Jenna Elfman is joining Fox drama series The Interrogator as the boss and handler to Stephen Fry’s character, stepping into a role built around a wary, testy partnership inside the intelligence world. Elfman will play Woodrow, a former rising star at the CIA whose career was derailed by a mission gone wrong and who now works at the D.I.A. supervising Fry’s Conrad Henry.

The series already had a 12-episode straight-to-series order for the 2026-27 season, and Elfman joins Luke Kleintank and Michael Beach as a regular. Fox has not yet set a premiere date, but the casting fills out a central relationship in a show that depends on friction as much as procedure.

That friction is built into the characters. Woodrow sees her current post as a demotion and, just as clearly, as a rung on the ladder back up. She oversees Henry’s cases, pushes him, and often quarrels with him. Henry, a former MI6 agent, is always seven steps ahead; Woodrow is rarely more than five steps ahead, which gives the pair a grudging mutual respect and the kind of odd-couple dynamic the series is aiming to mine.

The Interrogator comes from Lionsgate Television and Fox Entertainment. Fry writes, executive produces and stars in the project, with the pilot script written by him and revised by Matt Pyken and William Harper. Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie are executive producers and showrunners, and Paul McGuigan is set to direct. The series centers on Henry and his unconventional methods for interrogating dangerous criminals, putting Woodrow in the position of both overseer and antagonist.

Elfman arrives in the role after a recent stretch of steady television work, including three seasons on AMC’s Dark Winds and two seasons on ABC’s Shifting Gears, where she played Tim Allen’s love interest. She is best known for Dharma & Greg and for six seasons as June Dorie on Fear The Walking Dead. Her casting gives The Interrogator a familiar face with enough range to play authority, irritation and ambition in the same scene, which is exactly what the series seems to need.

The question now is not whether Woodrow will challenge Henry. That is the point of the character. The more useful question is whether their distrust will stay sharp enough to carry a full season, and the early signs suggest that is the engine Fox wants to build around.