‘Chicago Fire’ Boss on New Chief Dermot Mulroney: ‘He’s Going to Shake Things Up’
Change doesn’t come easy, as viewers attested to Wednesday’s season 13 premiere of NBC’s ongoing hit Chicago Fire. And if you were showrunner Andrea Newman, you’d probably go a step further and say viewers will feel a sense of “creepiness,” as the main cast grapples with issues and people from their pasts that haunt them.
In the premiere, viewers see the entirety of Fire Squad 51 struggling to adjust to not being under the influence of beloved former chief Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker). Boden has achieved higher aspirations in the Chicago Fire Department hierarchy, and the team is now left with a very different personality as their new leader is Dom Pascal, played by newcomer Dermot Mulroney. Pascal lets the fire department know from the start that he’s not like Boden, and he’s not trying to be. He’s a firefighter who has to play by his own set of rules. And to relieve stress, the new chief enjoys punching a punching bag at the station.
To get a clearer picture of what season 13 will be like for Chicago Fire fans, The Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with the show’s lead, showrunner Andrea Newman, to find out what the new season’s themes are; some of the most intriguing storylines to watch out for; and how show favorite Christopher Herrmann (David Eigenberg) might handle taking over as chief after Boden’s message at the end of season 12. Last season, a big storyline involved the aging firefighters at home dealing with the physical and mental changes that come with age. Fans of the show seemed to love that storyline. What can they expect from season 13?
Great. It’s funny, because this is season 13. And at first we kept calling it Lucky 13 or Spooky 13, all these different names. And then we realized that that theme was overshadowing a big part of this season. It’s the shadow of Boden hanging over the fire station, and Severide [played by Taylor Kinney] always has the shadow of Benny [his father, played by Treat Williams] hanging over him. Finding this brother in a relationship with his half-brother Jack Damon [played by Michael Bradway] really reminds us of that shadow. We have Carver [played by Jake Lockett] with the shadow of his past. And now Cruz [played by Joe Minoso] is going to be haunted by a ghost from his past this season as well. So we have a lot of spooky, creepy events happening this year.
Back to the storyline of Severide and his half-brother Damon. Can we get any more details on how this season plays out?
This is going to be a big event for Severide. Severide was thinking about family at the end of last season and we had a conversation between him and Kidd [played by Miranda Rae Mayo] about starting a family. And then at the end of last season, he revealed that he has a half-brother. That relationship is going to have a big impact at the beginning of this season, because it also involves Kidd, because she’s Damon’s boss as his lieutenant. So there’s the fact that he’s related and then he keeps it a secret. That’s going to be a big factor in their relationship and creating a triad of those three.
And the part about Severide wanting a family, where are we going with that?
That’s also going to be an evolving story, because we really want to explore the idea of how different it is when a male firefighter makes that decision versus when a female firefighter does it, and how it affects Kidd differently than it affects Severide. It’s a conversation for that reason, and also because, emotionally, those men don’t have great role models in terms of parenting. This half-brother is a reminder of that. They have to deal with some issues themselves, not just the formalities of the fire department, but also their relationships and their pasts.
And then there’s fan-favorite firefighter Christopher Herrmann (Eigenberg). We know that Chief Boden told him at the end of last season that he was rooting for him to be the new chief of Fire Station 51, but that’s not going to happen… right?
