Tradecraft: State of Affairs Adds to Cast

The previously announced Kathrine Heigl CIA drama pilot at NBC, State of Affairs, is casting Heigl's Agency co-workers. According to Deadline, Heigl (Killers) stars as Charleston Whitney Tucker, a key CIA attaché who counsels the president on high-stakes incidents around the world. The trade blog reports that Adam Kaufman (Without a Trace) and Sheila Vand (Argo) will play Lukas Wright and Grace Hough, respectively, fellow CIA analysts on the President's daily briefing team, and Cliff Chamberlain (Chicago PD) will play quirky Agency linguist Brett Welker. I like that amidst all the spy dramas we've seen lately (and all the spy pilots contending for timeslots next season), this one explores a fairly unique aspect of Agency operations. While there are a lot of shows about field agents, not many follow the officers who brief the President on world events. There's plenty of room for drama at the intersection between Intelligence and politics. I'm curious to see how they play it.