When Jason Beghe first signed on to play Hank Voight, he told the writers: “Make him flawed. Make him real. But make him human.” That directive led to some of Chicago P.D.’s darkest and most controversial moments.
But one scene, filmed in Season 6, was so brutal that NBC’s legal team intervened and demanded it be cut immediately—even though Jason Beghe fought to keep it in.
The scene took place in an interrogation room. Voight, spiraling from the loss of a CI, goes too far during a violent confrontation with a suspect. According to a producer who viewed the raw footage, Beghe choked the actor (with full consent) during the scene, screamed improvised threats, and slammed a chair into the wall so hard that a camera light exploded.
“It was intense. Everyone was frozen,” said a camera operator. “It felt like Jason had completely vanished into Voight.”
After the take, the director told the crew: “We’ve got it. We’re not doing it again.”
But when NBC saw the dailies, they were alarmed by the emotional realism and potential backlash. The legal department reportedly feared the scene could spark outrage over police brutality—especially given the real-world political climate at the time.
Jason pushed back.
“He said, ‘This is what Voight would do. You don’t sanitize the truth.’”
But the network wouldn’t budge. The scene was never aired. A re-cut version, showing Voight throwing a table but omitting the chokehold and outburst, made it to broadcast instead.
Years later, Jason mentioned the deleted footage in a podcast appearance, calling it “the best acting I’ve ever done on this show.”
It remains one of Chicago P.D.’s most notorious “lost” scenes—and a haunting reminder that sometimes, TV shows are forced to soften truths that hit too hard.
