‘9-1-1’ Showrunner on Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Big Entrance and if We’ll Be Waiting for Abby Forever
“You can’t replace Connie Britton,” Tim Minear tells TheWrap — before explaining how they replaced Connie Britton
Jennifer Maas | September 23, 2018 @ 2:30 PM
Last Updated: September 23, 2018 @ 2:32 PM
Michael Becker/FOX
You can’t replace Connie Britton. And “9-1-1” showrunner Tim Minear told TheWrap he wouldn’t have dared to try after her character Abby exited the Fox emergency-responder procedural when its first season wrapped back in March.
But he and fellow co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk did have to get a new leading lady if they were gonna keep all these crazy emergency calls coming for viewers this fall. So how do you find a worthy replacement for everyone’s favorite operator without replacing her? Enter Jennifer Love Hewitt.
“That was Ryan’s preternatural casting genius sense, which really never takes any time — at all,” Minear told TheWrap, in an interview ahead of the “9-1-1” Season 2 premiere Sunday. “He’ll know exactly the element that is needed for a show and when you say Connie’s replacement — not really Connie’s replacement right? You can’t replace Connie Britton. But what you need is you need certain elements on the show and we absolutely needed a face in the 9-1-1 call center.”
Minear said that with Britton out, they wanted “another great female TV star for that color on the show.” And Hewitt was the “perfect choice” to play new character Maddie, Buck’s (Oliver Stark) sister, who will be getting a job in the emergency dispatcher center come the Season 2 premiere. Yes, Buck’s lover — Abby — is being replaced by his sister. (No, not like that.)
“When we sort of started thinking about Jennifer in that [leading] role, the idea of making her Buck’s sister felt like a wonderful nexus, a personal nexus between that corner of our world and the other corner of our world,” Minear said. “You know, sometimes with Abby’s character, it was difficult to contrive them crossing in the show. It’s easier once you put her with Buck. But the idea that Maddie would be Buck’s sister made a lot of sense. And it has worked out quite wonderfully.”
While we’re excited to watch Hewitt join the gang for some new heart-stopping situations, we do wonder if we’ll ever see Abby again, after she took off on a indefinite trip to Dublin in honor of her late mother, on the Season 1 finale. And we know Buck, who set aside his womanizing ways when he fell head over heels for Abby during “9-1-1”s freshman run, is wondering too.
“We went out on a season where Abby left with a promise to return — or an intention to return — and Buck waiting for her,” Minear said. “So the first handful of episodes of Season 2 are about, you know, Buck waiting. And what that’s like for a guy like him.”
“We’ve seen him in his Casanova phase,” Minear added. “We’ve seen him grow up a lot with Abby. We’ve seen him become a man by being in a monogamous relationship. And what does it mean for a guy like him to remain celibate — at least for a while — while he waits for his true love to come back? So that was a part of the story we wanted to honor and didn’t just want to drop it and pretend like it never happened for Season 2.”
Minear emphasized that, “Buck’s waiting is the next part of the story” and that it would be a disservice to the viewers to “have him be back to his old ways” when they came back. But he’s still not sure how we’re going to get around that whole no-more-Connie problem. (Britton’s contract was just through the first season, with her exit planned from the start.)
“Whether or not I have to play everything sort of off camera or just from his point of view, I don’t know exactly yet,” Minear said. “But you know, Connie was there for the first year and she helped us get on our feet and off the ground and I would have her back in a second for as much as she’d wanna come back for. But that’s not happening yet.”
Minear also said with the entrance of Hewitt’s character fans get something they never got with Abby: a newbie’s look at the 9-1-1 nerve center. The showrunner noted we’ve only “seen the call center through a very experienced point of view.”
“With Maddie, you have a character who starts out as a trainee and we get an entry view into the 9-1-1 dispatch world,” Minear said. “And so the audience gets to experience that with her a little bit. And it gives you a unique perspective on that role.”
In addition to Hewitt and Stark, the “9-1-1” cast includes Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, Aisha Hinds, Kenneth Choi and Rockmond Dunbar and Ryan Guzman, who is another new face for Season 2.
“9-1-1” will return with a two-night Season 2 premiere Sunday, Sept. 23 at 8/7 c and Monday, Sept. 24 at 9/8c (its regular time slot) on Fox.
Ryan Murphy's '9-1-1' Emergencies Ranked, From Weird to Wild to WTF? (Photos)
Abby Clark (Connie Britton) answered some crazy emergency calls on the first season of Ryan Murphy's "9-1-1." But now it's Jennifer Love Hewitt's turn to deal with people's bonkers problems. Because Hewitt is about to take over Britton's headset as Maddie -- a new dispatcher in the emergency call center and our new leading lady after Abby's exit at the end of Season 1 -- TheWrap decided to rank a few of the most mindbogglingly injuries and incidents we've seen on Fox emergency-responder procedural so far. Don't worry Maddie, based on the previews for the Season 2 premiere this Sunday, we're sure there is still plenty of bizarre cases waiting for you this year.
The only thing dumber than the female serial killer LAPD officer Athena Grant (Angela Bassett) had to face on V-Day was the idea of this female serial killer. But it did make for a heartbreaker of an episode.
13. The most poorly timed motorcycle purchase ever
There is bad luck, and there is buying a hog as a midlife crisis birthday present for yourself, only to drive it off the lot and be sliced in half moments later. The death was a tearjerker, as the dad had time to say goodbye to his son over the phone -- but the sheer unbelievability of this emergency situation ever occurring gives it a spot on the list.
While we've seen more plane crashes on TV than we will ever be able to count, this one gets a spot on the list because it took up an entire episode and wove together so many different perspectives. Yeah, it's been done to death. But the show handled the drama well. Bonus points for the added complications of a water landing.
The injury itself was a little ridiculous. But the backstory upped the emotion for this one. At the scene of a shooting, a man who abused his wife tries to blow up the tree where she hung herself to death, by firing at explosives he's strapped to it. This go predictably awry. Did we mention this episode was called "Karma's a Bitch"?
How does a little plane emergency rank higher than the big one? Again, the back story: Supposed engine trouble is just a setup to a marriage proposal, which then prompts what seems to be a heart attack. She's rescued, though -- and says yes! (We have no idea why.)
8. The dead not dead guy aka the man with “narcolepsy with cataplexy"
Thank god for psychics, because if they didn't exist, the guy on this table here would have been autopsied. And that would be bad, cause he wasn't dead. Luckily the man, who apparently had narcolepsy with cataplexy, woke up, but the shock of that led the morgue worker who almost cut him open to slice his leg. The twist in why they had to call 9-1-1 was pretty brilliant.
Is there anyone who hasn't thought they would get stuck upside down on an amusement park ride at one point or another? This fear seems pretty common and the fact the first guy died because he was thrown from the roller coaster, but the second just gave up and let go, made this emergency especially haunting. Especially for poor Buck (Oliver Stark), who blamed himself.
A lady has a stroke -- but we don't know that part yet -- and starts speaking with a British accent. She is not British. She just woke up like that. Her husband, naturally, calls 9-1-1, as all of us would do in that situation. It is honestly the most hysterical emergency the crew has responded to, so it lands fairly high in these rankings.
Abby finally got her hands dirty in the Valentine's Day episode when she went on her very first date with Buck -- and ended up having to perform an emergency tracheotomy. Gross? Yes. Cool? Absolutely.
The idea of the wind picking up a bouncy house seems completely far-fetched -- but this is one of those emergencies that "9-1-1" actually ripped from the headlines. The desperate-to-spoil-his-kids dad made it all the more painful to watch.
The "9-1-1" pilot told us exactly how crazy this show would get when they pulled a BABY. OUT. OF A PIPE. IN. THE WALL. The premature child was flushed by her shocked teenage mother. The rescue was mesmerizing, painful to watch -- and finally cathartic.
The team's expert medic, Howie (Kenneth Choi) remained cool and collected while his buddies figured out the best way to save him after a bizarre car accident. All while he had a giant piece of rebar sticking out of his skull.
And we didn't even include the tape worm, the domestic-abuse murder with a twist, the suicide-prevention-via-kick... and so many other insane moments. We'll see if "9-1-1" can top it's first season when the second installment begins with a two-night premiere on Sunday at 9/8c on Fox.
Abby Clark (Connie Britton) answered some crazy emergency calls on the first season of Ryan Murphy's "9-1-1." But now it's Jennifer Love Hewitt's turn to deal with people's bonkers problems. Because Hewitt is about to take over Britton's headset as Maddie -- a new dispatcher in the emergency call center and our new leading lady after Abby's exit at the end of Season 1 -- TheWrap decided to rank a few of the most mindbogglingly injuries and incidents we've seen on Fox emergency-responder procedural so far. Don't worry Maddie, based on the previews for the Season 2 premiere this Sunday, we're sure there is still plenty of bizarre cases waiting for you this year.