Once a Pearson, always a Pearson. For this week’s episode of CBS’ Tracker, Justin Hartley reunites with his This Is Us costar Jon Huertas, but you won’t actually see their reunion on screen. Huertas directed “Aurora,” which takes rewardist Colter Shaw (Hartley) to a small town for a case that’s bound to be a dark one—a father is desperately hoping to find his daughter, who is still missing after her best friend was found dead three years ago. The search for what is most likely a dead body leads Colter into the world of ghost hunting, complete with a “haunted” mental hospital. Things get quite spooky, and there are surprises around every turn.
It’s new territory for Huertas and for Tracker, but a welcome reunion for the old coworkers. Huertas played Miguel Rivas, the eventual second husband of Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and stepdad to Kevin (Hartley), on NBC’s This Is Us. The cast was so close they became like a real family, and they’re even preparing to launch a rewatch podcast. It was a no-brainer for Huertas, who had already directed two episodes of This Is Us, to sign on as a director when Hartley and This Is Us director Ken Olin started working on Tracker.
“It definitely creates a shorthand and a rapport between myself and Justin and Ken,” Huertas tells Parade. “Because This Is Us was such a family show, it really lends itself to us staying connected. A lot of the emotions that you bring to the work, they bleed into our personal lives…We’re always trying to figure out how to work together and how to still be together.”
Tracker is about as far from a family show as you can get, but in an interview with Parade, Huertas detailed how he crafted “Aurora” with help from Hartley, Olin and a real abandoned hospital.
What was it like working with Justin in this capacity, as the star and EP?
Huertas: It was great. I mean, he’s the tracker. So he’s working all the time, every day, almost every scene, so he’s busy. So until he gets to the set, I really don’t see him…but then we have we have a great working rapport and shorthand when it comes to if I think I’d like to do a different take, a different choice , or if I’m giving Justin a suggestion. He’s always happy to run with it and try it. And it’s a really great, collaborative working relationship that we have. And he’s just so good at what he does that it makes my job easy.
“Aurora” feels like a different vibe than other episodes of Tracker, with the ghost-hunting themes. How did you tackle that?
It’s fun, but definitely still grounded. What I loved about this episode is that it’s more like a thriller. To me it feels reminiscent of, like, the movie Prisoners, elements of Seven, but also the found-footage type of stuff that we’ve seen in like The Blair Witch Project. How I think we were able to keep it so grounded is that these kids are film students. What we’re experiencing as the audience, is it something that they’ve created within our episode as characters, or is it real? You want to let the audience make their own decision, but it’s really a great way for us to ground it and make sure we keep it in the Tracker world. Colter is a skeptic, so he doesn’t believe in it. I think that he represents us, the audience, and we see everything through his eyes, right. So we were able to keep it nice and real and grounded, and I think that’s what makes a great episode. It’s personal.
How much freedom do you have as a director on a show like this, where every episode is in a new town with all new characters and sets?
Quite a bit of freedom. We get to start prep seven days before actually the first day of filming and it was supposed to be Vermont. So the idea is to find stuff that you know is synonymous with Vermont, location wise. That’s what I love about directing—you have to be creative in every aspect of what you’re doing. You go look at a house or a basement or a building and go, how can we turn this into what we need it to be? It’s always fun. The director, for the most part, gets to pick the locations, and it’s fun to explore someone else’s town. You’re going into people’s houses, places of work, parks, rivers, all these things you get to experience as a director just as part of your job, you’re exploring a town or city. It’s all really fun.
Speaking of locations, tell me about the haunted hospital. How did you create that set?
It was amazing. The building that they are walking into is a former mental hospital, just like exactly like what we were supposed to be shooting. There were a lot of creepy rooms, and it makes you just wonder and imagine what was going on in this place. You go into one of these rooms that feels like it hasn’t been touched in forty years, and you’re just drawing your own picture. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for a patient at this hospital. We
