Whether he’s handling falcons or laughing between takes, the New Jersey-born actor enjoys his on-location experiences.
Mustafa Speaks wants you to know right from the start that Nate Romanowski, the mysterious survivalist and Special Ops vet he portrays on the Paramount+ series Joe Pickett, is not just a falconer.
“He’s a master falconer,” he announces with equal measures of pride and mirth. And yes — that’s a real falcon he’s been trained to handle throughout the series. “When I first read the script,” he says, “and I realized it was going to be an actual falcon, I was super-excited. Super, super-excited. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Using a CGI falcon for Nate Romanowski? Wasn’t happening.”
Displaying his prowess as a falconer — excuse me, I mean master falconer — is all in a day’s work for Speaks, a New Jersey-born actor, writer and producer whose other recent credits include a continuing role on the CW series All-American, the independently produced TV series Shadowboxing — Round 1, and the upcoming neo-Western thriller And on the Eighth Day.
For Joe Pickett, an episodic drama based on the mystery novels of C.J. Box, Speaks also runs the emotional and physical gamut from seriously formidable badass to passionately protective ally as Romanowski interacts with the title character, a crime-solving Wyoming game warden with a tortured past played by Michael Dorman; Marybeth Pickett (Julianna Guill), Joe’s wife and partner in uncovering clues and gathering evidence; and Cricket Ludlow (Aadila Dosani), a Twelve Sleep County deputy sheriff who loves but occasionally mistrusts (with good reason) Romanowksi.
Mustafa Speaks visited the C&I Studio before the start of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike to talk about the challenges and rewards of portraying Nate Romanowski in Joe Pickett, which currently is heading into the homestretch for its 10-episode second season. (You can catch up with previous episodes, as well as view upcoming ones, on Paramount+).
