‘Class of ’09’ offers up an unconventional look at crime

The FBI and artificial intelligence (AI) are at the center of the new FX on Hulu drama series Class of ’09, which debuted Wednesday. It follows a class of FBI agents at several different decades in their lives and careers — an idea creator Tom Rob Smith tells ABC Audio he came up with after listening to a true crime podcast that featured interviews with FBI agents.

“I came out of those podcasts realizing that the agents themselves were really interesting people and the way they spoke about their work was really interesting,” he explains. “They were much more varied and quirky than I think I’d expected. And so I thought, I want to do a show about them rather than necessarily the crime. And that was the spark.”

Adds Kate Mara, one of the stars, “The show follows a group of FBI agents before they become agents, and then ten years later sort of seeing where they are in their lives then as agents, and then another ten or more years later seeing where they are then sort of in the future, when AI has taken over a lot of the law enforcement and all those things.”

The 40-yer-old actress plays one of the FBI agents, and says she came out of the show a little more suspicious than before.

“Even just noticing, you know, when you’re driving, noticing what cars are behind you. All of these things that just make you more aware. Not going for a jog with like both headphones in, that would be really, most of our advisors would say that’s a really, really stupid idea,” she shares.

Class of ’09 also stars Brian Tyree Henry, Sepideh Moafi, Brian J. Smith, Jon Jon Briones, Brooke Smith, Jake McDorman and Rosalind Eleazar.

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