'Covert Affairs' Season Four: 5 Things to Know From JJ's Set Visit

The fourth season of Covert Affairs is finally here and JJ has some MAJOR scoop for you before the premiere!

We recently visited the Toronto set to get all the deets on the upcoming season, straight from the stars themselves!

Annie (Piper Perabo) must determine how to balance two new relationships in her life – a burgeoning romance with Auggie (Christopher Gorham) and a professional partnership with Henry Wilcox (Gregory Itzin) – while also searching within Colombia for a new person of interest: the Puma.

Manolo Cardona and Hill Harper join the cast this season too.

The fourth season of Covert Affairs premieres TONIGHT Tuesday, July 16 @ 9/8C on USA!

Click inside to get five spoilers for the new season, and 25+ set pics…

1. This has been dubbed the “season of secrets” by the cast.

“I think it’s one of those things where it’s kind of the best intentions type of a deal, you know? I think [Auggie and Annie]… they’re both great at this job. They both understand the realities of this job and that you do have to keep secrets. And it’s not just an emotional thing. I think Auggie is secretive by nature,but there are professional reasons. There are things that are top secret and you can’t tell your partner. That being said, it doesn’t make it easy. I would say that trust does play a very big part of this season. As much as you know that your partner’s keeping secrets from you, it might matter what those secrets are, you know, what type of secrets.” – Chris

“It is getting heavier. [Annie's] becoming a more serious operative as her clearance goes up the missions are more dangerous. I like that it’s getting deeper and darker and heavier, and the missions are the stakes are higher. You know it was really interesting to do a rookie season for season one. I’d never done a TV show before. I was a rookie at TV and how to do TV action, and how to do stories that take 49 minutes. And now that I have as much experience as Annie Walker does, I want to do more action, bigger car chases. I like that as a grow with the show…I know more about phantom cameras and how to jump off buildings, and that the show is that the show is growing like that too is really fun for me.” – Piper

2. The motives of the new characters won’t be immediately clear.

“As you can tell, Hill Harper and Manolo Cardona are such an important part of our show this year. And what I love about our show is that it’s not, even in terms of story and direction, it’s not rigid. There’s great capacity for change and adjustment, and responding to not only what’s happening in the world. But but also where you and the audience lead us from one season to the next in terms of what seems to be capturing your interests, and what seem to be viable story lines. And I think in this year’s slightly different construction and architecture for the season, which is less episode-based and more essentially character and action-based, so that the characters and the action have a chance to, you know, live with this for more than one episode and as such, you can discover more dimension and aspects of the characters and details of the missions, that would not have been possible if we just had 43 minutes to do it. And that, to me, is the greatest thing about television because you get another crack at it next week. You know, it’s hope springs eternal. My mother used to say, ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope.’ That’s Arthur’s byline.” – Peter

3. Auggie and Annie will officially be a couple!

“I’ve been really happy with how the relationship has been playing since we started actually because I feel like it’s been pretty realistic. You know, you have two people who have great chemistry and get along really well and work together really well and become very close friends, but they’ve always been in other relationships with other people so they weren’t available. And when they finally reach a moment in time where they are both available they end up coming together and, and really falling in love. We’re just following through on that. That being said, they work in a very tough place to maintain a relationship. There are a lot of secrets that are coming into the light this season that affect things. There are consequences and so the relationship gets tricky very quickly. But, I think one of the great things and something the fans will really appreciate is that them falling in love doesn’t really change the show, doesn’t really change them, as they still work together really well. They still are great friends and it doesn’t become that sappy kind of teenage movie or, kind of weak jealousy thing of, “What are you doing? Why are you home late?’ That kind of stuff doesn’t really seep into it. I feel like we play it pretty straight. I’m happy. It’s exciting. It’s a nice change too.” – Chris

“I can see that because they’re attempting a difficult thing, which is having a relationship which has been made more difficult by being in the CIA. But by the same token, who wants to be in any kind of line of work and be completely alone all the time if you don’t have to be? So if your option is to be with somebody who keeps secrets or does what you do and it can be a little twisty. But sometimes, you know, it’s better to feel a little twisty and not be totally alone than just twisty and out there on your own twisting in the wind.” – Peter

“I was really excited to see how it would work. As a woman who has a sort of a high-powered job myself, I know how complicated a relationship can be even if it’s with somebody you’re working with. Your hours are long, the stresses are crazy and so I kinda wanted to see how the Covert Affairs writers would im-imagine that. We’ve seen two of [Auggie's] relationships in the past. You know, he’s really willing to go the distance and it hasn’t worked for him before, and so I think if you’ve been in that position where you’ve sort of put yourself out there a couple times and it hasn’t worked, you’re not as afraid to put yourself out on the line because you want it to work and you know that it’s gonna take going all the way out there for it.” – Piper

4. There will be more trouble where Henry Wilcox is concerned.

“The stakes are really high this season. Henry is really…he really kind of comes out of the fire and he’s a huge force this season. It’s really the first time where we’ve had one bad guy this whole season, somebody who’s really out to get our heroes. And he is. He’s angry and he’s out for vengeance, and he’s not playing around. He’s a “scorched earth type of guy,” is I think one of the quotes from one of the episodes. The stakes are high.” – Chris

“I love Greg Itzin. He’s been a long-time pal and a wonderful actor. And one thing I’ve consistently loved in the last three years are my scenes with Gregory. But he’s bad. And I didn’t realize how bad he was because I used to work for him. I think when Arthur left the Navy and worked for the agency full-time, he was working for Henry. And the whole season is about secrets. And everybody’s got them. And I think it’s like somebody you live with or somebody you know, you have suspicions. We all have our paranoia, insecure suspicions about people and then it really blows your mind when it turns out to be right. So you never can quite judge how easily you can trust them or what they might be up to. And I think in addition to secrets and lies, I think these people are really, really interested in the truth and uncovering what is going on. Most of them have a very strong sense of duty. But I think when you’re in the world of power and assess for a long time, you know it can make you crazy.” – Peter

“I love Greg Itzin and I love acting with him, he’s such a good actor. And so is Peter but they’re both very different. Peter’s almost presidential, you know what I mean? And Gregory is this kind like ‘who ha ha’ guy. So even the scenes…like when you meet Arthur, you meet him in front of like the Washington monument. When you meet Henry Wilcox, it’s like the most disgusting diner you’ve ever seen. And they’re very good about sort of putting those two channels together. I think it’s cool…you can’t really play Henry Wilcox, and Annie is a little cocky and thinks she can. I like that about her but it gets her in trouble.” – Piper

5. Auggie and Arthur’s history, long before Annie joined the DPD, will slowly be revealed.

“Arthur and Auggie have some great stuff this season. We’re really, for the first time, kind of getting into that relationship and what it is and what happened before Annie ever got into the picture. It’s really big, high stakes emotional stuff. There’s a lot of tension, and push and pull between the two of them. It’s hard to talk about it without giving much away, but there’s a lot.” – Chris