Justin Hartley is not just carrying Tracker on camera. He is carrying it home, too. Fiona Rene said Wednesday, April 15, that Hartley lives and breathes the CBS drama, joking that he told her, “I used to have a life. I used to have friends.”
Rene said Hartley reviews scenes at home before he gets to set, then arrives in his role as executive producer with detailed notes. That kind of attention has helped define a series that premiered in February 2024 and quickly found an audience by pairing a case-of-the-week format with a lead who keeps changing as the story goes on.
Tracker follows Colter, a survivalist who travels the country helping find missing people and track down information on criminal cases. Hartley has said the appeal was deliberate. In August 2025, he said he and executive producer Ken Olin set out to make a throwback procedural with a new spin, one where the character would evolve instead of staying the same each week. He said Colter “doesn’t apologize for his masculinity,” while also insisting that the character is emotionally aware and interested in getting to the root of why people do what they do.
He has been saying that from the start. In September 2024, Hartley said Colter has a lot to learn about himself and his family, and he said the show would have a long runway if it kept developing him. By August 2025, he was arguing that the formula had already been proven: people ended up loving it, and there is still room to push the character further.
The detail that matters is not just that Hartley is working hard. It is that he is shaping Tracker as both its star and one of its key architects, which explains why the production has become such a central part of his routine. The show airs on CBS Sundays at 9 p.m. ET and streams the next day on Paramount+, and Hartley’s own comments suggest the future of the series depends on keeping Colter restless, competent and unfinished.
