Producer Dick Wolf is world famous for his long lasting “Law & Order” shows and his “Chicago” franchise. He’s also dipped his poison pen in a series about the FBI, but the indefatigable Wolf has introduced a new series, “CIA,” airing on CBS.

One of the stars of the new spinoff is Nick Gehlfuss, who played the empathetic Dr. Will Halstead on Wolf’s “Chicago Med” for eight seasons.

“It's no surprise I'm still working with Wolf Entertainment because it's a great company, and I was looking for a new playground and I sure have it,” says Gehlfuss.

“So much so that I was looking for action that in our first day on set of running, I was so excited to jump out of an FBI surveillance van and sprint towards the gunfire that I pulled my quad ... It was a seamless, wonderful transition and I'm very grateful for the job, and it's a wonderful company I work for,” he says.

The show involves both a CIA case officer played by Tom Ellis (“Lucifer”) and an FBI agent portrayed by Gehlfuss.

The series’ showrunner, Mike Weiss, explains, “We knew from the beginning that this was going to be a show with a strong male friendship, a strong male growing friendship that's going to start out as conflict and eventually grow into trust of all different kinds; someone you can eventually trust with your secrets, someone that you trust to have your back to keep you safe, someone that you can trust in ways really big and small, when the stakes get really high and things like national security are on the line.”

Ellis, who is Welsh, seared his way into TV’s hierarchy with his portrayal of the witty and charismatic devil in “Lucifer,” which ran for six seasons. He also starred in shows like “Rush,” “Tell Me Lies” and “Washington Black.”

Already a known commodity in England, Ellis says he was not so confident when he arrived in America.“I was apprehensive, and when I first came over here you go to lots of auditions and cattle calls. I remember one audition where I was a ‘number.’ It’s like starting again. But once I got over that mentally, I realized that you're not competing against people. The only people you compete against in this industry is yourself. There’s so much out of your control,” he says.

“If you're the guy, you're the guy. If you're not, you're not. My end of the bargain is I’ll work as hard as I can, bring as much to the table as I can, and show you how I would play this character. If that’s not how you want it, fine. At least I know I'm at peace with it. I’ve done everything I can do.”

Gehlfuss, who’s co-starred in "The Newsroom,” “Shameless” and “Longmire,” correlates his work to his life.

“My personality is I enjoy constant change and mixing it up. I get bored too easily,” he says. “With acting, you don’t. The thing I love about it the most is that becoming a better actor really means I'm becoming a better person.”

The reason, he says, is because an actor must constantly study the world around him. “It broadens you as a human being, makes you more sympathetic and empathetic. You become really at one with your surroundings because this is my classroom,” he gestures around the room. “And so I can go to school every minute every day if I want to.”

Weiss explains why Gehlfuss was perfect for“CIA.” “We were trying to find someone who would be able to parry — a fencing metaphor — someone who could go blow-for-blow with Colin (Tom Ellis) and keep his character honest. And I could not be more excited that it wound up being Nick.”

Weiss says he’s known Gehlfuss for years. “We wrote scenes for Nick on ‘Chicago P.D.’ and ‘Chicago Med’ a decade ago, and it's really fantastic to be able to come full circle and put Nick in the arena with Tom. And I think we chose really, really well.”

The CIA is not known for its transparency, and that’s one of the reasons Weiss was attracted to the premise of the series. “I think that one of the benefits of making a show about the CIA is that a lot of the activities are secret, they're shadowy, and I think that this is an opportunity to have that way of working butt up against the FBI, which is very much a by-the-book, traditional, patriotic, out-in-the-open, sunshine-is-the-best-disinfectant style of law enforcement.

“I'm pretty proud of the research that the writers and everyone involved in the show has done — I think we’re predicting some current events around the edges. And so we’re definitely inspired by technology, stories, threats, and maybe more the activities that the bad guys are up to around the world.”

Words to the wise from Duvall

We lost Robert Duvall, among America’s great actors, on Feb. 15. He was the star of such classics as “Tender Mercies,” "Apocalypse Now,” “The Great Santini” and “The Apostle.” When I last interviewed him, he told me that though he’d done the first two “Godfather” films, he did not co-star in the third.

“We couldn't agree on the money,” he said. “Why were they doing it other than the money? I’d bet my bottom dollar the only reason they were doing it was for the money because (director Francis Ford) Coppola, he lives high on the hog.

“I said, ‘Look, if you're going to pay (Al) Pacino twice what you pay me, that's OK. But don't offer him three times more than me, give me half.’ Then some arrogant lawyer called up, and I said, ‘Forget it.’’’

Duvall recalled, “Francis came to my farm (to discuss “Godfather III”). I was there alone that day. He always liked my mother's Maryland crab cake recipe, so I cooked it for him, and I finally wrote it down for him after all those years — he didn't have it. Now when he left, he forgot the recipe. He was more concerned when he called that he forgot the recipe than would I do ‘Godfather III.’ He's a good guy. I like Francis.”

While Duvall gained kudos for his movies, it was his role on TV that he cherished the most. “When I did ‘Lonesome Dove,’ the TV miniseries, when I played that guy, I said, ‘I can retire now.’ The English can do ‘Hamlet’ and ‘King Lear,’ I'll do Augustus McCrae because this guy was like a modern-day knight in Texas. People say, ‘When you going to do that again?’ Not in another 100 years.”

And he gave a short lesson in acting: “You're always yourself when you act. You only have one temperament, one psyche. You turn it as if it's somebody else. Somebody says, ‘I'm the character. I'm the character.’ And you see it, and it's not good acting. It's tense. It's gotta be YOU underneath.”

SpongeBob goes deep for movie

“The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants” has surfaced on Paramount+ for a new audience to follow the little yellow fellow in his quest to prove how brave he is. He and his Bikini Bottom pals set sail on a venture that takes them fathoms deep in the blue sea.

Grinning broadly behind the character of SquarePants is Tom Kenny, who voices SpongeBob and is one of the luckiest voice-over guys in the business.

“I’m really proud to be a member of this select group of people,” he says. “It’s really hard to bust into. I’ve done on-camera stuff and made a living as a stand-up comedian for years, but voice-over was what I really wanted to do. I can only speak for myself, but I know that voice-over was much harder for me to break into than stand-up comedy or on-camera work. I really wanted it badly. That was the gate that I wanted to crash the most. It was the hardest.

“I guess it’s like everything in show business, it’s gaining experience. making connections. relationships — like any freelancer’s lot in life. And it was just dumb being in the right-place, right-time. Luck.

“I do a lot of animation. I know a lot of people who do straighter voice-over trailers and promos and things and they really want to cut loose and get into animation because you can go over-the-top nuts. When I book a really straight voice-over, like a straight announcer or promo or something like that, I feel like I’ve put something over — like that’s exotic to me. It’s fun to do, ‘Next ahead on “Frasier.”’ I go, ‘Wow, that feels good to do something straight-ahead normal and not be screaming.’”

FBI investigates on new series

How about exclusive interviews with reclusive FBI agents about their bizarre cases? Such is the fodder of the new “Feds,” premiering Wednesday, March 4, on ID. Fans know that Investigation Discovery is the leading true-crime network on TV and this marks another coup for the cable network.

In this series the FBI investigates everything from selling babies to an elusive hit man who calls himself “the real John Wick.”

On March 4 the intrepid investigators pursue an elusive bomber who has detonated destruction in New Jersey and New York. On March 11 the FBI finds itself on a case similar to the Guthrie kidnapping when a husband puts in a frantic call about his wife’s abduction.

And it seems that crime pays all over television: with shows like “The Staircase,” “Dateline,” “The First 48,” “Forensic Files,” etc.

And malfeasance continues to flourish as FilmRise is offering “Fatal Fraud,” a new series where financial greed turns into violence. The show reveals how avarice drives criminal behavior from inception to its deadly outcome. Cases range from fraudsters who befriend their victims before killing them, to perpetrators who enlist family members to carry out the crimes. This true-crime series can be viewed on YouTube and across streaming devices.

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