Justin Hartley put a lot of hard work into CBS’ hit series Tracker — and a lot of hard work went into making Colter appealing to any and all audience members.
Before playing Colter Shaw, Hartley made a name for himself with roles in soap operas such as Passions and The Young and the Restless. He also appeared on Smallville, Revenge and Mistresses before rising to a new level of stardom for his portrayal of Kevin Pearson in NBC’s This Is Us.
Hartley’s performance scored him several award nominations during This Is Us‘ run from 2016 to 2022. After the show came to an end, Hartley teamed up with This Is Us producer and director Ken Olin to adapt Jeffery Deaver’s novel The Never Game for the small screen.
Tracker, which premiered in February 2024, follows a survivalist who travels the country helping people and law enforcement tackle a variety of mysteries. As the series unfolds, viewers learn more about how Colter’s past shaped his current life as a lone-wolf who prefers to isolate himself from others.
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“I’m excited about it. It’s been a long time coming. Ken Olin and I built this show from the group up years ago, before This Is Us even finished filming our final season. We’ve been at this for years, through a pandemic, and a strike, and on and on,” Hartley told Entertainment Tonight that same month. “We poured our hearts and souls into this thing and started working on this what seems like forever [ago]. It’s a labor of love for sure. I’m really proud of it and just happy to finally get a chance for people to see it.”
The series premiere, which aired after Super Bowl 2024, brought in more than 18 million viewers.
Keep scrolling for Hartley’s most insightful quotes about Tracker:
Keeping His Character Single
According to Hartley, viewers shouldn’t expect for his character Colter to have a consistent romantic interest.
“The fact that Colter doesn’t have a girlfriend, I think that’s one of the things I wanted to sort of keep,” Hartley, who is also an executive producer on the show, told People in February 2024. “I feel like if he has a wife and a girlfriend and a family, and he continues to do all these dangerous things, that’s kind of selfish.”
(Hartley’s wife, Sofia Pernas, made multiple appearances as Colter’s nemesis.)
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Leaving Politics Out of the Show
“I think a lot of times, it’s all about the message or this political topic. Sometimes, it gets lost in the shuffle that we are entertainers. I want people to watch something and to be entertained,” Hartley explained to The Hollywood Reporter in February 2024. “Colter Shaw is not agenda-driven, necessarily. He’s a businessman. He takes the money, that’s how he makes his living. He’s not politically driven. He’s driven by doing the right thing. And, where does that come from? Well, that comes from his childhood, and we unpack that in the series.”
The Physical Toll
Despite Colter having plenty of physically-demanding scenes, Hartley didn’t take part in all of them.
“I do whatever production will allow me to do. There are certain things that I’m just not allowed to do, which I understand — it’s insurance. I have a brilliant stunt man, his name is Jordan, he’s incredible! We have a great stunt coordinator. Typically they design the stunts in a way so that I can do them,” he detailed to THR. “I’m doing most of it, mostly because they’re doing such a great job making them safe so that I can actually do them, which I think is so much better for the audience.”
Hartley continued: “You want to see the face of the person. You wake up a little more sore than you’d like sometimes when you throw yourself into walls a few more times than you’d like, but it’s worth it in the end. It’s a sore back for a couple of days, it’s no big deal.”
That same month, Hartley joked on The Talk about how Colter differed from Kevin Pearson, saying, “This Is Us was more like this — a lot of sitting. You didn’t get your steps in and on Tracker the guy is moving. He’s constantly moving so I do get my steps. I get dirty, I get to run and jump. I get hit, I beat people up and he has a gun.”
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Preparing for the Role
During an interview in February 2024, Hartley poked fun at how he could prepare to play a bounty hunter, telling IGN, “I play hide-and-go-seek with my neighbors. I tell everybody to hide. I go find them. Gosh, I did this one thing. It just sort of helped get my mind right — I stopped using GPS for a while. A Thomas guide thing that lets you see landmarks and this and that. I don’t know if you can take bounty hunting classes. I would take that class though.”
His Mortality
“It’s important to keep upping the stakes. I like being Colter as a hero, finding people and all that. I also really like seeing him in a suspenseful thriller and a dangerous situation,” Hartley told The Hollywood Reporter in April 2025. “I don’t want our audience to forget that this man is mortal, he’s not a superhero. He can die! The things he is doing are very very dangerous.”
Bulking Up
“I definitely tried to bulk up a little bit. When I started the show, to be totally honest with you, I read the source material, obviously, and then when we got the show and started developing [the character], I had this idea. I was like ‘Well, this guy is a rock climber.’ That came from the book. And one thing I noticed about a lot of climbers is they’re very slight,” he continued. “They’re thinning people because they’re pulling their body weight all the way up, right? They’re not like what you saw in Cliffhanger, when you had Sylvester Stallone with that incredible physique.”
Hartley added: “I didn’t want to get skinny but I wanted to stay on the thinner side to support that idea of the character. Then as soon as we started to get into the show, and the show started to change a little bit, I was like, ‘Oh no, this guy is not a slight man — this guy needs to have some meat on him. He fights; he needs to be strong.’ As the character has gotten a little bit more physical, I have gotten a little bit more physical myself.”
Taking Hits
“Anytime you get elements like that it’s worth it. We shot in Whistler [Ontario, Canada]. I don’t know how many times I was walking and all of a sudden — I’m 6’3” and boom, I’m 2 feet tall,” he quipped to THR. “That happened quite a bit. I think there are a couple of falls in the episode you see; those are not stunts, that’s me falling and we decided to keep it in. I took a couple of really nasty spills, and to be totally honest with you, I’m still healing up a little bit. But that was months ago; it was worth it.”
