'9-1-1' stars Angela Bassett, Jennifer Love Hewitt can't believe the 'crazy' 100th episode
LOS ANGELES – In the first season of “9-1-1,” Angela Bassett fielded calls about tanning bed burns and seven-foot tapeworms.
Six years later, those feel like small potatoes compared to more recent catastrophes facing her unflappable police sergeant Athena Nash, who has weathered earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis throughout the soapy procedural drama, which moved from Fox to ABC for Season 7.
Looking back, “that feels very calm and manageable,” Bassett says with a laugh, seated on a soundstage between takes last month. “Some of these set pieces are so humungous now. It’s exciting.”
Co-created by Ryan Murphy, the hit “9-1-1” was renewed Tuesday for an eighth season. The show celebrates its 100th episode Thursday (8 EDT/PDT) in a crossover with ABC's dating competition “The Bachelor.” The episode, titled “Buck Bothered and Bewildered,” features latest bachelor Joey Graziadei, and finds the fire department responding to an emergency call from the iconic Bachelor Mansion.
Jennifer Love Hewitt, who plays 911 operator Maddie Buckley, is a huge “Bachelor” fan and pitched the idea to the show’s writers. That’s not unusual for the actress, who loves to help dream up storylines.
“I offer way too much,” Hewitt says. “I’m like, ‘Hey, I have a pitch for you,’ and they’re like, ‘Really? Again? Aren’t you tired?’”
The “9-1-1” cast and creative team marked the episodic milestone last month with a cake-cutting ceremony on set.
“It was really fun,” recalls Hewitt, who swapped stories with her co-star, Peter Krause, about their other TV centennials. (Krause’s “Parenthood” signed off on NBC after more than 100 episodes in 2015, while Hewitt’s Fox series “Party of Five” and CBS drama “Ghost Whisperer” both cleared the marker.)
“It made me feel really old, because people don’t get to 100 episodes on a show very easily these days,” Hewitt says. “So the fact that I’ve done it three times, I was like, ‘Oh, my god, that’s kind of crazy.’”
The seven-season run has flown by for Bassett, who earned an honorary Oscar in January. “It doesn’t feel like we’re anywhere near 100,” she says. “But I’m still enjoying it and still loving it.”
Oliver Stark, who plays Maddie's firefighter brother, Evan “Buck” Buckley, marvels at how “9-1-1” continues to up the ante each year, kicking off Season 7 with a “Poseidon Adventure”-style cruise-ship disaster.
“It really didn’t feel like we were making network television. It felt like we were making this big, blockbuster movie,” Stark says. “Every season when I read the scripts, I think, ‘There’s no way we can go further.’ And then you read them and you’re like, ‘OK, but how will we pull this off?’”
The ensemble drama ultimately works because “even as the spectacle grows, the relationships between characters deepen,” he adds. “You get to know them on a more intimate level through the spectacle.”
