Chicago Fire interview: Derek Haas on Casey & Brett, Severide’s crisis
In preparing for this big batch of episodes, who better to talk with than Derek Haas? In our interview below, you can read what the showrunner has to say about Severide’s life-or-death showdown, what lies ahead for Casey and Brett, tension between Brett and Foster, and a collaboration-of-sorts between Firehouse 51 and another house that could have some interesting results.
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CarterMatt – Where are things going to pick up with Severide, provided of course he survives?
Derek Haas – Severide is not intimidated by anyone or anything, as we’ve shown for eight seasons. We’ve got a guy down there who is a cornered rat, and as we know, cornered rats fight to the death.
I told our stunt coordinator Rick LeFevour, who is one of the best in the business, that we always do better when our fights are dirty and not choreographed — just let them go a little crazy. Taylor [Kinney] is always up for that. Keep the camera in close and let them knock each other around and knock into things (laughs). That’s where we start this half of the season.
While Dawson isn’t going to be around, will there be any emotional residue left on Casey? I know he didn’t expect her to just stick around.
The fact that he slept with his ex-wife is definitely going to be a subject between Casey and Brett at some point in the second half of the season. It’ll 100% complicate their relationship. But, we’re not there yet, and we wouldn’t be Chicago Fire if we didn’t thrust Casey and Brett into proximity together due to circumstances.
We’re also going to explore a part of Brett’s life in the up coming half-season that has never been explored before on the show.
The winter premiere synopsis hints that there’s some tension between Brett and Foster coming up? How can you describe that?
In any relationship, even with your very close friend, you’re going to have your mountains and your valleys. It’s a little bewildering to Brett at first why Foster is in a generally bad mood and is taking it out on her, and Brett isn’t in the mood to let her act that way.
One personal story I want to highlight is for Mouch in this episode, since it seems like he’s going to be trying to deliver a mysterious letter. What’s going on there?
About 20 years ago, I got a letter in the mail that was delivered by the post office in a plastic baggie. It was a charred piece of mail with a letter that said ‘the truck carrying your mail was in an accident and caught on fire. Here’s what we could deliver.’ I always thought that was interesting! We wanted to do a little highlight for Mouch — as we know, he’s a very proud of being a civil servant and takes pride in his job. He finds a letter and is going to find out where this letter goes.
Firehouse 51 is going to find themselves effectively collaborating with another firehouse on some level moving forward. Is there going to be a lot of tension there?
Yeah. We like to explore different personalities of firehouses, which is true if you travel around. We’ve done the sleepy firehouse where they never get out and fight fires. We’ve done the mean, maniac firehouse in 99 where they, through intimidation, operate. We thought it would be fun if we overlapped with a firehouse where they were the glory hogs of the CFD, where they were more concerned with getting their picture in the paper than they are at actually doing rescues.
Related News – Check out a few more details right now on the Chicago Fire winter premiere!
What do you want to see on the rest of Chicago Fire this season?
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