hicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med are all coming together for the first time in five years for a crossover extravaganza.
The teaser alone for this TV event will get your heart pumping. In it, you see Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) and Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) in trouble after a subway collapse and an injured Trudy Platt (Amy Morton) crashing in the hospital. What will happen? How will all these worlds combine? Is everyone getting out of the crossover unscathed?
“The only teaser I can provide you is that I’ve been waiting for it myself,” Devin Kawaoka, a.k.a Chicago Med’s Dr. Kai Tanaka-Reed, told NBC Insider. “Five years is a long time, and how exciting for all of us to get to cross over. I’ve heard so much about all the fun that they’re having, and I literally can’t wait to watch myself as a fan.”
NBC Insider chatted with the One Chicago showrunners and several stars across the franchise to get more details on the crossover. Read on, and be sure to tune in Wednesday, January 29 at 8/7c for all the action. Things kick off with Chicago Fire, followed by Med at 9/8c, then P.D. at 10/9c.
Chicago Fire’s Andrea Newman calls the One Chicago crossover “cinematic, explosive, and thrilling”
Chicago Fire showrunner Andrea Newman reveals the three-part episode will see Firehouse 51 battling one of the most catastrophic fires they’ve ever faced. “Our 51 guys take command of the scene, and they have to rescue people with their own lives on the line as they do it,” she said. “All the danger involved going in—where there’s potential collapse, there’s fire, there’s explosions, there’s gas leaks, there’s air depleting. It’s one thing after the next. A lot of action.”
“You don’t notice when you’re going from one episode to the next,” Newman added. “It’s really all one big episode. It’s one big movie, is what it is. The writing process for these things is quite extensive.”
The episode was a collaboration between Chicago Fire writer Victor Teran, P.D. writer Joe Halpin, and Med’s Stephen Hotstein. It took them months to write the three-part saga.
“They really kept saying, ‘We really want it to have layers that you just keep peeling back,'” Newman said. “Surprises that keep coming. They made it together: a three-hour movie, essentially.”
The crossover will feature new character team-ups. P.D.’s Voight (Jason Beghe) and Fire’s Chief Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) share copacetic scenes, while others are more tense, like Ruzek and Stella’s trapped-underground storyline.
“One of the themes running throughout this crossover is the couples that we have on the show and their relationships being tested and tried throughout,” Newman said. “So yeah, Kidd gets trapped in with Ruzek, and Severide (Taylor Kinney) has no way of getting to her. And so he’s trying to keep it together and not lose it while also finding a way to get to her and get them out of there.”
Chicago P.D. showrunner Gwen Sigan added, “You see a bit more of that really interwoven story between three different shows, which was fun. That’s all kudos to the three writers that worked on this and the fact that they were so in it together from the beginning.”
“As far as P.D.’s role [in the crossover episode], we’re definitely such an engine for the investigation, obviously, and tracking down the criminals who are part of this huge incident in Chicago,” Sigan added. “And we become very interwoven with the other two shows, and it’s different pair-ups. So you’ll see some interesting pairings between all three shows of characters that don’t usually get to spend a whole lot of screen time together.”
Like Ruzek and Stella, for example. Or Chicago Med newbie Dr. Caitlin Lenox (Sarah Ramos), who helps P.D. veteran Platt in the hospital.
“I would say it’s very emotional,” Sigan said of the episode. “It’s definitely high-stakes, what happens with [Platt’s] story. But I think, you know, it really galvanizes the team… It forms quite high stakes for the team to find these offenders at the end of the day.”
Chicago Med’s Allen Macdonald says the crossover is “emotional, suspenseful, and breathtaking”
