Jennifer Love Hewitt joins Criminal Minds as undercover FBI agent Kate Callahan for season 10, which premieres on Wednesday night.
“I loved being on CBS for Ghost Whisperer, I’ve been waiting for a very long time to get back here,” she said in an interview on the show’s website.
“Super happy to be back as part of the family, and Criminal Minds is awesome. I get to play a badass.”
Callahan comes with “a pretty good resume behind her,” including eight years in another division.
“She’s very scrappy, she really enjoys getting the bad guys off the street, that’s her thing.”
“She takes pride in it, and joy in it, and really does it with a lot of humor, and feistiness,” she added.
And Callahan fits in well with the team, Hewitt told Entertainment Weekly.
“She has a rapport with everybody on the team. There isn’t a lot of awkwardness with Kate and these characters. She comes in and they remember her very quickly and they get to work. She has a big first day with this team on the job. It’s fun that way. Kate loves really good people in a very sarcastic, feisty way. She has a lot of respect for her comrades and the people she works with. She’s excited to be part of the team.”
She is paired up with Rossi a lot early on.
“In the beginning, Rossi is who she’s with the most. I'd say Rossi and Hotch (Thomas Gibson) really are the people she’s with. I always say she’s like the Barney Fife to Hotch’s Andy. She gets really excited to go where he tells her to and be at his side in that way,” she said.
“She and Rossi have a really sweet connection. They have a lot of respect for each other and really enjoy working side by side. I’ve gotten to do a little bit of stuff with Morgan (Shemar Moore) recently, which has been fun. I obviously work with everybody, but those three characters in particular seem to be where I am. Hotch and Rossi are the first two to know Kate’s background story, so they’re very kind to her and supportive of her own personal life story.”
According to the episode 1 description, Callahan quickly helps the BAU team solve a series of murders in Bakersfield, California.
