Development The first mention of
The Blacklist appeared on August 13, 2012, when
Jon Bokenkamp came up with the idea of an international crime series introduced to him by John Fox, his fellow producer The same day it was revealed that
NBC had bought rights for the series from
Sony.
Deadline Hollywood reported on March 13, 2013, that the pilot was written by Bokenkamp and directed by
Joe Carnahan. During an NBC
upfront presentation in May 2013, it was announced that
The Blacklist was NBC's highest-testing drama for the last 10 years. The official trailer for the series was released on May 12, 2013. Originally, a 13-episode first season was planned, but after the premiere reached 12.3 million viewers, All four showrunners signed a deal with Sony before the premiere; first, Eisendrath on June 7, 2013, then, Bokenkamp on July 16, and both Davis and Fox on July 29. Additionally, in November 2013
J.R. Orci became a co-executive producer. In 2015,
Michael Watkins also became co-executive producer. On June 24, 2021, a day after the finale of season 8 was aired, Bokenkamp revealed that he would not return for future seasons while Eisendrath became the sole showrunner. However, Bokenkamp remained credited as creator in future seasons. On March 14, 2022, Eisendrath prolonged his deal with Universal Television for three additional years. In February 2018, Watkins was fired over alleged
harassment involving a
camera assistant. He claimed that there was no reason for firing him and blamed his colleague, Laura A. Benson, for using him as a way to rise in her career. Then, he sued Sony, Laura Benson, and another of his colleagues, Bill Roe, a year later. The series was renewed for the seventh season on March 11, 2019, and was renewed for its eighth season on February 2, 2020. The seventh season was originally set to consist of 22 episodes. Filming of the nineteenth episode has been suspended, while episodes 20, 21 and 22 were never put in production. The producers decided to shorten the episode count to 19 episodes and put off three remaining episodes until season 8. The episode aired on May 15, 2020. The eighth season premiered November 13, 2020. On January 26, 2021, the series was renewed for the ninth season. The series was renewed for the tenth season on February 22, 2022, which, unlike the previous renewals, was first announced by
Spader himself during his appearance on
The Tonight Show, not by a press release. On February 1, 2023, it was announced that the tenth season is going to be the final of the series despite the extension of Eisendrath's contract.
The Blacklist received a panel twice on
San Diego Comic-Con. The panel appeared before the show's debut on July 18, 2013, and during a remote special convention on July 23, 2020. On May 11, 2014, NBC decided an episode of the series would air after the
49th Super Bowl.
Casting Main characters John Eisendrath told
Collider that the casting process was difficult. In February 2013, he and Bokenkamp invited
Kiefer Sutherland,
Bryan Cranston,
Pierce Brosnan and
Richard Gere to apply for the role of
Raymond Reddington. In an interview to
Variety, Bokenkamp told about his intentions to cast Sutherland for the role, though he also expressed doubt about the significance of the role to all these actors. and cast her for the role of
Elizabeth Keen. Although showrunners attempted to search for a more established actor as they cast Reddington, they invited more obscure performers for the role of FBI profiler Elizabeth Keen. Eisendrath recalled that he and Bokenkamp found "something specific" about Boone, and they got comfortable with her playing of the character. She was absent in a part of the season with her character killed, while her subsequent return was kept in secret from the cast. On March 11, 2013,
Ryan Eggold accepted the role of Tom Keen, Elizabeth's husband, who has previously worked for Reddington as a spy. In the middle of season 4, Eggold left the series to star in
The Blacklist: Redemption, a new spin-off centered on his character, but returned later this season following the cancellation of
Redemption. He was ultimately written off the next season. In a 2021 interview, he spoke about an option to return to the series, perhaps as a guest star, stating that it was "not totally out of the realm of possibility". On March 13, 2013,
Diego Klattenhoff joined the series as Donald Ressler, a law-abiding field agent working with Cooper's task force. The next day, on March 14, 2013,
Harry Lennix was cast as Harold Cooper, the leader of a newly formed task force, which cooperates with Reddington. Lennix has appeared in each season of the series; in an interview with
Collider, he stated that he would be willing to continue his role into the show's twentieth season, like his favorite TV show,
Gunsmoke. On July 25, 2013,
Parminder Nagra joined the cast as Meera Malik, a professional field agent who decides to help Elizabeth settle into her new job. However, she was written out of the series after the first season. On October 8, 2014,
Amir Arison was promoted to a recurring role as Aram Mojtabai, a quirky technician and a professional computer master after he showed some extraordinary on-the-move improvisation skills in his debut episode. He was promoted to series regular on May 20, 2014. After the finale of season 9, Arison departed the series, but return appearances were left possible. However he managed to prolong his contract first as recurring for the first two seasons, and, on March 31, 2015, earned a place in the main cast. He also noted that producers and scriptwriters gave him permission to alter the story and the past of Dembe based on his own insight and life experience.
Mozhan Navabi joined the cast for the second season on July 29, 2014. Various news sources confirmed that the name of the character she would reprise was Tamar Kartzman, until it was initially changed to Samar Navabi. Samar was a field professional agent recruited by the task force Director and originally working for
Mossad who develops relationships with Aram. She officially confirmed her departure on March 29, 2019, in the middle of the sixth season. She returned once, in 2022, during the show's ninth season. On May 7, 2020,
Laura Sohn was promoted to series regular as Alina Park, another new field agent taken into Cooper's task force, also previously recurring in the seventh season. She departed after the series' ninth season.
Supporting cast The first season introduced several well-known actors in recurring roles. For the pilot,
Ilfenesh Hadera was cast alongside Harry Lennix, playing Jennifer Palmer, a federal agent and a friend of Elizabeth.
Alan Alda was cast in a major supporting role in September, as Alan Fitch, the
Deputy Director of National Intelligence and one of Red's former allies. To bring the series closer to reality a former
CIA agent, Bazzel Baz, was hired by the producers to teach CIA techniques on assaulting buildings to the crew. Baz instead contacted old associates for the scenes, and went on to play a role in the show that was similar to his own experiences in the CIA.
Chin Han and
Margarita Levieva were among the blacklisters besides
Peter Stormare as
Berlin.
Susan Blommaert and Teddy Coluca also began starring as Reddington's valuable team members. For the second season,
Mary-Louise Parker was cast as Carla Reddington, one of Red's ex-wives. The episode "
Luther Braxton" introduced
David Strathairn in a guest role of Peter Kotsiopulos, the Director of the
National Clandestine Service.
Reed Birney played the final blacklister of season two,
Tom Connoly, and his death scene in the season finale was met with a standing ovation from the crew. Stormare continued to recur through the season and later departed in the middle of it. The third season featured numerous celebrities in major recurring roles as well as provided various comebacks of familiar characters.
Deirdre Lovejoy was cast as
White House Counsel Cynthia Panabaker, set to replace
Adriane Lenox, who had left earlier this season.
Fisher Stevens debuted as Marvin Gerard, an imprisoned criminal attorney joining Reddington's criminal empire, in the eponymous episode of the third season. Two actors portraying former blacklisters,
Lance Henriksen and
Margarita Levieva, returned during the third season. Strathairn also returned as one of the lead villains of the season, with two back-to-back episodes under his Blacklist number. The season also featured most of the lead cast from the series'
spin-off,
The Blacklist: Redemption. In July 2015,
Edi Gathegi was revealed as a high-class operative and assassin set up to kill Elizabeth.
Famke Janssen was cast as Susan Hargrave, an authoritative criminal magnate and Tom's mother.
Ulrich Thomsen served as the blacklister in the finale. The fourth season opened with the misleading departure of Blommaert after her character Mr. Kaplan was seemingly shot by Reddington. However, Kaplan remained alive till the end of the season. In August 2016,
Leon Rippy joined as a ranger and her savior, Hunter, while
Enrique Murciano landed a role as Julian Gale, an FBI investigator who previously worked with Ressler on capturing Reddington, in February 2017. Thomsen continued his role as Alexander Kirk, Liz's presumed father, who had been holding her hostage. He left the series in the first half of the season, although the fate of his character remained undisclosed. In the finale, Bazzel Baz, Murciano and Blommaert departed from the series. The fifth season brought more new recurring characters. In August 2017, it was announced that
Michael Aronov, and
Aida Turturro would take the recurring roles of Smokey Putnum, the logistician and an
embezzler, and Heddie Hawkins, his accountant. In October,
Jonny Coyne was cast as Red's nemesis and Tom's murderer, Ian Garvey; his adopted daughter, Lilian Roth, actually Liz's halfsister, Jennifer Reddington, was portrayed by
Fiona Dourif. Jonathan Holtzman and Genson Blimline also began starring in recurring capacities as two Reddington's operatives.
Nathan Lane played a notable blacklister for the series' 100th episode. Janssen also returned for one episode. In the sixth season, Dourif continued to recur in the season while Aronov departed. In November 2018, it was revealed that
Coy Stewart would play Vontae Jones, Reddington's innocent cellmate Reddington meets and befriends while in prison.
Stacy Keach played financier and con man
Robert Vesco, who in real life
escaped without payment of $200 million from the U.S. and who was rumored to die from
lung cancer in 2007, amidst theories about his
pseudocide. In two back-to-back episodes, the series connects Vesco and Reddington as Red searches for a lost treasure. Bokenkamp said about the two actors: "Spader and Keach together are a delight!".
Laila Robins also appeared in the season's final minutes as Liz's mother, Katarina Rostova, a subject of the show's major story line. For the seventh season, Robins was given a recurring role. ''The Blacklist's
showrunners told Deadline and Variety that they were trying to change the format of the series to a family drama, rather than a crime drama as it was intended to be. It was the reason for the introduction of Rostova, who also served as the lead villain of the season. Brett Cullen starred in the season as Ilya Koslov, a person previously pretending to be the real Reddington. Today'' host and
meteorologist Al Roker appeared in the series' 150th episode as himself. In the eighth season, various familiar actors returned in guest roles because it was the last season of the original storyline. The series continued casting new characters as well.
Reg Rogers was cast in the role of the main antagonist, the mentally disordered crime lord Neville Townsend, who sought revenge on Red after he murdered his family and who launched a bounty hunt on Katarina Rostova. One of his bodyguards, who also assisted in the murder of Elizabeth, Elias Vandyke, was played by Lukas Hassel. Blommaert returned in a guest appearance in the season, as a
hallucination of Mr. Kaplan coming for Liz. Dourif also made a cameo appearance in the season. The penultimate episode brought back Robins (who departed after the second episode of the season), Thomsen, and Cullen. Robins was revealed to be Tatiana Petrova, Katarina Rostova's body double, instead of Rostova herself. In the ninth season, while casting continued for new roles, most of the recurring characters of the previous seasons, such as Lovejoy, Turturro, Holtzman, Blimline and Coluca, maintained their roles. Blimline, whose character died
offscreen, departed at the end of the season. In October 2022, Diany Rodriguez and
Karina Arroyave revealed that they would be starring in the upcoming season as Cuban sisters Weecha and Mierce Xiu, respectively. Keach and Richardson both returned for one episode. Stevens also left the series after the ninth season's finale which had the title addressed to his character. and he was scheduled to appear in season eight, but died of
West Nile virus in 2020, before the season was filmed. He was honored by the series in one of the episodes of season eight, as his character also died of the same virus;
Huey Lewis also appeared as himself.
Brian Dennehy, who played Elizabeth's grandfather and Rostova's father, Dominic Wilkinson, also died in 2020. He appeared in guest roles from the third to the seventh season, when he died during the filming of the final episodes. However, his character was included in the animated special, which was filmed in his honor.
Filming Despite being set in
Washington, D.C., the series is filmed in
New York. The series' Task Force headquarters are located at
Chelsea Piers which was mostly used while filming
Law & Order. Producer Richard Heus said they chose to film specific Washington, D.C. locations for the series, including the
Lincoln Memorial, the
Washington Monument, and the
National Mall, because they were "iconic American locations." All the sets, excluding the Task Force headquarters, are either shot in different locations of the state or are filmed in special sound studios. The process of filming a single episode usually takes an average of nine days, while sometimes two episodes may be filmed simultaneously in order to save time. It is edited using
Avid Media Composer, and editor Christopher Brookshire says the show has "a very distinctive look and pace." An average of three cameras are used at one time, but as many as six cameras are sometimes recording. The final episode of the series was filmed in
Nyack village in
Rockland County, New York, on April 24, 2023. == Broadcast ==