Tracker’s Justin Hartley and Sofia Pernas Tease Billie’s Return (and a Major Reveal) in Episode 3
Colter Shaw will be reunited with a familiar face in the Sunday, Oct. 27 episode of Tracker, as Sofia Pernas reprises her Season 1 role as rival rewardist Billie Matalon.
Though CBS has only disclosed that Billie needs Colter to help track down a missing high school athlete, real-life marrieds Pernas and Justin Hartley reveal to TVLine that her latest appearance packs an emotional punch, and will better explain why these dueling reward seekers share a connection that extends beyond their peculiar profession.
“We get a little peek into her backstory,” Pernas says. “I feel like we broke bread in 106, and she’s comfortable in 203” — comfortable sharing more of herself with Colter, who, before now, was not necessarily someone she would trust with sensitive information. “That icebreaker moment [on the phone in Season 1, Episode 6] allowed a certain comfort for her to be able to be like, ‘I need some help,’ and she asks him for help in the third episode.”
“Of course, he’s skeptical,” Hartley points out, given that, when audiences first met Billie, we learned that she once betrayed him on a joint mission and claimed the reward money for herself. But this time around, Billie’s plea is “legit.” Along the way, “you learn a lot about her, about when she was a kid, and it gets pretty intense. It’s a very sad story, but it’s also a story of triumph and perseverance.”
Adds Pernas: “You get why she is who she is, in so many ways, and it comes from her mother.” And who knows more about deep-seated family trauma than Colter Shaw?
“They have a nice scene where she really does open up to him in a way that you….” Hartley pauses, then turns to Pernas: “The way that you played it was beautiful. Your performance suggests that you’ve never shared [this information] with anyone, ever.” And that, we learn, is precisely how Pernas chose to play it. “In my mind, she has buried this down so deep, and she proceeds through life with this wall that she builds,” Pernas explains. “I don’t think this is something that she just tells somebody over coffee, so I wanted it to be that much more.”
