Ex-Bonanza High track star Gross stays on the run with role in hostage thriller

Lance Gross has always been fast.

He was a track standout at Bonanza High School, where his long jump record has stood since 2000.

On his first regular acting gig, the TBS sitcom “House of Payne,” he cranked out episodes at the unheard-of rate of three every seven days.

Now he’s running for his life every week as the hero of the NBC hostage thriller “Crisis” (10 p.m. Sundays, KSNV-TV, Channel 3).

“It’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” says Gross, 32. “I’ve always wanted to sink my teeth into action and something with a little bit more speed.”

The actor stars as Marcus Finley, a Secret Service agent who, after 18 months on the job, is promoted to protecting the president’s teenage son. In fact, it’s his first day on the detail. So, if you’ve ever watched, well, pretty much anything, you know that first day’s going to be nothing but smooth sailing.

Moments later, Finley’s been shot and left for dead on the side of the road as a well-organized team of kidnappers is loading the first son and the rest of his field-tripping classmates — almost all of them the sons and daughters of diplomats, power brokers or titans of industry — into a truck.

Somehow, though, Finley is able to save one of the children, a chubby little outcast several years younger than the others, and the two spend much of the first episode tearing through the woods trying to elude capture. (“You have to run faster,” Finley demands. “This is as fast as I run,” he’s told. “I have a very short stride.”)

Gross portrayed a football player in 2012’s “The Last Fall,” but “Crisis” demands that he rely on his athletic background more than any role yet.

“This one kind of whipped me back into shape. It kind of made me feel like I was old and out of shape,” he says of all that running through the woods. Even so, he adds, “I made it look good, I would like to believe.”

Gross was born and raised in Oakland, Calif., and moved to Las Vegas in the summer of 1996, when his parents opted for early retirement just before his freshman year. He still sounds bewildered by just how stiflingly hot those first few months were. “But I got used to it,” he says. “I learned to love Vegas for what it was, and I enjoy coming back.”

His parents and two older sisters still live in the valley, and Gross makes sure to see them whenever he’s in town, whether it’s for a quiet weekend at home helping his mom cook or a few nights in a Strip hotel to party with friends. Even in the latter case, though, his parents always drop by the hotel. As for his sisters, Gross says, “We’re all super close, so if we’re going to a party or something like that, they usually join me and do the whole shuffle with us.”

Gross developed an interest in acting during his years at Bonanza, he says, “but I felt like I was a little bit too shy, so it didn’t really come to fruition until college.”

Attending Howard University on a track and field scholarship, Gross majored in film production with a minor in acting. Then, in 2006, he was spotted in an acting class by Tyler Perry, the prolific writer-director who would go on to cast him in “House of Payne” as well as the movies “Meet the Browns” and “Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.” Gross also starred in the 2010 romantic comedy “Our Family Wedding.”

The chance to branch out from those roles is just part of what attracted him to “Crisis,” which he calls “just one of those scripts that an actor kind of yearns for.”

The drama’s large ensemble cast also includes Gillian Anderson, Dermot Mulroney and Rachael Taylor, who plays an FBI agent reluctantly partnered with Gross’ Finley, whom she considers a suspect in the kidnappings.

“You never know who to trust. You never know who’s in on it. You never know what’s going to happen with it,” Gross says of the series’ array of twists. “So it’s fun, man. It’s been a blast working on this show.”

Gross isn’t able to discuss any of those twists, but he says he’s calling from Chicago during his lunch break while shooting the season finale. So, presumably, Finley lives at least that long.

Unless saying he was filming the finale was also a twist.

Despite all the running around, the pace of “Crisis” is far less hectic than his previous TV work, the three-a-week “House of Payne.”

“That schedule, it was some of the best training I could have,” Gross says. “At the time, it just seemed so crazy to do it like that. But I appreciate it that much more now working on a show where we get seven to eight days to film one episode.”

Still, despite the large cast and multiple storylines, Gross is quick to point out that he’s working five or six of those days.

In other words, he’s still always on the run.

“You get to process (the scripts) a little bit more,” he says, “but it’s pretty much go, go, go.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.