Niecy Nash-Betts Walks The Line Between Comedy And Drama In ‘The Rookie: Feds’

Nobody’s perfect. Certainly not her character in the new series, Rookie: Feds, says Niecy Nash Betts.

In the series, Nash-Betts plays Special Agent Simone Clark, who is the oldest rookie in the FBI Academy and has just been assigned to support the LA field office.

Of Clark’s approach to her new job, Nash-Betts says, “Will [she] get everything right every time? No. But her heart and her passion is definitely going to lead her in ways that sometimes a technical thing you find in a book will not.”

The series is a spin-off of The Rookie, which debuted in 2018 and stars Nathan Fillion as police officer John Nolan, who joined the LAPD as its oldest recruit.

Co-creator and executive producer Alexi Hawley says that because the series share the same universe there will be interaction between the shows, and not just with the two leads, but with all of the characters on both shows. “Police and the FBI work hand in hand a lot, and so the ability to have the fun of the [Nash-Betts character] bouncing back and forth is really part of the show.

Besides, declares Nash-Betts, “John Nolan is in love with Simone, and he doesn’t know it.”

She laughs heartily as she quickly says, “No. I’m just kidding. Wait. Don’t print that. Simone thinks everybody is in love with her. That’s a fair statement.”

Offering his thoughts on this, Fillion says, “It’s so easy because Niecy finds comedy very, very easy. So, all you have to do is stand next to her and watch the whirling dervish react as every man would. I get to be the straight man to her.”

Due to the narrative through line of the series, Nash-Betts has to walk a fine line, working to balance humorous moments amid serious storylines. “I’ve come to know that comedy is the harder of the two,” she says. However, she admits, “I like them both equally. It’s a blessing when you get to marry them, which is what I’m able to do here at Rookie: Feds — bake a little bit of that comedy into the seriousness of a script, and I love it. I love being able to have that duality in a place. They say that people who can make you laugh can make you cry, but the reverse is not always true. So, I feel very blessed that I can do both.”

Nash-Betts also says she also feel fortunate to have the cast that she does for the show, and that she knew immediately that the group would gel. “I came in the first day for us to all meet each other and it was the day that I found out my grandmother passed away. I came in. I sat down. I was kind of quiet. Somebody looked over and said, ‘Are you okay?’ I immediately started to cry like a baby, and everybody got up and just put their arms around me like a group circle, like they had known me all their lives, and I said, ‘Man, I’ve got the right bunch right here.’”

Talking about the scope of the series, Terence Paul Winter, co-creator and executive producer says that the creative team had ‘very honest and frank conversations in the [writers] room about the realities of systemic problems in policing. “Then we tried to figure out how can we incorporate that in the story, still entertain, but be honest.”

Hawley adds that since only 1% of FBI agents are Black women, “It was very much in our hearts when we created this show to address what it would be like for Niecy’s character to be inside an organization that is traditionally male, which is traditionally white and is traditionally stuck in the past. And so, the clash of those two cultures and those two forces makes it inherently dramatic.”

Nash-Betts agrees with all of this, stating, “I think that Terence and Alexi hit the nail on the head when they say, ‘The goal is to tell a story that is rooted in the truth.’ And the truth is that, in families, you don’t always agree on everything: politics, religion, who you are dating, who you marry, who you divorce, so many things. So to have a dynamic where people have really opposing views about police and the justice system but still love each other with their whole, full heart tells a very complex story, a very relatable story.”

‘The Rookie: Feds’ airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on ABC, and is available for streaming live and on-demand on Hulu.