‘Neagley’ Star Greyston Holt on Riley’s Future, Neagley Romance and Season 2

Hudson Riley, played by Greyston Holt, may spend much of Neagley trying to outrun his family’s criminal reputation, but by the end of Season 1, he’s created a completely new path for himself.

The Chicago detective begins the series determined to distance himself from his family’s criminal past. But his investigation with Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) gradually forces him back into the world he worked so hard to leave behind, and pushes him to reconsider just how firmly the line between right and wrong can really be drawn.

It also gives Riley and Neagley more in common than either might initially admit. Both are carrying complicated family histories, and over the course of the season, their growing trust develops into something that could become more. Riley just may have to be patient.

TV Insider spoke with Holt about what connects Riley and Neagley, whether there’s any hope for Riley’s fractured relationship with his father, what could be ahead in a potential Season 2, and the brutal junkyard fight.

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Hudson is so ashamed of being connected to his infamous crime family, but Neagley has her own complicated relationship with her father. Does that shared baggage help explain why these two understand each other so quickly?

Greyston Holt: Absolutely. I think that’s at the center of it. I think the ability for Hudson to see Neagley for who she really is underneath her armor, her guards, is directly related to the fact that I come from a broken household. I come from my own type of family trauma, and I feel like I see that in her right away, and vice versa. I think that is the main thing that allows us to break each other’s walls down.

What does it mean that he’s willing to go back to the family he’s trying to escape in order to further this investigation?

It’s huge, and I don’t think he would have gotten there if it weren’t for Neagley pushing him a little bit. It’s certainly a bridge he didn’t want to cross. He’s done everything in his power to distance himself from his family, to step out from under their shadow.

But I think ultimately she makes him realize that maybe sometimes it’s okay to do bad things or illegal things if it’s for the greater good, which is something they don’t teach you when you go to cop school, when you learn to be a detective, right? But he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, and through her motivation, he’s able to get there in his own mind. I think, in the end, it was for the right reasons.

Even though he’s trying to escape his family, he clearly has a morally gray area that he carries with him, even as a cop. Where do you think he draws that line? What makes him what he considers “a good guy” compared to where his family is?

I think that line was quite distinct prior to meeting Neagley. He’s someone who completely cut ties with his family and wanted nothing to do with them, didn’t want their connections. He wanted to just be an honest, decent, loyal, trustworthy cop. But those lines become more blurred as his bond with Neagley is growing, so there’s a pull there.

And then his department’s corrupt, too. It’s on both sides. The corruption is everywhere, and I think at a certain point, he just needed to do what he felt was right, not by the book. And so he’s put in a position where he has to reevaluate how he thinks about the morality of it. But in the end, he does what he feels is right and what will get the job done and solve the case.

In the scene where Hudson goes to visit his father in prison, his father immediately turns it into a transaction for information and to get what he wants. Is that when Hudson realizes there will never be a normal father-son relationship between them?

Oh, they never had a normal relationship. He’s always had a tumultuous relationship with his father, and that’s part of the reason he wanted to break clean and become a cop, because he wanted nothing to do with them.

But in terms of mending, to me, it really felt, like you were saying, transactional. And if there is to be any mending of our relationship, I think that will take seasons to draw out. But we certainly want to dig into that relationship a little more. I think there’s a lot more to unpack between Hudson and his father.

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That junkyard fight you had with Murphy got fairly brutal. How much of that sequence were you able to do yourself, and what was the most technically difficult part for you to pull off?

I think there might only be one point in that fight where we used my double, and that was, I think, getting my head smashed through a window. I’m trying to remember the whole fight, but essentially I would say I did 95% of that myself.

Mal [Dassin], who plays Murphy, and I, even after our rehearsals were over, would drill it out, the two of us, because it was such a long sequence. We wanted it to look — obviously it’s choreographed, every single movement is choreographed — but we really wanted it to look desperate and gritty and like we were fighting for our lives.

These two police officers don’t come from a background of martial arts. I mean, they certainly have some training, but it’s not like Neagley’s [training]. And so we really wanted to play on that visceral, raw feeling of two men just duking it out, fighting for their lives.

But yeah, I did most of it. That fight, we filmed over the entirety of a day, for like 12 hours, and the very last shot of it was kind of an innocuous little fall. It didn’t feel like much. I just kind of fell back. But the way I got up, my ankle got stuck, and I twisted.

I was certain I was done for. I couldn’t put weight on it immediately. I thought, “Okay, this is it. I’ve twisted my ankle. It’s gonna be a couple of weeks at least.” And so they took me to the hospital, got me checked out, and then it just kind of felt fine the next day. So we got lucky there, because obviously that could hold up production.

But yeah, I really enjoyed that fight, and I’m really proud of it. I think it really conveys what our characters were going through in that moment.

Early on, Riley tells Neagley, “I will deal with my issues when you deal with yours.” By the finale, they’ve both been forced to deal with exactly that. Do you feel like that line was a roadmap for what was to come?

Oh, absolutely. So much of our show is us all dealing with our issues. And I think that’s one of the aspects that sets us apart from Reacher, is digging into our psychologies and our backstories.

So, yeah, that certainly set up the fact that we would all be doing some self-analysis and looking in the mirror. We all have our flaws and our quirks and our ways of dealing with each other, for better or worse.

And Neagley certainly has — it’s a big story point for Reacher fans — this haphephobia, and to see her unpack all of that and get to the bottom of her trauma and why she is the way she is. And then for me to do the same and to deal with my family, I think that line really sets off that trajectory.

The handshake at the end between Neagley and Reacher was enormous. And then Riley asking her for a kiss shows that she may go further down the line, but not right now. Do you think Riley understands where the relationship stands at the end and where she is in her mental health?

Absolutely. He was always so careful not to rush anything and fully understood her haphephobia and just her personal blocks. He never thought that was going to happen quickly.

And even once he makes this gesture and is a little more straightforward with her about his feelings, I don’t think he’s surprised that she didn’t go for it in that moment. But he’s a very loyal guy, and he’s patient. So we’ll just have to see how that develops next season.

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If there is a Season 2, what would you like to see Hudson explore or develop next?

Overall, I think we’ve set up this dynamic foursome between Keno (Jasper Jones), Renee (Adeline Rudolph), myself, and Neagley, and I think just watching that dynamic grow is gonna be a big part of our Season 2.

For me personally, it’s exploring the relationship with my father and my family more. I think there’s so much more to explore there. And then who knows what kind of villain they’re cooking up? That’s always the most exciting thing, because you can kind of more or less picture our dynamic. We’re going to go through some crazy shit. There will be fights, explosions, bad guys, people will die.

But I don’t know what that antagonist is gonna be next season, and I can’t wait to see what the writers have cooked up. Knock on wood.

Neagley, Season 1, Streaming Now, Prime Video