9-1-1 Creator Tim Minear Reflects on Season 9 – INTERVIEW

Tim Minear breaks down significant season 9 moments and offers new in-depth behind-the-scenes insight.

9-1-1 explores the high-pressure experiences of police officers, firefighters, and dispatchers, drawing from the real lives of first responders and the situations that they regularly face. Before the procedural drama returns for its tenth season, I spoke with co-creator, executive producer, writer, and showrunner Tim Minear about the season 9 finale, deleted scenes, “Mother’s Boy,” the holiday episodes, character dynamics, and much more.

What made you decide to lean more into the brotherly dynamic between Buck and Harry this season? I’ve really enjoyed their one-on-ones throughout and even having them paired in the finale.
Part of it was it just makes sense. The more tortured answer would be, I wanted the characters to evidence a little piece of Bobby for each of them. And so for Buck, obviously, it’s Buck kind of stepping into that mentor role for Harry; he’s giving back what he was given. That’s why.

Even though Chimney now has this season of being a captain under his belt, are there any other obstacles, possibly parallels to Bobby, that you want him to face going forward?
I don’t know yet. I mean, he’ll always be comparing himself. But I don’t want the show to kind of turn into a constant meditation on that particular loss. I felt like this season needed to be, for sure. But the capstone for me was the Buck rehab episode.

That was a beautiful episode.
I mean, that may have been sort of the culmination of it, and I just wanted to make sure that the last couple of episodes weren’t just rehashing Bobby.

Yeah, I really liked that he went to Chimney and was actually seeking help rather than having it get to a place where he couldn’t backtrack, or someone caught him doing it.
I avoid reading social media. I used to do that, and it was not good. But I know that there’s been some criticism that, oh, that just was so slapdash, it happened so quickly. Well, that was the whole idea for me because it’s so easy to get hooked on to something like that, which we say in the episodes, but I wanted to tell the story of somebody who nipped it in the bud.

And that’s sort of me. I went to rehab when I was 20, and I’d only been sort of abusing substances for maybe a little over a year. So, I was 20 years old when I went into rehab; I wasn’t even old enough to drink. By the time I was old enough to drink, I had stopped. So it is possible.

Missing moments

I loved that final sequence in the episode where everyone is helping him through his detox. I feel like there were a lot of small details for each of the characters while they were helping Buck. Was there a small detail or a moment between the characters that was your favorite?
No, it’s sort of all of a piece. I mean, it’s so funny that act was, this happens a lot, but the episodes will often come in kind of longish, and this year they were usually around 20 minutes over, which is a lot, right? That’s basically half an episode, and that act, if I can recall correctly, I think was like 15 minutes long. It’s six minutes now, and there are a couple of scenes that I actually just cut out that I didn’t feel like you needed, that I loved.

I loved all the scenes, but it was really important for me that that whole sequence was allowed to breathe. Also, that song that we had in there, that needle drop, which didn’t clear until the last second, I had a whole other standing by, but I just knew it had to be that because that’s what we edited it to, that particular needle drop. It’s the whole thing together. I don’t know if you can kind of pull out one particular thing.

Were there any deleted scenes that you wish had made the final cut, but unfortunately, just timing-wise, you couldn’t add in at any point this season?
Well, there are a lot of examples of that throughout the season. I mean, the scene that had to go, which I really did like, was a scene between Buck, Maddie, and Chimney, kind of establishing that we’re going to come to your house and we’re all going to help you through it. So there was a whole scene, but that was a scene that was saying what you were about to see, so I figured it’s better just to see it anyway. But that was a nice scene that we had to lose. And then, there was this one scene in “Mother’s Boy” that I really miss.

That episode was a masterpiece. That’s my favorite episode of the season, and it’s one that I’ve gotten to rewatch and appreciate the smaller details of.
In that episode, which was like 25 minutes over, the trick for that was, how do I set this thing up in one act? Because I knew I wanted the car crash to be at the end of the first act. And so, it’s like, you have to go through a lot of setup before you get there. But I figured, well, the audience will bear with it because it’ll be fun. They’ll be on a road trip, and it’ll be fun. There was a much longer version of them driving across country in the car, and I think actually it times out about right. Like, much more of that, you start to get weary of it.

But there was a scene in there where Eddie looks over, and he sees that junker car that says for sale on it. There was a scene where he was haggling with the guy who was selling it. He’s offering less than on the thing, and I think it was for sale for $700 or something. He said, “I’ll give you $500,” and it’s like, well, that wouldn’t even cover what I put into it. Then, you see a sheriff’s deputy car coming up the road, and Eddie kind of just looks away. The car passes, and the guy clocks that Eddie’s hiding from the cops. He’s like, “I’ll give it to you for $7,000,” and then Eddie has to Venmo him seven grand just to get the car. So I was sad that had to go.

I’m sure Ryan was really funny in that scene.
He was, yeah.

“Mother’s Boy”

Can you tell me about filming that sequence with Eddie and Buck saving each other towards the end, and the significance of that overall?
Well, shooting it, Jonathan Lawrence directed it, and did a fantastic job. He’s a guy that I grew up with, making Super 8 films with from the time we were about eight or ten. He’s now directed two episodes of the show. In terms of when I was writing it, I mean, this is what I generally try to do: I generally try not to have anyone be a damsel in distress.

Whether it’s Maddie or whoever it is, needs to aid in their own rescue. So once I sort of landed on the idea that Buck is willing to say, sacrifice himself, and “I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t hurt him, just let him go,” they’re both kind of looking out for each other. But yeah, I try not to make those moments too complicated. First of all, you’re going to run out of time. It’s not going to be good. So you have to choreograph that very specifically on the page and really understand that there’s a couple of big moments here.

One is that she’s going to pull the gun on Eddie. Eddie’s going to disarm her. But then, the ex-husband is going to appear with a rifle, like a sniper across the way. I just made very sure to at least see the cattle prod once in the greenhouse. I think he takes it away and puts it down or something, but you remember that cattle prod, so that Buck can zap the guy with it. It was also important to me that I didn’t see Buck get out of his restraints, crawl up the hill, or something. That’s also a bit of a gamble, because people might feel like that’s a cheat, but I don’t think it plays that way at all.

When we pick back up, Buck insists that he’s fine, and Eddie’s trying to check in, see what’s going on, and make sure he’s going to therapy. Obviously, that leads us into the dependency storyline, but do you think they had a conversation about their different experiences in terms of what Buck went through and all that Eddie did to find him?
They probably did, I would think. There was definitely, I don’t know what I say, like a three-or four-week time jump, so they probably did. On the other hand, they’re men, so maybe not.

Putting grief front and center

I know that Ryan spoke up to make sure that Eddie was involved in the human trafficking storyline with the migrants, and you rewrote it to include him. I was curious if you collaborated with him at all for the “Día de los Muertos” episode. Was there a reason that you wanted to give Eddie that spotlight for the holiday episode this year? That was, again, such a beautifully done episode and one of my favorites.
Mine too. Yeah, there was a very specific reason. I mean, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, like the air dates got pulled up by a week. But before they were pulled up by a week, I was trying to make this space thing, right? My director, Brad Buecker, who’s the producing director on the show, was off in Nashville shooting a 9-1-1: Nashville episode. He always shoots the big disaster episodes, right? So, he was off in Nashville doing that, and it was taking longer than we had anticipated, and he wasn’t going to be back in time. I was going to have to roll into the next slot before he got back.

So, some of the space stuff got put on hold, and then I had to scramble and come up with an episode five. But luckily, Keith Tripler, who works for me, was going to direct that. So he was easily put into the slot. It didn’t screw up the director’s schedules, let’s put it that way. I looked at the calendar, and this is before the air dates got pulled up, and I’m like, “This is going to air the day either before or after Halloween, so we should do a Halloween episode,” which Kristen and I were both like, “Oh, God,” because our Halloween episodes are cursed. They’re always the hardest episodes. They’re always a bitch to shoot, and they often don’t come out well.

Oh, I love the Halloween episodes.
I have a couple of examples. First of all, everyone thinks that “Full Moon” is a Halloween episode. It’s not, but it could have been. That first year, we were midseason, so we weren’t even on during Halloween. But that was like the first creepy, spooky episode that we did, and it was great. And then, in season two, we did “Haunted,” the one with the horse. I was never satisfied with that episode.

That was a perfect example of an episode that was way too long, and I had to cut out stuff that I did not want to cut out, and I had to leave in stuff I did not want to leave in. So there was a whole thing where bats attack this haunted house, and it just amounted to nothing, and I was like, let me just take that out so that I can keep in this Hen [stuff], because I had a whole bunch more Hen stuff with Karen, and kind of dealing with her father, who was on life support. But the network at the time was Fox; they were like, “No, you can’t cut out a case. Cut out talking, don’t cut out action.”

Halloween fun

Meanwhile, that’s what the fans want: those talking scenes.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, they want both. If you have too much soap, then you’ll get criticisms like, “They don’t do enough calls on this show.” It’s like, well, okay, whatever. But I really wanted to take out that haunted house thing because I felt like the Hen stuff got kind of short shrift. Now, I’m not saying I don’t feel anything in that episode, but it was a lot more emotional before that stuff got cut out. Also, Loni, who directed it, did a great job directing, except for one thing.

He never got a shot of the goddamn horse. Like, the horse is there, but there was never a big, wide drone shot looking down on the people around because we had an actual horse on its side. An animal, this giant animal, that everyone was around, and there was not one wide shot to capture that image. So everything was in pieces, and that just drove me nuts, because I edit every episode. So, that one, it came out fine. It has a great needle drop at the end, and Hen unplugs her father, and then Buck writes a letter to Abby, and he realizes he’s the ghost haunting the house, and that was all right.

The next season, the Halloween episode was so troubled. So troubled that I brought in one of the studio executives, I’m like, “You need to come down to the editing room and look at this.” I brought her in, and Kristen and I were there; I think it was a Sunday. I made this executive drive from her house, and I’m watching this thing, and I’m like, “This is so bad. I don’t know how to fix this. Can we just not air this?” Which of course, was not [an option]. By the way, this is also what I do every time I edit an episode. I go in, and I’m just like, “This is a disaster. This is the end of my career, and this will never be good.” Not always, but generally. I mean, it was definitely like that with the finale this year.

So there was a whole sequence in that Halloween episode that we took out. It was the biggest sequence in the episode. It was a big montage, and there was like a Halloween party in an office. Our crew shows up, and there’s a woman who goes into the bathroom, and a squid like the facehugger from Alien either comes out of the vent or the toilet, I can’t remember, attaches to her face, and then, she comes out, she’s going to die, and they have to get this thing off. It was very Alien, and it was so bad.

It was basically this woman going, ah, with this rubber thing on her face, and it was just terrible. Everything about it was terrible, and I’m like, I just got to take this out. Oh, and then there was the thing with the crows at the beginning. I had to send that director back three times to shoot that because I’m like, “It’s very simple what I want. It’s The Birds. Just go look at The Birds.” You’re on our people, and you’re dollying back, you’re carrying them. And then, you’re in a dolly, and you’re moving toward the birds on the jungle gym, right? I need those two things.

The thing I always tell directors is point of view, point of view, point of view. You need to be in the characters’ heads. So that means a shot of them looking at something, and then a shot of the thing they’re looking at from their point of view. Sounds simple, right? It’s the thing I’m always trying to scrape together in the editing room. So I had to send that director back three times, and then we finally had to bring that damn little shed that the kids are hiding in to the Fox lot and shoot all the coverage inside. We couldn’t do it at the location because they kept running out of time, and eventually, we got it.

So anyway, the thing that I think made that episode actually work is the story of the woman who runs into the cyclist, and he’s sticking out of her window because that spans the episode; it kind of held it all together. Maybe my standards were also higher, because now, when I’m looking back at season three, I’m like, man, if I had all those things in an episode now, I’d be like, “Great.” But back then, I just thought, “This is a complete failure.” So anyway, the Halloween episodes are always cursed, right? But I’m like, we’ll do a Halloween episode.

I always wanted to do Day of the Dead, and then the air dates got pulled up, and I’m like, “This is now going to air after Halloween. Damn it.” So it literally aired the Thursday after Halloween. But the reason it’s Day of the Dead is because the rule I was going by this year is if I could do a story and Bobby didn’t need to die for that story to resonate, I’m telling the wrong story. Which is why Day of the Dead, which is why Eddie wrestling with his faith, because that was something he shared with Bobby or something that Bobby held dearly, but they shared in common, they’re both Catholics.

So that was why Day of the Dead, and also why I felt like somebody needed to die, which is why Abuela’s number came up. So, yeah, I wanted to do something specifically for Eddie, and I wanted it to be about his grief about Bobby, which presents itself differently than in another character. I mean, Eddie’s been in war, Eddie’s suffered loss. Eddie is taciturn in his way, so it just felt like a kind of more lyrical way to do that than Eddie having some big breakdown, like Buck might.

Tales of a giant pumpkin

And you did have the Buck parallel in that episode, too, with how they were both handling their grief differently, which was wonderful.
That’s right. Buck, of course, was hoping that Bobby was haunting his house. But maybe Bobby was haunting his house because that guy needed to get to a meeting, and Buck’s eventually going to need to get to a meeting. There was also another thing in there that I took out, at the very end of the episode, I think, it may have been in the montage, I don’t remember, but it was something like the picture starts to move and then moves back.

I had this thing in there, but then I just took that out, because it was kind of lame. But Keith directed that. He did a great job. I love that episode because it’s got a giant pumpkin, which is one of my favorite things ever. That was one of those things we found on a viral video; one of those things got loose from a used car lot, and it was just this giant thing. It may have been a snowball or, I don’t know, it may have been a pumpkin, it may have been Halloween.

But it just looked hilarious, and I think Kristen was like, “Remember this?” Because we had tried to do it before, and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s pretty great. We should do that.” But I thought Keith shot the hell out of it, and my directive to him was, “You have to play this thing like it’s The Blob, even though this thing would not actually injure anyone, you have to play it as though everyone is running and screaming in a ’50s horror movie.” You know, it’s like the girl on the scooter, and it’s coming up behind her.

And then my favorite thing in there is something I created in the editing room. There’s two cops drinking coffee, and they don’t see the thing, but it rolls behind the car. That’s not the way that was shot at all. They see it in the sideview mirror, and they look, and I’m like, we have to find moments before they called action where they’re just sitting there with the cups, because I think what would be funny is if it just rolled behind them and the music cue just stopped for a second, they don’t even see it, and then we just pick it up with the music cue. So, all that I created in the editing room.

Yeah, I love that episode. I thought the exorcism stuff was good and scary. I thought those people were great, and when we went to cast Abigail, the girl who’s possessed, we were looking at dancers. We needed somebody who could physically — because there’s some great stuff where she’s like, literally arching, her back is arching up, like in The Exorcist. She could do all this stuff, and so we put the episode together, and I’m watching it, and I’m like, “Do you think this girl can act? Because I want to bring her back. I have a feeling she can act.”

She had no credits. She was basically cast as a stunt performer, almost. But Keith really thought she could, and I thought, I think she’s acting here, I wonder if I bring her back, if that could be a thing. So I just kind of rolled the dice and brought her back, and boy, could she act. I mean, it’s so funny. When I worked on Angel, Amy Adams was in an episode of Buffy, and I remember Joss was like, “She’s going to go somewhere,” and that’s kind of how I feel about her.

I feel like, oh, she’s probably going to have a career. That’s happened to me one other time, too, when I did this short-lived show on Fox called Drive. This one actress came in and read for this part, and I’m like, boom. She walked in, and I’m like, “It’s her. We don’t need to see anyone else. This girl is fantastic,” and it was Emma Stone. It was one of her first jobs.

The firefighter auction

Bringing up Abigail, a lot of fans felt like there was a connection between Abigail and Eddie with their faith, but also feeling repressed. Did you make that connection? Is that why you paired them for a storyline? Was there anything there in terms of why you thought Abigail would latch onto Eddie and why he would feel so protective and want to help her?
Well, I mean, I brought her back specifically to service Eddie’s character, yes. Also, I don’t know; I just thought there was something kind of dangerous about it. We said she turned 18, but I just thought there was something kind of great and Lolita-ish about this young girl with raging hormones, who fixates on him. I mean, if you picked up that I was kind of going for a little sexual uncomfortability, then you would be correct.

We did get a new couple this year: May and Ravi, which fans really did want to see. What has it been like to see that relationship form, especially with the finale? I really love that May asked Ravi to go with her and how he was there to support and protect May throughout the whole thing. How did you go about finding that dynamic? Did you have any conversations with the actors?
I did let them know. When we were breaking the auction stuff, which I just cursed myself for, that was another episode that was like 25 minutes over, and the auction went on for forever. It was also intercut with Hen on the road with Karen. It’s not intercut like that now. That’s not what you saw. But what it was originally was they’re on their way to the auction. I put in some loop lines to kind of fix the timeline, but they’re on their way to the auction.

They don’t show up, and Hen was supposed to bid on Eddie, but she’s not there, so he texts Maddie. It was very convoluted. So I stripped all that stuff out, and also Eddie’s story with Abigail was not balanced correctly in the cut. It all was over way too quickly. So I just figured if I could pace out the Eddie thing and just have it culminate, and then make act six this fun act where there’s an auction, I think we’ll be okay, and that’s what we ended up doing. But when we were breaking that story, I’m like, all right, so we have to answer the questions.

It was Silas who pitched the firefighter auction, like, “That’s fun. The audience will love that.” And then, I’m trying to like, wedge it into this Fatal Attraction story, and it’s like, oh God, what have I done? I just dreaded the whole auction thing. I’m like, who’s going to bid on everybody? At one point, I’m like, “Can Buck just bid on Eddie?” And they’re like, you can’t do that, you’ll be queer-baiting. I’m like, fine.

It was originally going to be Alex. Alex was going to bid on Eddie. In fact, I brought her in thinking, maybe this is a potential love interest for Eddie, and I just didn’t see any chemistry there at all. So I pivoted. I mean, yeah, I brought her in early just to see if that character would work with him. I didn’t want to commit to it, and I just had to pivot. I’m like, who’s going to bid on Eddie? And then, Kristen had the idea, what if Eddie just bids on himself, because he doesn’t want to do this in the first place?

He even offers it at the beginning; he’s like, “What if I just write a check?” Which is what he ends up doing. Then, I’m like, but I do think that the knitting circle people need to buy Buck, and I think Athena probably has to bid on Harry. Actually, there was a lovely scene that I had to cut where Hen is practicing driving again after her illness, and Athena is there with a clipboard, helping her, and complaining that she never gets to see Harry.

So there was a little subplot in there of Athena trying to spend time with her son, but he leaves before she gets up; they just don’t see each other. She ends up bidding on him in order to have dinner with him, which would have been great, it’s just the episode was way too long, and to keep in any of that scene of Hen and Athena, I mean, that scene went on for three minutes, which doesn’t sound like it’s long, but that’s really long because the whole act of the show could be like five minutes long.

Eddie wasn’t discovering that Chris was still at home until the end of act one, and I’m like, “We can’t do that. I think we have to reveal this right up front. I think it needs to be the end of the teaser,” which I think it is, because we’ve been off the air. It was a bit; it was kind of a mid-season finale, if I’m not mistaken. Everyone’s going to expect that we’re going to come back, and we’re going to be doing the Chris is missing episode, just like the Harry is missing episode, or the Maddie is missing episode, and I never wanted to do that.

So either they’re going to be really disappointed that, like, wah, wah, just kidding, he wasn’t really abducted. I think they’ll forgive it more if that card is turned over earlier. I don’t remember what I made the first act break, but as you can tell, I move things around in post all the time. It’s also been a challenge to find ways to incorporate May’s character, right? I wanted them both to be regulars, which they are. She’s wonderful, and she’s been around since the very beginning, and obviously, it’s easier to kind of get Harry into the action because I made him join the 118, which is the way to keep Athena having emotional stakes tied to the firehouse now that Bobby is no longer there. It was actually Corinne’s idea for May to pursue nursing.

She called me, and she’s like, “Here’s what I’m thinking.” She was very nervous. “What if she wanted to be a nurse and she could help people. It kind of goes back to the tsunami episode where she had to hold that woman’s neck.” I don’t know what she was expecting, but like, “I think that’s a great idea.” She’s like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah.” So we decided to go down that road, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of screen time on that until I kind of found a place to make a story about, what does May want to do in her future?

I’ve been trying to include Ravi more. I mean, because Eddie was busy with his Day of the Dead, Buck needed someone to have his séance scene with. I’m like, it should be Ravi, and for whatever reason, I’m like, “I think he has to show up dressed as Raggedy Andy.” Everyone in the room was just like, “What?” I’m like, “It’s just this image in my head of Buck opening the door, and there’s Ravi dressed as Raggedy Andy.” Anirudh did not want to do it.

Alayna, the costume designer, was like, “No, no, people are going to love this. It’s great.” She kind of talked him into it, and of course, you should do it, because it’s great. So I had these two characters that kind of get the short end of the stick, right? My feeling was like, I think they’d be a cute couple, and this would be a way to kind of fuel inject both of those characters by putting them together. So, that was the thinking there.

Character relationships: new and old

They really do make a cute couple.
They’re about the two most beautiful people I think I’ve ever seen. I think they’re both unbelievably good-looking. And, yeah, so I like them together. It suddenly makes Ravi a more interesting character, and it makes May a more interesting character. But I think it benefits Ravi more in a way because often he’s there to round out something, which is why last year when Eddie went to El Paso, I just had a lot of fun writing Buck trying to buddy up with Ravi, trying to replace Eddie with Ravi, and Ravi’s just like, “Is there a camera on? Are you trying to punk me?”

They’re a great dynamic, too, I have to say. They’re so funny together.
And I love now that we have Hen and Eddie. Then also, you may not even realize it, but the idea of making Maddie, Chimney, Karen, and Hen kind of this extended unit, we had not done that before. I just started that when Mara was introduced. That was really the first time that I started putting Maddie and Hen together was, I think, in the cruise ship episodes. You didn’t really see scenes, and they love having scenes together. So, I really just started expanding that as late as season seven, and now everyone thinks of the Han Wilson families as this extended unit, like they’ve always been that, but in fact, they have not. It makes perfect sense.

Buck’s next chapter

Buck is not only going to have to learn how to be a parent, but also deal with the fact that he’s stepping into the role because of the death of his friends. Why do you think that this was the right time in terms of him being ready to start navigating what it means to be a parent? Obviously, he’s always been good with kids, but throwing him into this new role is very challenging. Where are you kind of hoping to start with that process next season?
To me, it really does roll off of Bobby’s death story. Buck can’t be the kid anymore. It’s just a metaphor, right? It’s a metaphor for, like, you can’t be the kid anymore. Your father figure has now kind of gone, and he’s left you with all kinds of gifts, and it’s time for you to grown up up, right? So it’s a metaphor for that. Honestly, I always say these kinds of things in interviews, and then people are like, “See, I knew it,” but I make it up as I go.

The story needs to talk to you a little bit, and there’s a million reasons why you do one thing and not another. Sometimes it’s because the actor’s not available, or the thing you thought you could do, you can’t do. Here’s a perfect example. There was a scheduling conflict at the end of this season, and Angela Bassett was not available to me for the month of March. So I had to shoot everything that she was in in the last two episodes at the beginning of April.

I needed a story where she didn’t have to talk a lot, so I shot the shit out of her, right? I’m like, we put her on a gurney, we do The Godfather, where they have to move The Don from one room to the other, and we can put a photo double on that gurney with an oxygen mask, and no one will ever know that it’s not Angela. And then, I’ll write some scenes that we could shoot in that one week we have left.

Everything in episode 17, like the scene upstairs in the loft where they’re going through the clothes, and she looks down and sees the kid, all that stuff in the loft was shot weeks later. I’m like, we’ll part this out, which is also a thing we do all the time when somebody has to be on one unit and can’t be on the other unit, but you still have to shoot. You just save a piece of it for later in the schedule. So all the stuff in the loft was shot separately, and I’m like, I’ll put her in a dream where she’s talking to McCluskey; we can shoot that quickly.

Her piece in the party at the end, like that whole party thing, was shot over the course of a day or two; she wasn’t there. And so, just the little piece where she flashes the detective’s badge, that was shot later. So, there’s a million reasons why you do what you do.

To me, what’s happening in that [Welcome Home, Theo] scene is that we had mentioned that she had found emergency housing for Theo until the next of kin were kind of located or whatever. So, Buck is the next emergency placement. He’s going to foster him, right? But it’s an emergency placement. Without repeating the whole four-year-old story that we played with Hen and Karen, there’s going to be complications. I mean, to me, it’s a gold mine of story. It’s a big change for him, and it seems like the right change-up for me.

To me, it was a way of giving Buck a new love interest because I’m never going to make anybody happy. You bring in a woman, they’re going to be pissed. You bring in a guy; they’re cockblocking Eddie. Like, “Oh, we hate that Tommy.” It doesn’t matter. We sort of dealt with his sexuality; we’ll continue to, but not every love interest has to be romantic in that way, and I mean, I just can’t tell you how lucky we were in casting those twins.

As you might imagine, often my casting department has to work very quickly because it’s like, “Okay, what’s shooting next week? Well, I think I’m doing this. I don’t have a script yet. I need Kathy Bates. I’m doing Misery,” and every single actor turned it down. Time was of the essence, and we still had nobody to play that part. Then, Shawn, my casting director, recommended the actress that we cast. I just went off his recommendation.

I’m like, I think she’ll be good? And she was perfect. Like, perfect. I had gone so many different directions, like, old battle-axe, this kind of comedy actress. Some actresses that I worked with before in the past, I pitched them the story, and I’d get to the cattle prod, and they’d be like, “I don’t think I want to do this. It sounds too dark.” But then, the actress that we cast came in, I spoke to her, and she really understood it.

I can’t imagine anyone else in that part, because she’s playing it straight. She was perfect. She was also young enough that you believed that she’d have enough energy to keep him immobile. Also, I told Oliver, “You have to play this like you’ve got three cracked ribs and you have internal bleeding, because otherwise the audience is not going to believe that this giant firefighter doesn’t just knock that woman out and run out of the room. So you need to be on the verge of collapse for a while.”

Those performances are what sold it, because it could have just not [worked], and also the way Jonathan directed it. So, yeah, it’s Buck’s new love interest. Anyway, those kids are great. There were a bunch of twins that read, only really about six choices, though. When I saw Teddy and Lincoln, and also, Kristen was like, “I think it’s that kid. I think it’s those twins.” We did a Zoom call with the kids, and John Gray, who directed episode 17, kind of gave them some direction, and they said their little lines, but what I was noticing was they couldn’t sit still, and they were just running around in the background.

I’m like, “That’s the kid. That’s what’s in the script. He’s a little hellion.” And so, I watched those scenes where he comes in, and he’s blowing the chocolate milk in Buck’s face, where he’s ripping up the flowers, or throwing the sandwich, I’m sorry, it’s probably the best performance of the episode. There’s no other character that feels that lived in the moment and real than what, I think that’s Lincoln in those scenes, is doing.

Also, they were both kind of scared when they had to stand on that electrical tower thing, which is, of course, not the electrical tower, really. It’s a piece of it kind of on the ground, but it scared them both, and Oliver immediately started bonding with those kids, right? He even told me, “I think these kids are my favorite scene partners ever.” I’m like, “Good, because you’re going to have a lot of scenes with them.” Just as lucky as can be that those kids were available, because I can’t, I mean, they’re perfect.

They are.
It’s funny, in the scene in episode 17, in the hospital, where Diedra says, “Say goodbye to Buck,” and he’s like, “Goodbye, Buck,” and then they leave. I also had him say, “Goodbye, Mr. Poop.” I think that was one of the first scenes we shot, and I’m like, “Have him call him Mr. Poop, because he’s going to call him that earlier in the story.” And the kid was like, “That’s a bad word, I can’t say that.” It’s like, no, it’s okay, it’s for the show.

The dad or mom gave him permission, and then every time he said, Mr. Poop, he just dissolved into laughter. He could not stop laughing. It was the cutest thing ever. But then I said, “We should also say, ‘Goodbye, Buck.'” And then, when I put the episode together, I’m like, “Mr. Poop, Mr. Poop, Mr. Poop, Mr. Poop, and then, he should call him Buck.” So, that’s what I did.

Leaning on found family

I know we’re going to get some sort of role reversal with Eddie stepping in to help Buck with Theo. Can fans expect more parallels between them, callbacks to scenes where Buck was helping with Chris? We saw Kameron and Connor’s deaths compared to Shannon‘s death; that was a huge parallel, and even Buck shielding Theo from seeing his parents, like with Chris.
I mean, I did that on purpose, and that was directly from the tsunami. All that was on purpose. I mean, normally it’s not on purpose. I don’t want to tell the ladies at The Buddie System; they’re like, ah, this clearly, and then it’s like, okay, sure. They notice stuff that I wish I had planned. But mostly no.

Although maybe on some level, do you know what I mean? Once you have so much canon behind you, things start to ping off each other. So often, you’re setting things up. Two examples, one of my favorite multi-part stories was last year with Athena landing the plane on the freeway. I don’t care, those episodes are perfect. So good. And then, we had Dennis Jenkins. He makes like a prison shiv to kind of cut open that girl’s leg.

When I got to the end, I’m like, how am I going to end this thing with the guy who’s got a gun? I realized he’s still got the prison shiv, and then he shives him in the nuts. So, it wasn’t like, I’ll set up this item early in the story and then pay it off at the climax. I’m not going to say it was sheer luck because this has happened as long as I’ve been writing stories, that you have set up the answer in the first or second act, and you don’t even know that you’re doing it.

Like in “Mother’s Boy,” basically what I pitched to the production was like, “And then, Buck’s being held in the shed, we’ll have this big tense scene where Eddie shows up and talks to the woman, and he doesn’t know that he’s actually found Buck and that he’s down there. She’s got a gun, but he doesn’t see it. He’ll leave, and they’ll go back to kill Buck, and then Eddie will show up because he figured it out. I don’t know how any of that’s going to work, but that’s what it is.” So I didn’t know that I was setting up how Buck was going to disarm Earl with that cattle prod, but I was setting it up.

I don’t think it’ll be just Eddie [helping Buck]. I think it’ll be Chris, obviously, Hen; they’re all parents, except for Buck.

Yeah, it’ll be nice, especially with Maddie seeing Theo and remembering a younger Buck.
That’s why I really felt like Maddie had to be the one to show up at the hospital, because what there wasn’t room for, but what we had written, was a scene where Maddie finds out about Theo. I’m like, we’ve got to somehow read Maddie into Buck’s story, and we have to do it quickly and efficiently. So she walks in, and he’s like, “What are you doing here?” “Oh, Chimney told me,” and it was really important that she look over and see the kid in the distance, and go, “It’s little Buck.” She doesn’t say that specifically, but that’s the idea.

You see it in her face.
Yeah, because Jennifer Love Hewitt is a fantastic actor.

I just think the way she played that was incredible.
Oh, that’s Jennifer in every scene. Every scene, she just knows what to do. She knows what I wrote. She will just always give you the thing.

Exploring Eddie’s faith

I can only think that Eddie getting stabbed in the chapel is not going to make his faith any stronger, outside of the fact that he did survive, at least. That was a miracle in itself. But can you walk me through the decision to have that be an ongoing struggle for him throughout the show rather than only a one-season arc?
There’s little bits of me in all the characters; that’s just how I always conceive that character. Eddie’s the one character, well, maybe not the one character now, Maddie, too, I guess, that I just created because I felt like we needed a character. So in season one, we were all kind of working on the show: Ryan Murphy, me, Brad Falchuk.

Then, season two came along, and Ryan was like, “Here, just take it.” So I just took over in season two, and I’m like, “I’m going to do an earthquake, and I’m going to do big disasters,” and Ryan was like, “Don’t do that.” And I’m like, “I’m going to do it.” He’s like, “It will just look terrible. It’ll look like you’re dropping stuff in front of the lens and shaking the camera,” I’m like, “No, it’s not.” So I did it, and not only did I do it, but that first earthquake was supposed to be one episode, and then I realized it was going to be long, like everything else.

And I’m like, “What if I just write some more scenes, and we just keep shooting? And then, we’ll have two episodes instead of one,” which would be great because I don’t know what episode three is, so this will give me some time to figure that out. What I discovered was that when I make those disaster episodes multi-part episodes, it brings the costs way down.

It’s much cheaper to amortize over one, two, or even three episodes. And so, it’s literally the only way for me to do it. I would not be able to afford to do half the stuff on the show if I didn’t do that. So I brought in Eddie in season two, and I just kind of always knew who he was for me. Now, it’s been a challenge because for the longest time, he was the hardest character to kind of get into other stories, which I think now, partnering him with Hen, it’s becoming easier, but it sure has taken a long time.

Were there any alternatives to Eddie being alone in the elevator? Was it always going to be just him, or were you thinking of sticking him with another character in there?
Well, I mean, the trick with that one was I didn’t want to fall into the trap of giving anyone short shrift. I would say, like, in the season seven finale, the house burned down, and then Athena kind of goes off, and everyone’s at the hospital going, “Oh, we’re so worried about Athena.” I always thought that was a pretty disappointing finale, because people didn’t have anything to do except for Athena.

So I didn’t want that to happen again. But then, I remembered back, I’m like, oh shit, am I making a mistake by setting another finale in a hospital waiting room? Everybody needed something to do. But I’m like, it’s Harry’s mother, so I don’t think I can have Buck and Eddie team up and become, like, Die Hard boys because then Harry’s going to end up being a third wheel, and I can’t do that to Harry’s character. I’ll put Ravi with May, and I’ll cut them off.

I’ll give Hen and Chimney a life to save, but what the fuck am I going to do with Eddie? I didn’t really have something to do with him, but I’m like, I do definitely want to scene, like in Die Hard, where Bruce Willis runs into the villain, and he’s like, “You got a cigarette?” They talk, and you’re like, “Does Bruce know that that’s the bad guy?” So I definitely wanted that scene, which is where that chapel scene came out of. I’m like, “Oh shit, Eddie doesn’t have anything to do. I think I have to stab him, trap him someplace, and just let him bleed out.”

It was a way for him to have something to do on screen that wasn’t the exact same thing as what the other characters were doing, because really, it only took two guys to go in the basement and shut off the power. I mean, if you think about it, not a lot happens in that episode.

It’s the tension that’s building.
It’s the tension. I was saying before that I got the first cut of it, and I’m like, “Uh oh, uh oh, we’re in big trouble. This is so fucking boring,” and it was. It was so boring, and I’m like, “We have to pull everything up, right? We have to pull everything up.” I don’t know where that beat with Anatoly in the waiting room was originally, but it wasn’t in the first act. I made it the act break.

Eddie didn’t get stabbed until the end of act two, and Anatoly didn’t even shoot the guy and break into the ICU ward until like the end of act three. I’m like, “All this needs to happen an act earlier. We got to pull it all forward.” I was worried because you absolutely need these flashback scenes with The Godfather, and you need the scene in Hooks’ kitchen with Anatoly because we don’t even know who this kid is. I was very worried that I’m going to have three scenes with Hooks in it before we even get to the action.

The audience is going to be like, “Where are the characters?” So I really went back and forth on that first act many times. I’m like, “What if this scene came at the end? I don’t know, let’s try this.” I tried a bunch of stuff and then sort of landed on the structure that it ended up as, which is not all that different from the script, except that I pulled everything forward.

For instance, in that first scene in the waiting room, where Hen sits down and says to Eddie, “I know what you’re thinking, this is our fault. She’s going to pull through because it’s Athena,” that was not in that scene. I pulled that out of the waiting room scene that actually appears at the end of the act before Eddie gets up to get coffee. So I pull that into the first scene; you can’t tell at all because it’s all in the same place. It used to be we go into the waiting room, we would play this long waiting room scene, May would show up, and then they would repeat all the information that we already know, and I’m like, “Just get rid of this.”

It cut to Athena waking up, but then you reveal she’s still in surgery, and that was the end of the first act. I’m like, that needs to happen in the middle, not at the end, and I need a transition to get to Athena waking up. I pulled the exchange between Eddie and Hen from later in the story, pulled it up into the first act, so that I could have her say, “She’s going to pull through because she’s Athena,” cut to Athena wakes up. That’s why I pulled that up there.

I just made sure that not all the Hooks scenes were clumped together because I think after that is when I reveal she’s in surgery, then I reveal Hooks coming into his kitchen and running into Anatoly. The problem was it kept feeling like Anatoly was teleporting into the waiting room. So I kept trying to get that kitchen scene further away from the ending. I’m like, I think maybe if it comes right before and we put in a couple of drone shots of the city with some ominous music, that’ll feel like a time passage.

Instead of trying to get it further away, let’s get it closer together, so it becomes the penultimate scene of act one. This is all the nuts and bolts of why things are the way they are. I’ll just hammer at it in the editing room until I feel like I have the right order, and the scenes are in the right place. It usually works out, sometimes not as well. But here, there were very few choices in some way.

It was always going to be the first act was going to be the trick, and then I’m like, if I can stab Eddie in the middle of act two, then every time I cut back to boring scenes in the waiting room where people are going, “What’s her status?” They won’t seem like boring scenes, because the audience would be like, “He’s bleeding out, where are you going? Pick up your phone!” So I knew that that would just juice up everything that came after it.

Athena’s detective journey

Speaking of Athena, we started the season with her grieving Bobby, but we ended with a huge career move: her becoming a detective. Is that part of her moving into a new chapter for herself? Not forgetting Bobby, but going forward.
Yes, 100%. You know, it’s funny in “Pick Your Poison,” where we first meet Hooks, and we kind of first hear about Nikolay Caster, and at some point he says, “Next time, get yourself a detective shield.” I remember, I think Christina Smith, who’s an executive at the network, she was like, “I wouldn’t mind if she did,” and I’m like, “Are you sure?” Because we’d had this conversation before, where I wanted to make Athena a detective, and there was some pushback against it because that would take her out of her uniform, and she would no longer be on a car crash scene or something, interacting with the 118.

But I think we all felt like, now it’s time. And so, in that episode, the reason the guy who was poisoned is looking for her specifically is because I had done this thing so many times where this patrol sergeant is a detective all of a sudden, and she’s working a case. I couldn’t justify it one more time. I’m like, “There needs to be another reason.” When I was on The X Files, it was always like, okay, you don’t want to reveal what the paranormal thing is necessarily in the cold open, but you need a reason for Mulder and Scully to latch onto the case, so how do you do that without giving away the ending?

How do you start it? It has to be Mulder going, “Well, everyone thinks it’s this, but I think it’s this,” and then he can be wrong, but close. So there always needs to be a reason that Athena suddenly becomes a detective. So that’s why I had that guy come to her specifically, and also, it’s as old as time. It’s a movie called D.O.A., which is also remade with Dennis Quaid in the ’80s. But it’s a classic ’40s noir where this guy comes into a police station, he’s like, “I want to report a murder, mine. I’ve been poisoned, and I have this long to live.” So, it’s about solving your own murder before the poison takes effect.

So that’s sort of what that was based on. But I just didn’t want to do that again, where it’s like, oh, she’s being a detective because I need her to be. What if she really becomes a detective? That’s kind of where that idea started. The whole thing with Hooks and Nikolay Caster, that was just for that episode. He wasn’t dirty.

Really?
I was like, “What if he was the bad guy at the end? What if he is dirty? What if we’ve been setting up the finale this whole time and nobody knew it?” So, yeah, that’s where that came up, because the thing I had going into the finale was Die Hard in a hospital. I don’t know what that means, but there’s this great hospital location, and we can get it for like a week because all that was shot in a real hospital. None of those were sets, and because I have this scheduling issue coming up with Angela, I need to come up with a story that makes it feel like she hasn’t disappeared off the show. And so, basically, necessity is the mother of invention.

The Diaz family

There’s one scene in the finale that really stuck with me, which is when Eddie tells Chris that he doesn’t want him sitting up all night at the hospital, only for Chris to say, “Why not? You did it for me.” Now that Chris is growing up, how are we going to see their dynamic change moving forward? Are there any aspects that you’re specifically excited to explore? I mean, it’s obviously the most important relationship in Eddie’s life.
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting that you’ve mentioned that scene, because I added that at the last second. The last second. So, there were a whole bunch of other scenes in the original draft, and it was like Eddie at Gabi’s office, and they’re talking about the migrants. Then, there was like Buck with Maddie, and he’s like, “That poor kid. I wonder if there’s anything I can do,” and I knew, just in looking at everything that had been written, I’m like, first of all, we’re not going to fit all of this into the episode.

We just got to get rid of something. Then, there was Athena coming home, and she’s going to rehab, but she’s back at home with her kids. It did all culminate in the baby Nash birthday party, and there was that giant scene that I took out, where they’re doing this Korean ritual where you could put a bunch of items on the floor, and the thing the baby crawls to that’s going to be their future. So we shot that, but the baby didn’t crawl, the baby didn’t do anything.

It was like the third baby, because the baby that we had in the middle of the season, every time Jennifer Love Hewitt picked it up, it would scream. So we had to get a new baby. At least this one didn’t scream, but it also wouldn’t do anything. Anyway, I took out that scene, and then I added an ADR line for Sue when she comes in, she’s hugging Hen, and there’s an ADR line where she goes, “I wouldn’t miss baby Nash’s birthday.” Like, no one’s going to know whose birthday this is because we took out that scene, and there’s no shots of the baby.

So I added that in there. But after I went through the act where Anatoly gets busted, and they find Eddie in the elevator — that was the other thing, the biggest part of that puzzle was I did not have an act three break. I pulled everything up because all that action of them turning off the power, that was all in act four, and it was a 15-minute act. I’m like, well, obviously, we’re going to have to pull something up, because this is too long.

But I’m like, what’s the act break? There’s no moment for the end of the act, and I’m like, wait a minute, I think when I wrote that thing in the elevator, I said that Eddie looks into a middle distance and his eyes become fixed, like he’s dying. I’m like, “Can we look at the dailies of that?” We go back and looked at it, and I’m like, “What if that light he’s staring at starts to… we should just try to make it seem like Eddie’s dying at the end of act three.” So that gave us an act break because I really did not know what the act break was going to be.

I mean, it was an even bigger puzzle when I was putting together episode four with the flashbacks to the ’90s because I wrote all that stuff separately, and then I’m like, “I’ll figure it out in the editing room.” So I’m like, I think there needs to be a scene with Buck and Eddie, post him being stabbed. We have to have it. We can’t just skip over that. The audience will kill me. Well, The Buddie System will kill me.

We need that scene. So I wrote that scene, I’m like, “Brad, what are you shooting tomorrow? Because I need a scene where Eddie is recovering, and we see that he’s going to be okay. I think Buck needs to be in it. And then, I’m going to call casting and see if I can get Pepa. I wonder if she’s available tomorrow.” So that’s what I did. I just wrote that, and then I came up with The Shining joke.

And then I’m like, I think I need to see Chris with his dad. He got stabbed; it’s a big deal. So, I wrote that at the last minute, and then I called casting, and then I called Alayna, and I’m like, “I’m sorry, I know you don’t have any time to do any fittings, but I might need Pepa tomorrow.” She was great. She’s like, “She often wears her own clothes, so I think we’re fine.”

So we called that night, she came in the next day, and we shot that the next day. But the other thing I felt it needed to do, it was there for another reason, and the other reason was that you need a downbeat where everything feels like the danger has passed before you see Hooks pull up to the hospital and go in to assassinate her. So that’s really what it’s there for, just structurally, but then it’s there for other reasons, too.

It does three things. It simply services the need to kind of see him after he’s found bleeding out. It’s not enough to [have him be] off camera, and someone’s like, he’s going to be fine. You need to see it. I think you need to see Christopher, and I knew that the audience would love to see Pepa, because it just makes things feel more real and lived in. It needs to be a downbeat before the Athena finale part. But you need to see Buck reacting to the father and son, and that’s why Pepa says, “Try to keep those two apart; you’ll lose.” He’s thinking about Theo, and you can tell. Like, that’s important. That’s what that was all for.

Looking ahead to the future

Actually going off of Pepa, I do have to ask you, selfishly because I want to see it: is there any chance of Eddie’s sisters visiting for a future arc?
Sometimes I’ll watch The Buddie System live reaction, and somebody in the chat did mention that, and it struck me as a good idea. I mean, look, I usually try to avoid the old saw of, like, “Oh, my no-good brother is showing up for this episode.” Now, I’m not above it.

I introduced Bobby’s mother and brother, but I mean, I did introduce them in a flashback in the previous years, so I kind of felt like it’s not exactly out of the blue. I have been known to do it, and, you know, it’s like, oh, here’s Chimney’s half-brother from Korea. It’s so sitcomy, but I’ve done it. I have seen evidence of his sisters; we’ve mentioned the sisters before. You sort of see them at a barbecue in season two, in the finale. They had more to do in that scene originally, but I had to trim it down. So Eddie’s sisters are not a terrible idea.

The last question has to go to May because you touched on this a little bit, but she’s going into nursing. Does this mean we’re going to get more of the medical field first responders? I feel like the potential is also there for when a member of the 118 gets hurt.
Yeah, I mean, for sure. I think it gives you a look into the hospital element. It’s not going to turn into Grey’s Anatomy or something, but I do think it is an area we haven’t really had one of our characters in. We sort of teased it with Hen’s going to become a doctor, ha ha, just kidding. I would love to bring back Ian. I thought that guy was great and could be an interesting foil. She gets closer to him, and Ravi’s like, “What’s going on? What’s going on at work?” I think that could be interesting.

9-1-1 will return as part of ABC’s Thursday night lineup this fall. All episodes are streaming on Hulu and Disney+.

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