If you’re watching Line of Fire, then you know Jack is a mystery. Played by Charlie Barnett, Jack is a member of the Hollingsworth family. Thing is, everyone thinks that Jack is dead after he joined a permanent undercover mission that would take him away from his family. But the plot twist came in episode 1 when it was revealed that A) Jack wasn’t dead and B) he’s been cleaning up someone else’s mess.
Fangirlish got to sit down with Line of Fire star Charlie Barnett to talk about the mystery of Jack, why he said yes to the show, and a possible Chicago Fire return. But the thing that stuck out to me from the very beginning is how much of a mystery Jack is to Barnett himself, something that is surprising considering how many secrets we know he’s hiding.
“Here’s the thing,” Barnett said, “Usually you enter into these, not all the time, but a lot of the time that you try to get as much information as you can. You know, I’m a theater boy. I like to dissect and, you know, my script is my Bible. I take it and I want to know every piece. What are people saying about me? What am I saying about myself? What are my actions? What are my lies? What am I falsifying? What am I actually? What are my truths like, that is my bread and butter. I eat that shit up.”
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Jack doesn’t have that. Instead, Jack is a mystery wrapped in another mystery on a show that is a full on mystery. So where does that leave Barnett? Well, he taps into Line of Fire showrunner and creator Joshua Safran. “I have been like digging into Josh’s psyche to just try and get it because Josh is pretty incredible about like, just maintaining everything in his head,” Barnett said, adding that this has led him to look back at some Jack scenes with a bit of regret. But this is where trust in his showrunner comes in.
In the moments that Barnett has wished he knew more about Jack to act a specific way, Safran has told him, “No, see, I think you’re wrong on that. I think you’re being a little too hard on yourself. […] I feel like if you had known that information, you would have played into these beats. And I didn’t want to see any part of that playing into it. So sometimes, having the mystery can actually allow you to, you know, not play into the trap.”
So what does Barnett know for sure about Jack? Well, like the other Hollingsworth family, Jack cares about his family most. “He’s trying to go with the best choice that he feels is either going to protect him, his family, the people around him. I mean, I want to keep it open ended. So maybe even hurting his family in order to protect other people that need the protection.”
But then there comes that line in Line of Fire “Cabin Pressure” where he tells Agent Wallace “Family is a burden” before basically making her promise to not tell his family is alive and letting her go. And as a viewer, I wanted a little perspective on what Barnett thought was going through Jack’s head while he was saying that. Because it feels like a contradiction.
For Barnett, Jack is protecting his family by not revealing he’s alive. Because if he does, that will shatter the lives they have built and the lies that were told to keep his secret. And he can’t risk them feeling that hurt. “For him, the burden of knowing that he’s alive, the burden of having to deal with that lie from the parents, the burden of having to deal with, you know, where have you been and what you been doing is so much more complicated than just accepting the fact that he’s gone.”
But then what about the origami cranes? Because if Jack doesn’t want them to know he’s there and he’s doing all of this under the guise of “what is going to serve us best?,” then why leave the origami cranes around? Barnett skirted around that question with us as well, which makes it so I can’t even trust that all the cranes are by Jack or even for the Hollingsworth’s in the first place.
On the cranes, Barnett cautioned making assumptions or firm conclusions about what’s going on there. “I do love talking about this with people, cause there are many assumptions made. But once you go back and watch it, you’re going to be like, “Oh, I was assuming this just because I thought I was told this. And you realize that some of the information, I’ll give you the hint, like the origami cranes is not actually, not as connective as you assume.”
This was the easiest segway of the interview with Barnett, because if we’re talking about the origami cranes, then we need to talk about the person finding them: Jane. Even though Jack and Jane have directly interacted, and she thinks he’s dead, there’s a deep bond there. And he might not be her child by blood. But she loves him with every fiber of her being, making it so his death tore her and her marriage apart.
For Barnett, the bond that Jack shares with Jane is one of the reasons he was drawn to Line of Fire. “I’m adopted. Both of my parents are white. I was raised in a mixed race household. […] I learned very early on that blood does not constitute a family. You know what I mean? Time, effort, love, compassion, work does.”
When it comes to Jack and Jane, they have a connection with each other because they’re different. “They find solace and more acceptance, because they don’t have to live up to what is expected, maybe, certain so to speak. And I think that, for me, is one of the reasons that you see that bond between them. Not to mention, I am, you know, I am the oldest of the siblings.”
“So when Mike and Jane would have gotten together, I was her literal first baby. I was her everything for a certain amount of time. […] I can’t speak for Hope. And I do love Hope so much. We’ve had, we’ve been luckily been having a little bit more time to actually bond and have those moments.” Keeping all of this in mind, he also said, “We’re going to have a chance to go deeper into who Jack’s mother was, how long Jane has been a part of his life, all the kind of connections. But there is a deep root there.”
Outside of the mystery of Jack on Line of Fire, there was one question I was getting over again when I asked people what they’d like me to ask Charlie Barnett. And it had to do with his time as Peter Mills on NBC’s other show Chicago Fire. He was on the show from 2012-2015. And if he had the chance, oh he’d totally go back. In fact, he’s been asking about it.
“I mean, this is going to sound bad. But now I’m working for NBC. So don’t kill me NBC. Every single time, and I’ve been back to Chicago a lot. Every single time I go back, I stay with Joe Minoso. But I probably have every single time gone into their offices to be like, “Hey, I’m alive. I’m not working. What’s up? What’s good? […] I can play Peter Mills again. He’s alive.”
But truly, the love that he has for Chicago Fire is something that he carries with him every day and it’s the thing he gets recognized the most for. “I get stopped more for Chicago Fire than any other project I’ve ever been a part of to this day. Like worldwide. I can go to out to like the middle of East Asia and somebody would be like ‘Chicago Fire?’ It is deeply connected to my heart.”
Like truly connected to his heart. So much so that when we started talking about Chicago Fire, he really got going and there was no stopping him. So I didn’t. “I talked to Yuri [Sardarov] two days ago. I talked to Joe five days ago. Monica Raymund was like, and still is, I haven’t talked to her in a while but she like my big sister. And one of the pinnacles of this industry for me. I mean that woman is brilliant.”
“Aside from like the cast, I literally texted Randy Flagler two days ago, because he was outside of our old apartment in Chicago. And I texted David [Eigenberg], I was talking to David because Joe Minoso just got off the show. And then he was trying to get me to come out to Chicago for his last day. They’re going to a putt putt golf event to celebrate Joe Minoso because he’s such a golfer now. It’s so weird. Joe, Yuri, and I also lived together for years when we were filming. So like, it’s a brotherhood. I love them. I’m always going to be connected to them.”
Line of Fire airs new episodes on Mondays at 10/9c on NBC, with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock.
