Actor Tom Morton plays Detective Daniel Müller in I Will Find You, one of the key characters in Harlan Coben’s latest twisty crime jigsaw. In embodying the role, which doesn’t exist in the original novel, Morton had the opportunity to offer a fresh narrative layer within Coben’s world.
Netflix’s latest Harlan Coben crime drama, I Will Find You, is the first adaptation to take place in the United States, following Sam Worthington’s David Burroughs, a man sentenced to prison for the murder of his three-year-old son, Matthew Burroughs — to which he ardently pleads his innocence. Five years into his sentence, his ex-sister-in-law Rachel (Britt Lower) pays him a visit and shows him a photograph of what appears to be his son. If he’s going to prove his innocence, he must first break out of prison.
In true Harlan Coben style, the case is so much deeper than it first appears. As soon as David enacts his prison escape, he follows a trail of breadcrumbs that set a target on his back. And also, as the police try to apprehend Burroughs, we meet Detective Daniel Müller, a Geneva-based police detective who arrives in the United States with additional details that hint towards a deeper web of corruption tied to the kidnapping.
Played by Tom Morton (known for The Substance and (Legend Has It), Detective Müller is an original character to the show; he’s not based on a character from the book. How did he bring the international detective to life? And what was his overall experience on the show? We sat down with Morton to discuss all of that and more. Check out our interview down below!
What’s On Netflix: First of all, congratulations on the role. Everyone loves a Harlan Coben drama.What made you so excited to take on this role? Are you a big fan of Harlan Coben dramas?
Tom Morton: I love Harlan Coben’s world. I’m a sucker for a good thriller where the truly improbable comes out of nowhere and just when you think you know what’s going to happen, it doesn’t, and something else happens instead. And this was no different. So it was a very, very easy yes for me.
And also, it’s not every day I get an offer to do a role that is so perfectly tailored to my background. So it’s really quite a pleasure.
Detective Daniel Müller has his own, almost standalone story in this show, serving as a key piece in this twisty Harlan Coben jigsaw. What about that character stood out most to you? What would you say is his defining trait?
That’s a great question. I have to be very careful talking about this character because the fun thing for me was that he’s not in the book at all. And that was a bit of an interesting experience.
When I got the call saying you got the job, I got on a plane, because I was in France at the time, and thought oh, gosh, how do I prepare? I had so little time. And I thought, genius idea: I will read the book on the flight. And so I sat there for seven and a half hours reading the book thinking he’s going to turn up at some point — he never did.
To suddenly realise that you’re signing on to do a role, which there is no blueprint for it. It’s in Harlan and Robbie’s [showrunner Robert Hull] heads. But I’m not privy to that until I get the scripts. It was a very exciting opportunity to just kind of pull something together in the spur of the moment. I was watching them making it up. So it was a very exciting process in that regard.
I Will Find You. (L to R) Sam Worthington as David Burroughs and Britt Lower as Rachel Mills in Episode #102 of I Will Find You. Cr. Christos Kalohoridis/NETFLIX © 2025
You’ve got such a multilingual background and you’ve worked across Europe and Canada. How much of your own personal history informed the way you portrayed Müller’s international investigative style?
I love that. I think the older I get, and the more I feel that I am just playing versions of myself; hopefully not too much when I start playing, you know, serial killers and things like that. But there is something of just allowing your own life and trust the words and trust what’s been what’s been written for you.
And with this, there was a lot of that. It was because there was less prep time than I was perhaps used to. I did have to just trust that the script was going to a place that was going to make sense, at least to the viewer, even if we on the ground didn’t necessarily have all the pieces all the time. And that’s also part of the fun of this sort of thing is you don’t necessarily have access to all the script, so you don’t necessarily know where you fit in the whole way through. So that kind of voyage of discovery in that regard was also a huge part of it.
Since your character wasn’t in the book, how did you initially interpret him when you read him in the scripts?
I think what was interesting is that he was coming in from left field, because he is not in the book, he comes in to flesh out a portion of the book that Harlan didn’t have the space to get into when he was writing. And for him, it was this opportunity to go, OK, if I’d had that extra 60- 100 pages, what extra part of the story did I want to tell?
And that’s exactly where Daniel fits in. He is almost the prequel in that way. It’s the prequel of the story that we don’t even know. And that’s a very Harlan Coben part of the world to exist in.
Did you get the chance to talk with Harlan Coben?
Sadly, I didn’t because we were shooting over such a huge length of time. We shot the show over about three months. We came in at the beginning and then we’d be off for a while and then come back in. Each time I came back, I was meeting new people, new cast members. I spent a lot of time working with Logan Browning, which was a wonderful experience. And then I went away and then I came back and then I was working with Milo Ventimiglia and Madeline Stowe. It was just a very different experience.
My days on the set never coincided with Harlan’s, but I did have access to Robert Hull, who is the co-creator of the show with Harlan. Talking to him was very much like talking to Harlan in terms of the breadth of understanding of the world.
Your character meets a grizzly end for, perhaps, digging a little too deep into the case. As an actor, is there a certain thrill to filming a death scene, or is it more of a technical challenge?
I think it can be both. I think in the context of this one, there were a lot of very technical things. And I mean, you’ve seen the scene, so you know it’s a scene that is shocking when it comes, because it isn’t expected. I think also the way in which the team shot it, whether that was Maggie [Kiley] behind the camera and the whole crew, there were so many quite literal moving parts. The really exciting thing for me in these contexts is getting to work with stunt people, because stunt people are incredible craftspeople. And I’ve had the opportunity over the years to work with some pretty incredible people who just bring a level of passion and precision to everything that they do.
No one turns up more prepared than the stunt crew. It’s staggering. So watching them work is a good day on set. Also the relief of watching them work and not getting smacked in the face yourself. That’s a huge joy.
What would you say was the biggest challenge (or challenges) you faced in tackling a Harlan Coben drama?
I think because you’re working in a world which is at the same time both grounded and very heightened, it’s really quite a knack. And I think that this show treads really well that line between reality and madness. I think that’s also one of the things that really works in Harlan’s writing is he creates characters that are eminently relatable.
In the same way that people get addicted to true crime podcasts, I think people get addicted to Harlan’s writing for the same reason. There is a morbid fascination. But beyond the morbid fascination, these people are very normal people in extraordinary circumstances. This is an invitation to project yourself into that.
I mean, I know that people have binged the show over the last 24 hours. And it’s now number one in the charts on Netflix in the US, in France, it may well be in the UK as well. It’s just been ploughing through the charts, because people don’t just want to watch an episode and come back to it. It has a kind of grab you and do not let go quality. And that is such a rare talent to have.
I Will Find You. Sam Worthington as David Burroughs in Episode #101 of I Will Find You. Cr. KERI ANDERSON/NETFLIX © 2025
How did you specifically relate to Daniel Müller, if at all?
To me, we don’t always see characters on screen who are really good at their jobs.And a lot of times, particularly in comedy, the comedy can come out of the fact that people are not good at their jobs or not as good as they think they are. One of the things that I loved about Daniel was that he is not just incredibly good at his job, but he is committed to it in a way which is perhaps a little unhealthy. It certainly doesn’t serve him well in the end.
But it’s such a joy to get to play somebody who knows exactly what they’re doing and who is really in control… until he isn’t.
We’ve seen actors like James Nesbitt take on multiple roles in different Harlan Coben dramas. I presume you’d be down for more?
Oh, sign me up tomorrow. Sign me up now. Absolutely.
Someone said to me the other day, Harlan Coben’s Netflix Universe is a little like the MCU in that there is just this sort of endless realm of possibilities of characters and configurations and scenarios. And just when you think, well, he can’t come up with something else. There he is.
So I’m happy to be in the Harlan Coburn expanded universe. I hope I get to visit it again soon.
We thank Tom Morton for his time. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. I Will Find You is now streaming on Netflix.
