‘Chicago Fire’ showrunner Andrea Newman teases what’s happening on Season 13 of the hit NBC series.
Chicago Fire returns tonight and there’s a whole lot of shaking going on in the Windy City now that Chief Boden (Eammon Walker) has left Firehouse 51 and moved up the chain of command and Chief Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) will be replacing him at the helm.
“I really think the fans are going to have a blast this year,” Chicago Fire showrunner Andrea Newman tells Parade. “Dermot is so fun to watch and what Pascal does, all the impacts he has on all the characters, it’s a lot of new stuff with people we love and know well, so that’s a beautiful combo. We go deep on character this year for sure. I keep saying it’s our soapy roller coaster year, but character deep for sure.”
That said, while there are changes with the characters, it’s business as usual when the first responders head out on calls. You would think after 12 seasons, there wouldn’t be anything new, but Newman says Season 13 will still have fresh calls.
“The truth being stranger than fiction thing really works for us because we have all these real firefighters on the show and the producers and actors,” Newman says. “They come to us with stories of what happened yesterday and it’s like, ‘I can’t believe we’ve never done that, let’s do that.’ So, the stories keep coming because life keeps happening and people keep doing crazy stuff, thankfully.”
Here are 10 fun facts from Newman that reveal what we can expect in the coming season.
Chicago Fire Spoilers for Season 13
No. 1: CHIEF WALLACE BODEN
As mentioned, Boden was promoted to head all of the firehouses in Chicago, so he can no longer make his home at Firehouse 51, but has had to move downtown to the main office.
“People come and go,” Newman says. “I know Boden said that and it is a part of life. But there is that element of once you’re a part of 51, you’re always a part of 51, too. So, Boden’s presence is still very much felt. And the opportunity to bring in somebody at the top like this is different than bringing someone in on a rig or a floater. It’s really the tone of the firehouse.
“It’s like an earthquake hits basically when Chief Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) comes striding into the firehouse for the first time. And it’s going to affect all the characters. We do see it, as writers, as an opportunity for new dynamics and new relationships and seeing sides of people you haven’t seen before.”
No. 2: CHIEF DOM PASCAL
Pascal is moving back to Chicago from Florida, where he’s been working as a firefighter for years, but he wants to close out his career where it started. Plus, there are some secrets involved.
“From the beginning, we knew that we wanted somebody very different from Boden,” Newman says. ‘We imbued the character with that quality, which is, ‘I’m not here to replace Boden, I’m not here to try and fill his shoes, I am not Chief Boden, and I will never try to be. I am Chief Pascal, and things are going to change around here. I have different rules, different ways of approaching everything.’
“I think the main characteristic I would say about this guy is that he plays things very close to the vest. He’s a very mysterious dude. He doesn’t like to show his cards, he’s not the Boden type, where he’s come in and let’s talk it out. He’s a studier of human nature and he studies our firefighters. While he’s trying to peel back their layers and getting to know them, they’re doing the same with him and finding it very tricky.”
No. 3: CHANGE MEANS CONFLICT
“What’s fun is there’s a bunch of surprises in that conflict,” Newman says. “There are characters that we would think would bond maybe with the guy at the top, and others we think would have a problem with him. I think there are surprises in the way people react, even to themselves, how they’re impacted by this guy. Yeah, there will be conflict for sure and there will be everybody trying to figure out how best to get to know him.”
No. 4: DERMOT MULRONEY
“Dermot was such a gift to us,” Newman says. “We had the character in our heads to a certain degree, and this is often how we write, we have a certain distance we go in terms of forming the character and then you bring in the actor and see what the actor [brings]. Dermot is just so talented and he’s just such a collaborator. So, from the jump we were talking about this Pascal character and the things that Dermot himself could bring to that that are different from what somebody else would bring. He’s just got this enigmatic smile where you just don’t know what he’s thinking. That’s the Pascal smile, we just stole it right from Dermot. It’s just what is on his mind and what’s he thinking right now. But yeah, he’s got talent.”
No. 5: CHRISTOPHER HERMANN
In the Season 12 finale, we saw Boden tell Herrmann he wanted him to take over as Chief of Firehouse 51, but Herrmann wasn’t going to be able to do that without going through some hoops first, including passing the test. So, now he needs to deal with the fact that someone else has the job he was earmarked for.
“Boden said it and Herrmann took Boden’s words to heart and he has started the process of working his way up,” Newman says. “What’s really fun is that he’s doing that while somebody’s sitting in the seat he’s supposed to be ending up in. So, it’s kind of like, ‘What’s going to happen? Is he going to push him out? How is this going to go?’ From the beginning, Pascal is very aware that Boden anointed Herrmann and right from the jump is going to have that conversation with Herrmann. Then they’ll both be on their paths, and we’ll see what conflict comes out of that.”
No. 6: JACK DAMON
We learned in the Season 12 finale that the secret that Damon was keeping is that he’s Severide’s half-brother. Now, we need to see how Severide reacts to that news, whether Kidd will keep him on truck, and how the rest of the firehouse responds to the news.
“There’s a lot of fun stuff to come with that relationship,” Newman says. ‘I think it’s something that is meaningful to Severide, but it’s loaded and problematic from the start because it started in this secret. Kidd is part of this, it’s a triangle basically. Because we’ve got Damon who’s working for Kidd, Kidd has been suspicious he’s keeping something to himself from the beginning, and now there’s trust issues there. But Severide wants him around and wants to develop that relationship. It’s all sorts of tangles and knots in that one as Severide tries to get to know this kid. The decision has to be made if he can stay at 51.
“Kidd always felt that he wasn’t telling her everything. And then Ritter overheard some conversation with Damon on the phone that now makes sense in retrospect, but at the time seemed like maybe he was up to no good. And then the truck went missing, and Kidd was a little suspicious he might have had something to do with it.
“So, it got very messy for her in terms of the way she saw him. She just didn’t have that level of trust that is so important. When you’re on a fire squad with somebody, you have to completely trust them and their movements and their instincts and everything. That issue of trust is going to be big at the beginning of the season.”
No. 7: KELLY SEVERIDE/STELLA KIDD
Severide’s family is growing, but not in the way that he and Kidd had talked about. They were talking about getting pregnant, but, of course, it’s a bigger decision for Kidd than Severide as it would affect her ability to work.
“That conversation is very much on the horizon,” Newman says. “We really did want to explore the difference between how that would affect Severide and how that would affect Kidd. It’s quite stark differences between a male firefighter deciding that and a female firefighter deciding that. So, yeah, it’s an ongoing conversation and an ongoing journey for the two of them. Where that will go, I think will be surprising.”
No. 8: SAM CARVER
At the end of Season 12, Carver took a furlough and went home to work on himself. Now, he’s returned a supposedly changed man, but what will that mean for him and Violet?
“Those are all things that went into Carver at the beginning of this season,” Newman says. “He takes the furlough to go home and try and work some stuff out, and how he comes back is the big question. How does that affect him and what comes back with him, what’s changed him, if anything, and how does that affect Violet and their relationship? It’s a roller coaster, those two. There’s a lot of high drama at the start. Our theme is shadows this year and he’s got a big one with his tortured family background.”
No. 9: VIOLET MIKAMI
One of the issues between Carver and Violet is that she wasn’t happy when he confronted her with his believe that she wasn’t over Evan. Violet needs to face that and come to terms with Evan’s death.
“We look at this season as a very Violet-heavy season in terms of her journey to try and move past the shadow of Hawkins and the pain of that Hawkins relationship and how he died,” Newman says. “So, that very much hangs over her. She’s all about trying to move past that and there’ll be a lot of changes that’ll affect her as she tries to come out from under that shadow and go, we keep saying, back into the light.”
No. 10: JOE CRUZ
“Cruz has some great story this year,” Newman says. “We love to embrace the fact that we have 12 seasons of history on the show and we have Cruz dealing with somebody from the past that our audience knows coming back to haunt him. It’s our haunting and shadows season, so Cruz has some fun stuff there.”
