Inside the epic 9-1-1 season 7 premiere: The shipwreck, the romances, the drama
Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, and more preview the cruise ship (and love-life) disasters ahead as the first-responder drama moves from Fox to ABC.
That’s the first word that comes to mind when Angela Bassett recalls the 14-hour days spent in a water tank for her latest 9-1-1 adventure.
Over the past six seasons, Bassett’s Los Angeles Police Department field sergeant Athena Grant has weathered an absolutely staggering number of calamities including, but by no means limited to: a tsunami, a citywide blackout, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, and, yes, a blimp crash. This is in addition to surviving an attack by a serial rapist (who, it should be noted, also kidnapped her son) and then facing a mudslide caused by a dam break on her very first day back on the job.
That’s a lot, which makes it even more impressive when the star and executive producer tells Entertainment Weekly they wanted to do something “big and grand” for the opening disaster of season 7. “I think this might be our biggest,” adds EP Peter Krause, who also stars as fire captain Bobby Nash. “It’s fun making these disaster movies for TV.”Playing out over the first three episodes of the season, this latest disaster is a direct homage to 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, with Bobby and Athena on their belated honeymoon cruise when pirates take control of the ship and things go topsy-turvy — literally.
“We have this giant bingo tumbler, and we’re the bingo balls inside of it,” Krause says of shooting scenes in a rotating set called a roll room. Besting the one built for Christopher Nolan’s Inception, it’s the largest roll room ever constructed. Fitting for Fox’s highest-rated drama. Except that season 7 will actually air on ABC (starting March 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, before Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 ).
“It’s almost like a homecoming,” co-creator Tim Minear says of how Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox (the studio behind 9-1-1) but not the Fox network created a domino effect that ultimately led the series to Disney-owned ABC. “Our studio and network are tied together again.”
All involved speak kindly of their time on Fox, but ABC is treating 9-1-1 “like a first-year show,” says Minear, who will serve as sole showrunner for season 7, with previous co-showrunner Kristen Reidel remaining involved as an EP. “They’re relaunching everything and they’re super excited, really supportive. It’s all shiny, and the enthusiasm is through the roof.”One of the benefits of being the shiny new thing is, apparently, heated water tanks.
“The water was a nice, warm 93 degrees — but the weather outside wasn’t, so you wanted to stay in the tank,” Bassett says of filming the season 7 extravaganza. “Just imagine a nice 14-hour bath.”
That bath is a far cry from the water tanks used during season 1.
When 9-1-1 launched in 2018, the series was framed as Glee co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s take on a procedural. Teaming with their American Horror Story EP Minear, they developed a story centered on the 118 fire station and other Los Angeles first responders. Bassett, Krause, and Connie Britton brought star wattage to the project, but the promised disaster spectacle was an equal draw.
The series’ first mini-disaster movie came in episode 4, when a plane crashed into the Pacific and Bobby led Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Buck (Oliver Stark) in rescue efforts that left the actors in far cooler water than Bassett and Krause are experiencing now.
“Aisha, Oliver, and I would huddle together in the luggage compartment of the plane [between takes],” Krause recalls of that December 2017 night shoot where temperatures dropped into the 20s. “I put a scarf in there, and we’d wrap it around our heads to stay warm.”
“We were up to our waist in freezing water, braving all of the elements,” Hinds confirms. “But I will tell you this: That experience set the bar for what this experience on the show would be. And so anytime we have to do the hard work, I’m always like, ‘But it’s not the airplane. But it’s not the airplane…’”
What’s your emergency?
Minear says they originally planned to shoot the season 7 premiere on an actual cruise ship, “but cruise ship companies were like, ‘Well, does anything bad happen on the ship?’ And it’s like, ‘Have you seen the show? It’s not going to go real smooth.’”
Not that things are going swimmingly before the ship capsizes either.
“Obviously, they’re on a honeymoon, but it’s not like everything is smooth in their interior lives,” Minear says of where audiences will find Bobby and Athena at the start of the season premiere. “There are conflicts that maybe they haven’t expressed to one another.”
Those unspoken conflicts simmer beneath the surface as the couple literally get their sea legs, and run into some familiar faces —
