Not many actors can say they were Jennifer Aniston’s love interest on Friends. But that’s just one of Tate Donovan’s claims to fame. More recently, the Tenafly-bred actor portrayed one of the real-life embassy staffers who escaped capture by Iranian revolutionaries in Argo, last year’s Oscar winner for best picture.
In the new CBS drama Hostages, Donovan’s character isn’t as lucky. He plays Brian Sanders, the seemingly loving, successful businessman husband of Dr. Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette), who is about to operate on the President of the United States. When the Sanders family is taken hostage by a rogue FBI agent (Dylan McDermott) who tells Dr. Sanders to let the chief exec die on the table, Brian discovers that his secrets aren’t all that secret.
“I don’t personally know how they’re going to get a second season out of this, but I didn’t know how they were going to get the first season out of the pilot,” he says of the serialized, 15-episode season.
Whatever happens, he’s happy that the series is being shot in New York, so he can visit his mom, who lives in Cresskill.
Donovan, 50, admits that his Jersey pride blossomed late in life. “When I left for college in Los Angeles, and they were like, ‘Where are you from?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m from New York.’ They were like, ‘Where in New York?’ I’d be like, ‘New Jersey, New York,’” he laughs. “Now, I’m totally proud.”