{"id":409724,"date":"2026-01-15T23:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T23:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/409724\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T23:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T23:37:09","slug":"chris-sullivan-joins-jay-ellis-in-abcs-the-rookie-north-pilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/409724\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Sullivan Joins Jay Ellis In ABC’s ‘The Rookie: North’ Pilot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Chris Sullivan<\/a> (This Is Us, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) has been cast in the ABC<\/a> drama pilot<\/a> The Rookie: North<\/a>, Alexi Hawley\u2019s spinoff<\/a> of his ABC\u00a0drama\u00a0series The Rookie.<\/p>\n

\n\tSullivan will portray Sgt. Nix, a recently promoted Watch Commander whose heart still wants to be out on the street. If the project gets picked up to series, Sullivan\u2019s role will be series regular. He will star opposite Insecure alum Jay Ellis, who leads the project.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Rookie: North\u00a0follows Alex Holland (Ellis), who believed his midlife wasn\u2019t worthy of a crisis.\u00a0But after a violent home invasion ignites a dormant purpose, Alex battles a lifetime of failed commitments in Los Angeles by joining the Pierce County Police Department in Washington as its oldest rookie.\u00a0Policing from the urban coast to the rural forest where backup isn\u2019t just five minutes away, Alex must prove to his skeptical training officer, his fellow rookies and himself that he\u2019s finally found something worthy of the fight.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pilot is set to shoot late next month in Vancouver,\u00a0Hawley told Deadline earlier this month<\/a>\u00a0while promoting The Rookie\u2018s eighth season. He also discussed last year<\/a> why it was appealing for him to set a new series outside of the major-city locations where procedurals are usually set.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think ultimately, what I got excited about was, I think every patrol cop show versus a procedural has really been big-city oriented, New York, Boston, Chicago, L.A., so I like the idea that this place is a bigger slice of America, where people live,\u201d Hawley said last May. \u201cThe county that they\u2019re policing does include Tacoma, so there is some urban, but at the same time, it\u2019s also the suburbs and the exurbs, and it\u2019s also the meth lab in the woods, and a National Park, and there\u2019s a military base. That sort of county is really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued, \u201cI thought it would just immediately set the show apart visually and then thematically; I think our lead, the character that Jay plays, is a guy who never really found something he\u2019s passionate about before this. And part of that has to do with a tragedy in his past, which we get into a little bit. So that was a little bit of a different way in; it is a guy who\u2019s a little more lost. I think Nathan\u2019s character was a successful professional, obviously blue collar or whatever, he was just a little lost after his divorce and everything. But this is just a little different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs previously reported<\/a>, The Rookie: North\u00a0is a stand-alone pilot; it will not be embedded into\u00a0The Rookie\u00a0the way the spinoff\u00a0The Rookie: Feds\u00a0starring Niecy Nash was. And because\u00a0The Rookie: North\u00a0is targeting next season, there are no plans for Ellis to appear on the mothership series this season.<\/p>\n

\n\tLionsgate and 20th Television are the studios. Hawley is the show\u2019s writer and executive producer through his Perfectman\u00a0Pictures. Additional EPs include Nathan Fillion, Mark Gordon, Bill Norcross and Michelle Chapman.<\/p>\n

\n\tSullivan, a two-time Emmy nominee, is best known for his six seasons starring as Toby in the hit NBC drama This Is Us. He can currently be seen starring as prosecutor Bill Kunkle Jr. in Peacock\u2019s limited series Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy. Additional TV credits include Lena Dunham\u2019s Camping, HBO\u2019s Curb Your Enthusiasm, CBS All Access\/Paramount+\u2019s The Good Fight, Netflix\u2019s Stranger Things, Steven Soderbergh\u2019s Cinemax series The Knick, and Peacock\u2019s The Calling. He reunited with Soderbergh last year to star in the feature Presence.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the film side, he played Taserface in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. He will next be seen starring in Amazon MGM Studios\u2019 Mercy opposite Chris Pratt.<\/p>\n

\n\tSullivan is repped by Gersh, Suskin\/Karshan Management, and\u00a0Hansen Jacobson Teller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Chris Sullivan (This Is Us, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) has been cast in the ABC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1855,196747,88,22329,196748,92],"class_list":["post-409724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-abc","tag-chris-sullivan","tag-entertainment","tag-pilot","tag-the-rookie-north","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}