Ahead of Chicago Fire’s Fall Finale, David Eigenberg Shares What Never Happened to Him About Herrmann and Sticking to the Script
Spoilers ahead for Chicago Fire Season 13 Episode 7, titled “Untouchable.”
Believe it or not, Chicago Fire’s journey through the 2024 television calendar is coming to an end with the Season 13 Fall Finale scheduled to air on November 20. There’s plenty of drama to fill that Fall Finale, with storylines ranging from Severide and Pascal teaming up to the ongoing story of Violet and the unfortunate Carver. Herrmann and Mouch are also getting ready to take their officer’s exams. When I recently spoke with David Eigenberg about Herrmann’s pursuit of a promotion in CFD, he shared something that never happened to him… or Herrmann.
As fans will remember from the Season 12 finale (which is now available to stream with a Peacock subscription), Boden’s emotional farewell to Firehouse 51 involved naming Herrmann as his chosen successor as Chief of Police. Season 13 interrupted that process by adding Dermot Mulroney as Chief Pascal, who apparently has no plans to go anywhere once he’s settled in at 51. Meanwhile, Herrmann is still preparing to take the captain’s exam as the first step toward that position as Chief.
So, during CinemaBlend’s interview with David Eigenberg at NBC’s One Chicago press tour, I asked if Herrmann would ever have considered taking that leadership path if Boden hadn’t suggested it. The Chicago Fire veteran laughed and replied, “No. When you get into the real world of firefighters, there’s firefighters and then there’s cops.” When you’re a lieutenant, you’re a firefighter but you’re not called a firefighter anymore. ‘Are you a firefighter or a cop?’ And Herrmann would say, ‘I’m a firefighter.’ And he was very happy with that. Then they brought in a new thing, and I thought it was great… I really didn’t know what was going to happen, and I don’t know if they knew what was going to happen.
It doesn’t seem like a decision has been made about whether Herrmann will become the new Chief of Team 51 in the near future, but there’s still a lot of Season 13 left with the 2025 TV release date looming. After getting his thoughts on whether Herrmann would ever consider pursuing this promotion, I had to know: did David Eigenberg as an actor ever consider the possibility of a new Chief when Eamonn Walker has been such a big part of the cast for so long? The actor explained, with a touching story about his real-life friendship with Walker: No, I don’t think so. Eamonn is a dear [friend]. He actually came to visit me, and he was just out of town to go see his son. But I was in the basement, and he was right there. I’m very close to Eamonn, and I love him very much. I sat at the desk a couple of times, at Boden’s desk… And honestly, I didn’t know what they were going to do. Dermot is a great addition to the cast and to the show. He’s a lovely, lovely man and a very interesting actor, so they’re going to play it the way it goes.
While Eigenberg has nothing but good things to say about Dermot Mulroney, not every firefighter in 51 is fond of Pascal as the new Chief. Herrmann, however, accepted Pascal pretty quickly, even though the new character took over the table that Boden intended for him. So how did Eigenberg — who has appeared in all thirteen seasons of Chicago Fire to date — approach Herrmann’s dynamic with Pascal this year? He shares: I didn’t get any notes on it, on how to play it exactly, because in some drastic ways, you want to amp it up a little bit because it’s television. But the reality is, there’s some competition between real firefighters for positions. But there’s also what I like to call a humanness, both women and men, for each other. He came in [and] we got a couple of comments from the actors like, ‘[Pascal] has some goofy antics about him,’ but one of the actors was also like, ‘He’s doing this to us, but are we allowed to like him?’ Because I really like him!’
I suppose that’s a pretty good compliment for Dermot Mulroney, if he can make his character likeable despite the odds against Pascal being warmly welcomed! Eigenberg went on to say that he “looks at it as life is going to be, as it’s going to be.”
