Bringing back some classics
Hopefully they left the door open for him to come back, which leads me to my next question. It may be him or may be somebody else, but if you could see any past character return to the show, who would it be? Whether you’ve worked with them before or not.
Well, I’ve gotten to meet Monica Raymund, who played Dawson, and that was really dope and really lovely. It would be great to have Jesse back, obviously for so many reasons. I would really enjoy having someone like Charlie Barnett back, as Peter Mills, or have him pop in and do a thing and say “hi.” I’ve met him a few times in real life, but I’ve never gotten the chance to work with him, and I am really a fan of his work. I’ve been following his career, “Chicago Fire” and beyond, and I think that he’s an incredible artist. All the times that I’ve met him, he’s a really warm, sweet guy. Having the opportunity to work with him would be pretty badass, so that would be my vote.
Ritter seems like a pretty open book, but what’s one thing about him that fans would be surprised to learn?
I don’t know. They have written him in a pretty open way. Maybe this won’t be too much of a surprise, but it’s always something that I try to remember and incorporate about him. We can sense that Darren Ritter has a great sense of intuition about people and about what they might be going through, and that is because he is a person who has encountered mental health crises in the past, personally, like with his deceased uncle. That actually has a bigger bearing on how he moves through the world than we might be able to pick up on the surface, so, maybe it’s not the world’s most surprising thing, but it is something that I think is always sort of present.
He thrives on the ‘adrenaline’ it takes to shoot action scenes
There’s a script that just came out, and I obviously can’t tell you anything about it, but there is a moment where, as an actor, I look at what’s happening and how he’s picking up something about someone and sometimes I’m like, “Wait, where is that coming from?” And it’s like, “Oh yeah, he has that thing,” because as a person who’s also been close to people who deal with mental health issues, once you see the signs, you can’t unsee them. He has a really great sense of empathy, a kind of intuition when it comes to something that someone else might be going through. That’s a huge part of how he operates within the firehouse and beyond. So, [that’s] a little tidbit, a little insight into the interior of the character.
What would be your dream scenario on “Chicago Fire”? Where do you hope to see Ritter go in terms of storyline?
I would love to see Ritter in more of some action moments. Selfish, right? I’ve done a lot of the incidents and all of that, but in the past there’s been a few standouts for me that I got to perform and work on, and there’s no feeling quite like it. I remember in one instance, the train rescue, the amount of adrenaline that I had to mitigate that day of shooting was incredible. It was so much fun, and it required so much focus and so much energy and all of it, but I really did enjoy it.
Having him do or be in a scenario where he can be at the helm of some of that action a little bit more is always something that gets me excited. Whenever the writers send something down the pipeline like that, I’m over the moon, I’m thrilled, because it does get to show that heroic side of Ritter, which we all know that he carries. I love it.
