[Warning: The article below contains major spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 15, “Lab Rats.”]
Angela Bassett got insider info about a major character death coming to 9-1-1 in the procedural’s eighth season… and she thought it was her character, Athena Grant, who would be dying in “Lab Rats.”
Instead, as fans found out on Thursday, it was Peter Krause’s Bobby Nash who succumbed to a viral infection.
“[9-1-1 co-creator] Tim [Minear] did pull Peter first and let him know,” Bassett told The Hollywood Reporter. “He gave me a call and was like, ‘OK, Angela, this is a big change in the season. We gotta do something really dramatic — and someone’s going to die.’ And then there’s a pause, of course. And I said, ‘Is it … Athena? Is it me?!’”
Then Bassett guessed the doomed character would be Aisha Hinds’ Hen Wilson and Kenneth Choi’s Chimney Han before finally realizing who it would be. “I think finally, after about three or four names, I was like, ‘What?!’ — because it was inconceivable to me that it was Bobby,” she said. “It was incredulous to me that it was Bobby, so it was just very surprising. Sometimes, you’re just struck dumb — and that’s one of those moments because their bond has been so wonderful and so strong these past four or five years. I didn’t see that coming. None of us saw that coming.”
Christopher Willard/Disney
A week or so later, Bassett and Krause reconvened on set. “You know when your eyes just lock and you don’t know what to say? And you just bear hug each other, and then you just shake your head?” she recalled. “And bless his heart — he had to comfort all of us. [Laughs] He truly had to comfort all of us while he’s going through his own processing in the moment. But fortunately, everything’s [shot] so out of order that you can shoot what will be the finality [of that character], but you still have more time together. So that’s some measure of grace — a small measure.”
Minear told TV Insider he considered other possible deaths but decided that it was Bobby’s time since his death would affect every other character’s story on the show.
“It made a certain amount of sense for the arc of his character and that he came here for redemption and that he came here with a death wish, really,” the showrunner explained. “And then his whole story is about how he no longer has a death wish. He never feels completely worthy of the happiness that he’s received, but when he makes that sacrifice, he doesn’t want to go, but he achieves the culmination of everything that has been driving that character for eight seasons.”
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