnant and it’s so open-ended, and I was really proud of Rick, the showrunner, for telling the story of a woman and the woman’s choice of, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, I really got to think about this,’ and that it wasn’t just instantaneous excitement and that it was a bit of a struggle. I thought that was such a brave, wonderful writing decision. 

We moved through it and there’s stuff between Scolina, as everybody calls it, and we make it through the finale. We have baby Dougie, as we say, and we don’t call him Douglas, that’s very formal, that’ll be for when he wears his bow ties, but at the moment he’s baby Dougie. Then there was this idea that baby Dougie wasn’t going to make it and, of course, that — I mean, anytime I think it comes to kids and I’ve played characters where… I played a character where my son passed away, and it’s so difficult to grasp that idea. It feels like maybe the most brutal thing a human and a parent could go through, but the idea that if I go to Most Wanted, we would like the baby to live and for you to have a more fleshed-out relationship, and see these mini crossovers and the potential, I, of course, took a step back and thought about it for Nina, but it kind of was a no brainer for me. I feel so lucky to play Nina and that anybody saw potential to carry on her story of something that I created in a space that was supposed to be temporary feels like, I guess in a way, I did something right. So often we look to feel like, ‘Am I failing? Is this okay? I all of a sudden just got thrust into this show and am I doing okay?’ It was kind of this, mini reward feeling of, ‘Okay, I created something where they can see a need for a character and the stories she has to tell.’ So often we don’t get to have creative control of what the writers come up with on any TV show, they can take you — all of a sudden you’ll have a drug addiction and you’re like, ‘what, why would I,’ and you’re just down the path.

And so, you’re kind of just on this treadmill of everybody’s ideas and where they’re gonna take the character. It felt that way when they told me I was gonna be pregnant, it was like, “Oh, we’re sleeping together. Okay, good to know,” you know? And so, it felt the same way with the baby, but it just takes sitting and anchoring yourself in the truth of a character, and I think the truth is that Nina, albeit she is a mother now and they have a relationship with two working parents, she’s also somebody who her ambitions aren’t going to stop. The purpose and the drive that she’s always had may even increase because she is now a mother. I got to look at my mom who worked her whole life and I’m so grateful that I had that example and that hard work ethic that was placed in me, and maybe it meant my parents weren’t always around all the time, but as you get older, you see the sacrifices that parents have to make and I think it’s an interesting story to tell and it’ll be so cool to see where and how these two people get to parent, and where being a parent falls in line with this really intense, crazy fugitive task force work.

Nina’s career is clearly very important to her and I admire that so much. It’s just so well done on the show. While you’re in a very different career and so am I, you always find similarities. Did you find any in terms of when you personally were getting ready to take a new job in a different genre that might’ve seemed extremely challenging or just a leap that you were taking? Did you pull any inspiration?
You know, life seems to just always fall in line. I went through maybe the hardest year of my entire life last year, hands down the most challenging shifts, a multitude of losses and I really had to surrender to the idea of something completely new. Moving to another coast, being away from all of my friends, my chosen family, any family that I was near, letting go of so many things in my life, and really stepping into being brave at my age, which was so interesting. I’m 38 years old and I just never thought I would be starting over and I am, and I did, and I feel like this show and this role, I channel Nina probably more than anything because I myself am a little too easygoing and sometimes a people pleaser, and Nina’s not. She is and has a voice and is truthful when she speaks. There’s times I’ll be on set and I think, ‘I don’t want to say anything,’ and I’m like, ‘But Nina needs me to. What would Nina do?’ And so, I do and I think that we can learn from characters and maybe that’s something that exists within us. I think about her bravely stepping into a space of being a mother and not wanting to give up on her drive, her purpose, and something that she loves. I think about myself stepping into the brave unknown of a brand new city, a new life, and a job. It always ends up somehow aligning where I pull inspiration from the characters and try to live out the alter ego of myself that I wish I was with their strength and maybe that’s the beautiful collision that will teach me, and I can use my toolbox of challenges from the last year to tell stories as well.