EXCLUSIVE

Before strapping on the holster of Sheriff Mickey Fox for CBS‘s Fire Country spinoff Sheriff Country, Morena Baccarin was, to say the least, gun-shy. “I had told my agent I’m not doing a network show,” the Gotham and Deadpool favorite readily admits while casually chilling on a comfy chair inside TV Insider’s Midtown Manhattan office. “I don’t want to work for 10 months out of the year. It’s going to be shot in a different country. I can’t do this. I have three little kids!”

Undaunted, her agent urged the actress to “just have a meeting with” Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, the exec producers who had cocreated Fire Country with series star Max Thieriot. She had already done a pair of guest spots on the show, so she agreed and that’s when the spark was first lit. “They literally made me fall in love with this character. In the first five minutes of the conversation, they pitched such a complicated, interesting, vulnerable, hard-ass woman that you just don’t see out there.”

During her first appearance, in 2024’s Season 2 episode “Alert the Sheriff,” it became clear to Baccarin that Mickey was designed to be more than a one-shot deal. Not only did the deputy sheriff of the fictional Edgewater, California, share ties to some Country folk — she’s the stepsister of Cal Fire chief Sharon Leone (Diane Farr) and aunt of firefighting ex-con Bode (Thieriot) — but CBS was also hot to capitalize on the popularity of its runaway hit. “I knew when I went in to play Mickey,” she continues, “not that [a spinoff] was officially picked up, but that was a potential thing that was happening. So I had to really wrap my mind around it, [the] possibility of something becoming your own show that may or may not happen, but you have to be ready for it.”

To make sure she was locked and loaded, Baccarin did her research via a ride-along with officers in her upstate New York hood. “It’s a small town, so it’s kind of perfect,” she recalls. “There’s not a lot going on sometimes, but then it changes on a dime. But I was more fascinated by the little things when there’s not much going on. Do you take your belt off when you sit in your office? Things you wouldn’t think about, like when you are writing endless reports, do you take a coffee break? Do you go break it up with, oh, an eviction notice? If you want to make something happen, do you search for people to pull over?”

Another weapon in her arsenal was husband Ben McKenzie‘s past gigs as an LAPD cop on Southland and Gotham‘s Detective Jim Gordon. “Oh, he had a lot of tips,” she slyly quips, adding that she now reminds him that she’s playing the sheriff and not just a future police commissioner “all the time.”

Baccarin returned to Fire for a second appearance in Season 3, and it was that episode, “Dirty Money,” that really set the stage for Sheriff, with the introduction of the Leone ladies’ marijuana-farming father, Wes (W. Earl Brown), as well as references to Mickey’s rehab-frequenting daughter, Skye (Amanda Arcuri). Not exactly the family tree one would expect from such an ethical officer of the law.

“They’ve surrounded this woman that is fiercely black-and-white about what’s right and wrong with these characters who are very gray. Skye is struggling with drug addiction, and to have a mom who’s a cop, I can’t imagine anything worse for a child that age with the troubles that she’s having. And then Mickey’s dad grows weed illegally. It’s like you can’t make this stuff up!” Baccarin laughs. “It gives such a complex dynamic to all of her relationships.”

As Sheriff kicks off several months after her last visit to her Fire stepsister, we see that Mickey is more than the capable cop who helped catch their dad’s homicidal cannabis buddy. She’s also incredibly lovable (showrunner Matt Lopez likens Baccarin’s ability to be comedic, dramatic, and drop-dead gorgeous to Ava Gardner), at times inspiring and unapologetically enmeshed in the lives of her Edgewater neighbors, which lends the show a cozier vibe than its often incendiary forebear.

“It is very much a salute to small towns,” agrees Lopez. “One of the things we talk about is, I live in Los Angeles, and if I call the police and they come to my house, they don’t know me, and I don’t know them. It’s a very transactional sort of exchange. So what is it like to police a community in which you know everyone and everyone knows you? In part, that’s Mickey’s superpower. But we’ll also see that it can be a little bit of a blind spot for her.”

So don’t expect a Mayberry P.D. meets She’s the Sheriff. “I don’t discount the focus on community, but starting in Episode 2, one of the things we will do in Sheriff Country is show viewers some of the darker corners of Edgewater that [viewers] may not have seen before on Fire Country. It is a crime show, it is a police drama. In Fire Country, the enemy or the adversary, if you will, is the elements, right? It’s fire. It’s fire and nature in many ways. Here, it is human beings. And as soon as you enter that into the equation, it takes you to some very interesting places.”

Despite not having previously worked on Fire, Lopez was well aware that he’d need to import some aspects of the O.G. to make sure the two shows felt like they existed in the same universe. That meant coordinating production schedules that would allow for an array of crossovers — Thieriot’s Bode pops up in the premiere and Lopez promises “some really fun crosses coming up” — and scouting out spots in Toronto, where Sheriff shoots, that match the look and feel of the Vancouver-based Fire‘s locations. Thankfully, Lopez reports that they were able to find a “pretty good match” in some “little towns around Ontario, kind of at the fringes of Toronto.”

And of course, he’d have to infuse the series with a similar appreciation for the unsung heroes who happen to live outside of major metropolitan areas. “I had seen Fire, obviously I had been a fan, and so I was very excited when they reached out to me about Sheriff Country,” he admits. With only two prior TV shows under his belt and one unsold pilot (starring Ben McKenzie!), the writer of theatricals like Race to Witch Mountain and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice raves that it’s been a “wonderful experience” working with Fire‘s exec producers to “create this show that, on the one hand is very much part of the Edgewater–Fire Country universe and delivers what people love about that universe—the hope of community, all that great stuff—but at the same time carves out its own identity. And that’s kind of what we’re in the process of in Season 1.”

The series premiere hits the ground running with a crisis that leans into the small-town vibe as Mickey, currently the interim sheriff, and her partner Nathan Boone (Matt Lauria) attempt to de-escalate a deadly face-off between two brothers who have just buried their mom.

“To use a phrase that they used to use in the Old West, your six-shooter was called a ‘peacemaker.’ And Mickey Fox is perfectly willing and able and prepared to use a peacemaker, but she’s also, when the situation calls for it, able to be a peacemaker,” notes Lopez. “We see that in that first scene.”

The sequence also illuminates the differences between Mickey and the more trigger-happy Boone. “Our tech adviser, who’s a retired Sonoma County sheriff, was telling us, that first encounter you see in the pilot where she’s confronting those two grieving brothers, he said basically that most cops, the verb he used is ‘would vaporize those guys,’” says Lopez. “And that’s Boone.” He reveals that we’ll later learn that the character is “actually from big city Oakland, where policing is very different” and that their conflicting approaches to enforcement help foster “the part odd-couple, part dynamic-duo thing they’ve got going on…that push-and-pull between them as we get deeper into the season will be really exciting.”

Exciting romantically? Baccarin doesn’t see that happening. Yet. “We’re going to find out stuff about Boone, even more stuff that creates another wall between them,” she teases. “They really are great partners at work, and you get the sense that there’s something else underneath, but neither of them, no…it’s just not even on the table.”

That’s probably a good thing, since Mickey has enough on-the-job drama as it is. In addition to dealing with the Boone of it all, she has taken Edgewater P.D.’s deputy sheriff Cassidy (Michele Weaver) under her wing. A young woman who, like Mickey, spent some time in the foster care system, “Cassidy really looks up to Mickey,” Baccarin explains. “I think Cassidy had a rough past, and Mickey gave her confidence and gave her purpose. And she’s female, and there aren’t a lot of females at the station.” But if you think that means the Girl Code will be enforced, think again.

Off duty, Mickey’s life is just as hectic. The pilot reveals that her father Wes has finally gone legit, and with that comes his newfound interest in reconnecting with his daughter and granddaughter. What the hour doesn’t reveal, but Lopez does confirm, is that Wes may be finding a new drug in Edgewater P.D.’s comic-relief administrator Gina (Caroline Rhea) after moving in with Mickey. “We’ll find out she and Mickey’s dad have a little bit of a history in Episode 2, and those two are so fun together.”

Less fun: The fact that Mickey must convince the good people of Edgewater (and even herself) that she deserves to be the town’s full-time sheriff, while coparenting a troubled kid with her ex-husband, Travis (Christopher Gorham), a well-connected lawyer from Edgewater’s first family. “Travis is a Fraley and the Fraleys are the old money in town,” Lopez confirms. “They made a fortune in lumber.” At first glance, it seems that the former couple is on the same page, but “they have their little differences,” previews Baccarin. “We get in some pretty drag-out fights as the season goes on. There’s a lot of resentment there [because] she wanted to keep working on the marriage, and he’s the one who wanted it to end. There’s a lot of wounds that are still kind of left open.”

Expect some new ones, as well, once Mickey realizes that she and Skye aren’t the only women in Travis’s life, and that someone very close to her has committed a massive betrayal. Someone, it turns out, who will be vital to the future of Mickey’s family after Skye is implicated in a shocking situation in the premiere’s final moments.

“The first four episodes are really about that story,” hints Baccarin, who relished the chance to explore just how principled Mickey can be when it’s her own child at risk. And even though the huge smile on her face reflects a burning desire to spill the deets, she knows not to shoot off her mouth when it comes to spoilers. “I guess I can’t give too much away, but it gets much more complicated.”

Guess even the sheriff has the right to remain silent.

Sheriff Country, Series Premiere, Friday, October 17, 9/8c, CBS