Evan “Buck” Buckley hates basketball. Oliver Stark does not.
“You should have seen the way my face lit up when I got asked to do this,” Stark tells TODAY.com ahead of the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game, tipping off Feb. 14 at 7 p.m. ET.
Stark, who has played Buck on the Ryan Murphy-created drama “9-1-1” since it premiered in 2018, will play on Team Rice, coached by Jerry Rice and Khaby Lame, alongside teammates Shaboozey, Walker Hayes and more.
Stark arrived in the Bay Area for the game Feb. 13, just a few hours before his team was set to practice for the first time. His appearance in the game comes amid filming for the back half of Season 8 of “9-1-1,” which returns with new episodes March 6.
“To be quite honest with you, I finished filming about 4 a.m. last night, outside in the rain, so to then wake up and get on an 8 a.m. flight was a little challenging,” he says. “But ‘9-1-1’ were actually super accommodating in making sure I was free to do this, but they did send me on my way with a night shoot.”
One of Stark’s character’s most memorable recent episodes, titled “Buck, Bothered and Bewildered,” fittingly centered on a basketball game.
Season 7, Episode 4, which aired April 4, 2024, saw Buck deal with a newfound jealousy over his best friend Eddie’s (Ryan Guzman) new friendship with Tommy (Louis Ferrigno Jr.) Later in the episode, Buck learns via Eddie’s wall calendar that he and Tommy have plans to play pick-up basketball, which he decides to crash.
“You don’t like basketball,” Buck’s sister Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) says when he mentions the game.
“Which is why I say no, but now he’s going with Tommy. And he’s got it circled,” Buck says.
“Is it circled with a heart around it?” she teases.
Buck attends the game, and tensions boil over as Buck witnesses Eddie and Tommy’s camaraderie on the court. After Eddie steals the ball, Buck chases him down before shoving him, fracturing Eddie’s ankle. In the end, Tommy apologizes for excluding Buck, while Buck cops to feeling jealous and admitting he had been trying to get Tommy’s attention.
Tommy then kisses Buck, marking the character’s first onscreen kiss with a man, sending the “ardent fans” — as the Feb. 12 episode of “Pop Culture Jeopardy!” put it — who have long wanted Buck and Eddie to become more than friends, spiraling. (“It was on ‘Jeopardy!’?” he says when asked about it.)
Stark says he’s “cautiously optimistic” going into the game.
“I think I’m trying to focus on, ‘I’m just here to have fun,’ but I do know that my competitive side will probably take over,” he says. “But listen, I might spend the whole game on the bench.”
He also jokes that his appearance in the celebrity game could serve as some “redemption” after Buck’s performance in the show’s pick-up game.
“Buck is not a basketball fan. I am a huge basketball fan,” he says. “I hope this is something of a redemption arc for me, that I get to display this.”
Below, Stark chats with TODAY.com about his All-Star Celebrity Game debut, how his “9-1-1” cast reacted to him accepting a spot in the game, and he revisits *that* memorable basketball scene from Season 7 of “9-1-1.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
The All-Star Celebrity Game, how have you prepared?
So listen, it’s been a little while since I’ve played basketball competitively. I played a lot in high school, but that was some years ago. So as soon as I got the email about this, to be quite honest with you, I said, ‘Yes.’ I put my phone down. I went to the park, and I’ve pretty much been there ever since playing day in and day out, just to kind of get it back in my body a little bit.
What would you say, just rundown of your strengths and weaknesses that you’ve noticed in that preparation?
(Laughs) Well, I’ll tell you, one of the things that I miscalculated was, you know, I’m 6′ 2″, and so I thought that maybe, you know, for the kind of game that it is, that I might be on the taller side. But I’m actually one of the shorter players. So I’m going to put that as a weakness. And I’m going to put, and I say this tentatively, but sports IQ in my in my strengths column, and hope that works in my favor.
How did the ‘9-1-1’ cast react to hearing about the game?
Most of their reactions were to do with my somewhat injured knee that I’ve been struggling with for the past year. And basically everyone said, “Is your knee going to be able to handle that?” To which I said, “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”
But over the weeks of prepping for it, I feel good about it and having told that to them, they’re all really excited. And they’ve all said to make sure I let them know exactly what network it’s on, what time, and they’re going to be cheering me on from back down in Los Angeles.
“9-1-1” returns March 6 with Season 8, Episode 9, titled, “Sob Stories.” The midseason finale of the show left Buck reeling when Eddie told him he plans to move to El Paso to be closer to his son, Christopher. Buck has also been mourning the end of his relationship with Tommy, who broke up with Buck in Episode 6. Meanwhile, a trailer for the Season 8 return hints that Buck’s sister, Maddie, is about to be kidnapped by a serial killer.
Reading interviews about Season 8, (showrunner) Tim Minear gave strong descriptions for what Buck is feeling in the midseason finale: Buck’s going to be “spinning like a top.” Buck “looks like he’s been hit in the head with a baseball bat.” In your own words, how would you describe where we’re going to find Buck in this March 6 premiere?
Yeah, there’s a ton of different stuff going on. There’s a lot of tension in the upcoming episodes between characters that we don’t often see tension between. I think the stories across these (episodes), it’s going to be quite a fraught and intense atmosphere for a good healthy portion of it. And that’s not something that ‘9-1-1’ tends to do, right? In general, our main cast, our main characters, are a pretty tight knit group, whereas we’re going to be looking at what happens when you kind of start to tug at a thread, and you know, it keeps on pulling and pulling, and you kind of watch a lot of things unravel as that goes.
Back to basketball and back to specifically 7×4, I’m wondering in the wake of the breakup with Tommy, now Eddie saying he’s leaving … is there more to explore regarding Buck’s feelings in 7×4? Those feelings of jealousy, which all came to a head during that basketball scene, is there more to unpack about Buck’s feelings there?
Definitely, and I think they’re going to be kind of explored and looked at in a way that is more obvious than kind of has ever been done before on the show. To an extent where I was actually surprised by the extent to which it’s going to be explored. So, yeah, no, absolutely, that is to come very soon.
Specifically the feelings of jealousy?
Not that specifically. But just kind of an exploration of what the feelings are.
That came to a head in that episode?
Yeah… I’ll say no more on that.
