Inside the Epic 9-1-1 Season 7 Premiere: Shipwreck, Romance, Tragedy
That’s the first word that comes to mind when Angela Bassett recalls the 14-hour days in the water tank for her latest 9-1-1 adventure.
Over the past six seasons, Bassett’s LAPD Sergeant Athena Grant has weathered countless disasters including, but not limited to: tsunamis, citywide power outages, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake and, yes, a hot air balloon crash. She’s also survived an attack by a serial rapist (who, it should be noted, also kidnapped her son) and then faced a landslide caused by a dam failure on her first day back on the job.
That’s a lot, which makes it all the more impressive when the star and executive producer told Entertainment Weekly that they wanted to do something “big and epic” for the season 7 opening disaster. “I think this might be our biggest disaster yet,” EP Peter Krause, who also plays fire captain Bobby Nash, added. “It’s fun to do these disaster movies for TV.”
Taking place over the first three episodes of the season, this latest disaster is a direct homage to 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, which sees Bobby and Athena on a belated honeymoon cruise when pirates take control of the ship and things go haywire—literally.
“We have a giant bingo machine and we’re the bingo balls inside it,” Krause said of filming the scenes in a set known as the reel room. Surpassing the set built for Christopher Nolan’s Inception, it’s the largest reel room ever built. Fitting for Fox’s highest-rated drama. Except season 7 will actually air on ABC (it starts March 14 at 8 p.m. ET, ahead of Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19).
“It’s almost like a reunion,” co-creator Tim Minear says of Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox (the studio behind 9-1-1) but not the Fox network in 2019, which created a domino effect that eventually led to the series being owned by Disney’s ABC. “Our studio and our network are all tied together again.”
Everyone involved spoke fondly of their time on Fox, but ABC is treating 9-1-1 “like a first-year show,” says Minear, who will be the sole showrunner for season 7, with previous co-showrunner Kristen Reidel still on board as an EP. “They’re rebooting everything, and they’re really excited, really supportive. Everything is shiny and the enthusiasm is at its peak.”
One of the benefits of being the shiny new thing is, obviously, the hot tubs.
“The water is warm, it’s nice, it’s 93 degrees—but the weather outside is not, so you want to be in the tub,” Bassett said of filming the show’s epic season 7. “Imagine a great 14-hour bath.”
That tub is a far cry from the water tanks used in season 1.
When 9-1-1 debuted in 2018, the series was framed as a procedural by Glee co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. Teaming up with American Horror Story EP Minear, they developed a story centered on the 911 fire station and other first responders in Los Angeles. Bassett, Krause and Connie Britton brought star power to the project, but the promised disaster spectacle was just as compelling.
The series’ first mini-disaster came in episode four, when a plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean and Bobby led Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Buck (Oliver Stark) in a rescue effort that left the actors in much cooler water than Bassett and Krause were experiencing now.
Krause recalled a night shoot in December 2017 when temperatures dropped to 20 degrees. “I put a scarf in there, and we wrapped it around our heads to keep warm.”
“We were waist-deep in cold water, braving the elements,” Hinds confirms. “But I’ll tell you this: That experience set the standard for what this experience would be like on the show. And so whenever we were working hard, I was always like, ‘But it’s not a plane. But it’s not a plane…’”
Did you have any emergencies?
Minear says they originally planned to shoot the season 7 premiere on a real yacht, “but the cruise line companies were like, ‘Oh, is something bad going to happen on the boat?’” And it’s like, ‘Have you seen the show? It’s not going to go smoothly.’”
Not that things were going smoothly before the ship capsized.
“Obviously they’re on their honeymoon, but not everything is going smoothly in their inner lives,” Minear says of where viewers will find Bobby and Athena at the start of the season premiere. “There’s conflicts that maybe they haven’t expressed to each other.”
