[Editor’s note: This interview contains spoilers for Duster.]
Duster is a solid cocktail of the ’70s, packed with ingredients like bell-bottoms, a parade of cool cars, and pop-culture references and jams from the era. Co-created by Lost‘s J.J. Abrams and The Walking Dead‘s LaToya Morgan, Max’s action dramedy has buddy-cop dynamics from B movies of the time, courtesy of its smooth central duo: getaway driver Jim Ellis (Josh Holloway) and Nina Hayes (Rachel Hilson), the FBI’s first Black agent.
Each of them has a personal reason to bring down Jim’s criminal boss, Ezra Saxton (Keith David), but Nina’s resolute motivation spans years, ever since Saxton murdered her father when she was a young girl. While she tries to nab him in season one—with a small but mighty team by her side—she constantly deals with misogynistic colleagues who don’t believe she can do the job. (One of them quite literally tries to kill her because he’s working for the enemy.) Nina proves them wrong at every turn—and in the finale, she cracks the Saxton case wide open and goes from being a rookie to an indispensable task-force member.
The A.V. Club spoke to Morgan and Hilson about bringing Nina’s story to life, finding inspiration from a trailblazer like Sylvia Mathis (the FBI’s real first Black special agent), and why this character’s experiences in the workplace still feel relevant today.
The A.V. Club: What was the process of crafting Nina’s personality and journey in this very specific, male-dominated ’70s criminal world?
LaToya Morgan: We always knew that for Nina, who is coming out of Quantico with an agenda of her own, she’s someone who has been holding onto how her father passed away for years. So she’s been chomping at the bit to finally be let off the leash and attack. She’s had the fire in her belly for so long, so she has to come in hot in the first scene. We wanted her to be someone who is aware of her skills and doesn’t want to let anyone stop her from solving this case. I love having conversations with actors about their roles, and Rachel and I had a very specific vision. It was about the combination of toughness and determination, but also being able to strike that balance of vulnerability where she can let people in. Rachel got that in the conversations we had. She was always listening, open to our input and had her process. As the show goes on, it becomes so much more complicated for her. Rachel has to play Nina and then play Nina playing another version of her when she’s undercover. It was a tightrope for her to walk.
Rachel Hilson: It was, but it was a joy to step into this world and play into things that are current and modern. Yes, the show is set in the ’70s, but it has a door open to the 21st century. Nina’s got grit, depth, and vulnerability, and it’s fun to embody someone with those qualities in a story that’s insane with its twists and turns. I never knew what was coming next after reading an episode. I remember LaToya and J.J., in some emails, would ask me if I had any predictions, but I never could guess. They were surprising me the whole time.
AVC: Nina is loosely inspired by Sylvia Mathis, the first Black female FBI agent in 1976. How did you figure out what aspects of her career to include versus what works best for the show?
LM: Creating Nina was like cooking up a beautiful gumbo. Sylvia Mathis, of course, was a touchstone for us. If we were going to have someone be the first Black woman FBI agent in our world, we had to look at Sylvia’s career and what her life would have been like in those times. Talking to [retired agent] Jerri Williams, our FBI consultant,was wonderful because we saw how that baton was passed to her and how not much had changed by then. It was important to me to be honest and truthful about that world and what Nina would be stepping into. We didn’t want to shy away from that, but we also didn’t want to slow the story down and have it feel like a very after-school special, you know? So we wanted to touch history and be truthful, but also use that to cater to Nina, who is so determined with this secret that she holds and the private mission she’s on.
RH: I was grateful to get to work with Jerri, who joined the FBI in the ’80s and dealt with similar things that Nina had done. What’s interesting about our present moment in time, too, is that it is just as rife with inequalities. Things back then looked a little different or were shaped a little differently, but they mirror our time. I think all TV can be a mirror, but especially TV that is a period piece, so we can see how things evolve. And I think that’s what we wanted to achieve with Nina.
AVC: What are other inspirations, especially from the pop culture of that time, that you wanted to incorporate into Nina and the show?
LM: There are so many movies. I’m constantly inspired by Pam Grier and the long shadow she cast over the ’70s with her phenomenal performances and gritty roles. She was part of the inspiration mixed with people I know, like my mom. We stirred it up in a pot. But the most important thing for us was to make it clear that Nina is not just one thing. She’s three-dimensional, and you see that in her interactions with every character. She makes everyone grow. You see the ripple effects of Nina in the FBI office, in the team she cultivates with Awan and Jessica-Lorraine, with Jim, and even within the Saxton family. She makes everyone around her better.
RH: I will say, LaToya gave me a long list of movies to watch. Obviously, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kidand The Godfather, but also Get Christie Love! and Coffy. I also like to think of Nina as pocket-sized Pam Grier. Honestly, throughout shooting Duster, I watched a lot of X-Files.
LM: That’s my jam. I had to make her watch that. X-Files forever. [Morgan points at a poster of the show hanging on the wall behind her in her office.]
AVC: The X-Files reference is interesting because Nina develops such an intense and fun bond with Jim quickly, despite their different backgrounds and personalities. How did that dynamic evolve from page to screen?
LM: We knew we wanted Jim and Nina’s first scene together to make him feel thrown off because he’s used to all these women flirting with him, and then feel surprised she’s an FBI agent. I love that about their relationship. She’s constantly pushing him. So I know if we could start there and push them to fight, it would become a real pressure cooker as the danger increases around them. They come to appreciate the charms and the brains that each of them has because they’re good at what they do in different ways. They trust each other because their lives are literally on the line. That’s what I love about this show: The stakes are high.
RH: Josh is amazing. He’s as charismatic as you imagine him to be, and that’s how Jim is, too. So I wanted Nina to approach him and believe that she’s going to be a puppet master and get what she needs from him, or from anyone else, and not see others as complete people. Well, it’s not like she doesn’t see people as people, but it’s more about extracting things from them. Of course, she grows to care for Jim, but she’s also learning things in real time about herself and what it feels like to get hurt and possibly hurt others. Her mettle is being tested because it’s her first year as an agent. “Be careful what you wish for,” as she’s told in the pilot.
AVC: The finale sees Nina evolve professionally from a rookie agent to being a part of this critical task force. Do you see that as a victorious end to her journey, considering the battles she faced to get justice for her dad?
LM: It seemed right that Nina, being as good at her job as she is, figured out how to become indispensable to this institution that she has such conflicting feelings about. Now there’s this bigger, much more dangerous thing that she has to try to wrap her arms around and solve before something terrible happens. She’s being thrown into, if she was already in the deep end, the ocean. That’s where the partnership with Jim comes in handy because, again, they’re locked in this together and can’t do this without the other.
She’s also been spending all her free time thinking about Ezra Saxton and how she’s known him on paper. And then she gets to know him as a person. Yes, he killed her father, but he’s also this family man who loves his kids, and he’s a businessman. He can be fun and sweet, but he sure is a killer. So she has all those emotions, and I love how Rachel played into it to show at the end that nothing is black or white. It’s a gray area, the path you’re on, and there’s no one way to feel about it.
RH: I think she does end things victoriously in a way, but there’s also this thing that happens when Saxton dies, and she’s surprised by her own emotions over it. She’s getting what she wants and perceives as justice, but in that moment, she can see it’s also somebody’s devastation. She’ll have to contend with that as she keeps moving on in thenext phase of her career, which is interesting. The people and the ideas she’s been fighting and in contention with throughout the season…she gets to meet them head-on and see what they’re like to add complexity to her. It was so satisfying as an actor for me to play that. As a viewer, it’s such good TV. One of my favorite scenes in the finale is when Saxton decides to save Jim, and he turns around with the music playing. From a viewer’s perspective, it’s holistic and satisfying. The ending opens the door to more mysteries and confusion. It’s the stuff Nina thrives on because she likes to dig, dig, and dig.
LM: Yeah, and she gets put through the wringer because of it. [Laughs] Nina has to literally fight for her life so many times. Rachel, it was so crazy to see all your dailies at the end of a filming day for those scenes.
RH: I had huge bruises on my wrists from the handcuffs. I wasn’t being hurt or anything. It was just because they were on all day. It was fun, but it’s a commitment. I loved it, though.
AVC: LaToya, Duster has been in the making for quite a while since it was announced in 2020. Can you talk about the waiting period and whether the story changed because of it?
LM: The only thing that changed for us was when we let the audience know that Nina was holding the secret about what happened to her father. Of course, it was always a conversation with Josh over the years about why Jim is loyal to the Saxtons and thinks of them as family—and what it would take for him to turn on them. That’s why it was pivotal for us that in the pilot, Nina laid it out for him with evidence that this is a thing that happened to his brother and she’s the only person who can help him find some answers. All of that was always there and didn’t change. The evolution was really about when the information was turned over to the audience, but in our heads, Nina was always going to come in there guns blazing with an agenda that would turn into a reluctant friendship between two people who are complete opposites. They are at odds, yet through this craziness, our goal was to show how they come to like and depend on each other.
AVC: When were you initially intending to reveal Nina’s family history?
LM: Not too late in the season, but maybe in episode two or something? We were always reorganizing some stuff about backstories, but we knew we’d reveal it in season one and not save it for too much later.
AVC: Since you’ve been with the character of Nina on paper for so long, was there a moment during actually filming the show when she snapped into place for both of you?
LM: It really was during Rachel’s audition for me. She’s from Baltimore, which is the place Nina is from, so that was already great. But I think it was the energy she brought to her chemistry test with Josh. Despite the opposing things about them, including the height difference [laughs], they had the movable force of Jim and Nina together. The way she played it then, as if she’s not going to back down from him and she’ll poke at him so he can get to a vulnerable place—that was the moment for me.
RH: I do think the day I put on my first look with the hair helped me to see her fully. In reading the script, and her first scene when she’s talking to the agents, that immediately made me solidify who she is as a person. I could see on the page itself that she’s someone who likes to be on the attack, even if emotions are bubbling underneath. That already gave me good insight into how tough she is.
AVC: As a writer and performer, respectively, how does it feel to walk the tonal tightrope of telling a serialized story that’s a bit of a throwback to traditional network TV but packaged as a streaming drama?
LM: There is a sweet spot we tried to hit with Duster as a throwback to old-school television with some prestige swagger to it. With a weekly drop, there’s time for people to check in on it and for conversations about it to bubble up as they watch and get to know the characters. That’s always been a great way to introduce a show to audiences. With that in mind, it was fun to figure out the episodic aspects of each episode. But then there’s also this serialized piece of it that allows us to go deeper with the mysteries, and we relied on it to keep the story interesting and fresh.
RH: There are pros and cons to how streaming has evolved. One of the cool things is the opportunity to look at the story completely, which isn’t something that easily happens with old-school network TV. So I find this to be a unique opportunity where the creator can have the full vision before filming instead of not having the map—because you write as you go, traditionally. I think because of that structure, I was able to figure out the tone quickly, and that lent itself to making the character feel so lived-in.
AVC: You brought this notion up earlier, but how do you think Nina’s workplace experiences in the ’70s feel relevant today?
LM: Yeah, Nina’s had everything against her and is constantly having to prove herself. She’s a great example of finishing what you start and not letting people take you off your game, believing in yourself when you start to have doubts, and, you know, why you should call your mom when you need to steady the ship.
RH: Nina is proof to me that you can be more than one thing. I try not to read too many comments, but you do hear things like “there’s too much DEI”—that’s the buzzword right now. What I think people forget is that so many firsts exist—like, Sylvia Mathis was the first in this space and a lot of women were first in certain spaces. Duster is not a by-the-book or historic retelling of Sylvia’s experiences, but she happened—and this is a reminder of that. There were pioneers and people like us who charted the path for us. Their stories deserve to be told.
LM: I love how you phrased that, Rachel. And the whole thing is packaged in a fun way with the coolest cars. It’s visually appealing. Stories like these can be full of action, emotion, and heart. Our goal was to ultimately make Duster feel like a roller-coaster ride that’s fun when you tune in.
