Spoilers ahead for the series premiere of Line of Fire.
Kat Cunning did not envision playing an FBI agent.
When the role of Claire Hollingsworth on Line of Fire came their way, Cunning was spending their nights singing at New York’s Faena Hotel. “I was singing in what I like to call my drag. I was very high-fem with the heaviest beat on,” they share. Singing jazz standards is a far cry from the NBC procedural audiences will see them in this fall.
Created by Joshua Safran, Line of Fire follows the Hollingsworth family, whose members are all law enforcement agents. Special Agent Mike Hollingsworth (Peter Krause) and Deputy Marshal Jane Hollingsworth (Hope Davis) raised Claire and her brothers Micah (Tommy O’Brien) and Russ (Taylor Bloom), who all followed in their parents’ footsteps. After being handed a case by her mother, the FBI agent figures out that Jane’s fellow Marshal Libby was killed by the elusive killer believed to be targeting the Hollingsworth family, putting the entire family on alert.
Kat Cunning as Clare Hollingsworth and Pico Alexander as Logan on 'Line of Fire'Scott Gries/NBC
Unfortunately, the professional win comes with a personal tragedy for Claire. Logan, Claire’s boyfriend, is killed at the Hollingsworth family home, and his killer turns out to be Mike’s oldest son Jack (Charlie Barnett), who the rest of his siblings believe to be dead. Now, is Jack the killer hunting the family? That is to be determined.
Out spoke to Cunning about Claire’s messy family, queer art, and having a “really fun time appropriating hetero culture” on Line of Fire.
What was your reaction when you found out Logan’s neighbor Joel is actually her brother Jack?
Charlie is such an incredible person and we reached out to each other the second we realized we were both doing this. We went and saw the Whoopi Monologues together, and we gelled so much. I’m so excited for the news to be out that he is a brother.
To be honest, we all want to know what is going to happen, but for Claire, my relationship to Jack is definitely me projecting a lot of my actual older brother dynamic, which is that I look up to him, and I’m excited to see what happens as we learn more. Finding out he was my brother when I first read the script made my jaw drop to the floor, and it was the singular thing that made me like, “Whatever I thought this script was, there’s going to be a surprise at every turn.”
Speaking of Jack, what do you think keeps Claire from sharing that part of her life with Logan?
One of the things for me as a queer person playing Claire that is an important starting place is that my work is more important to me than my relationship. That’s something I can pull from my real life to some degree. I’m getting to know her while I live in her body, but that’s my main justification for not sharing a lot of deeper things with Logan. I definitely think there are some huge things about myself I don’t know yet that I wouldn’t let a partner into yet. It’s only been a couple of months really. It’s just too intimate. It was a major tragedy in Claire’s life and it’s not that serious yet.
How was filming that chaotic dinner scene when Logan runs out?
That was the first time that we all really got to learn how we all work in the room. You can Google people, you can watch their work, and you still never know what it’s going to feel like in the process with people. The fact that we all just played really well and supported each other to, like, make that ballet come to life.
I don’t know anyone who’s gone through what Claire’s saying to her boyfriend in that moment. I’m a very physical, method-y actor, and the best part about that experience for me was I learned that my co-actors could hold that. My co-actors could let me do my thing and be a little weirdo in my internal process and we’re all like doubling down when it’s time to be serious and supporting each other to make this as grounded, real and human as possible.
If there’s anything cute and funny I can say is that I had to eat fake arugula for a long time while gearing up to drop a bomb.
Kat Cunning as Clare Hollingsworth and Hope Davis as Jane Hollingsworth on 'Line of Fire' Photo by: Scott Gries/NBC
With Claire's mother manipulating her to get to the bottom of what happened to Libby, and her dad trying to get Russ to break the rules on his first day at his new job, are their parents a little toxic?
They’re all a little toxic. The family is all different sanctions of the government, but those are metaphors for the way they all have their own agendas, and that people in any family have their own secrets. There’s some healthy competition that’s a little tête-à-tête vibe, but there’s some deep secret keeping, and that’s what I find interesting. This is not the Brady Bunch.
It’s really unclear who the good and bad guys are, and that makes it interesting to act with each other because I don’t actually know who I can trust at any given moment. At the end of the day, you do always get the warm hug of the dream of a family of superheroes.
What was it like building that sibling dynamic with Tommy and Taylor?
It was incredibly easy, like, to an eerie degree. Shout out to our amazing casting directors, but especially Cassandra Kulukundis, who reached out to me right after I sent that tape in, and then was like, "I see you for this, and we're gonna work on this."
So, when I first met Tommy– this is a big opportunity for both of us, and unlike anything either of us have ever done. So, we got a beer in Williamsburg where we were shooting and chatted, and immediately clicked, and just sort of agreed to take this as seriously as we possibly could, and treat it like all the indie films we've done before, and just be ourselves in these roles.
And so that really tight sibling dynamic was already effortless. And then when Taylor came into the fold, he could not be more perfect for his role. Like, Russ has such an earnest quality that has to just be doe-eyed and optimistic, and he is that. Like, we actually all sort of feel like a family from jump, and I also have two brothers in my real life, and they sort of remind me of them, except for better looking.
With Josh Safran at the helm, what is it like to get to work with queer people when telling stories like this one?
This is not a process I would have anything to add to if it weren’t this way. I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t a warm, queer, diverse room with plot twists that feel like they’re written by people who live in the shoes that I live in. I have a lot of fun in my career playing the hyper-fem women because I like to play them from a distance with the sauce that I have from the life that I love.
This step for me, even though on the poster maybe it looks like your average mainstream procedural cop family. It’s not the gayest show on TV either, but it’s made by queer people and that’s really different from the other shows in this genre. I’m having a really fun time appropriating hetero culture.
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How does making your own music fit into the way you're thinking about your career now?
My acting career started because I was singing my own music in the show Trinkets, and my most dedicated fans internationally are from that. It’s been a larger part of my career, even though the acting has felt like there’s more on my IMDb page, I’ve been singing way more often than I’ve been acting the last decade. There’s no slowing down.
I’m fully consumed by making this show and making American Hostage, but I recorded my first full-length album that includes songs from the very beginning of me writing over 10 years ago, and it's called Notes from the Brink. I don't think this moment in my career as an actor would feel as truthful if I didn't also have this mission statement of who I am as an artist coming out as an album alongside it.
It's really fun to be somebody that you're not, and true things about you come out through that work. But my own music is always going to be my chance to say exactly who I am, and to especially directly speak to queer people and give them the actual notes from the experiences of my life, and that's always going to be a crucial part of who I am as an artist.
Line of Fire airs Mondays on NBC.
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