Tommy’s 9-1-1: Lone Star cancer story was former star Sierra McClain’s idea: ‘It will affect everybody’
The Fox drama’s co-showrunner Rashad Raisani breaks down the intense episodes ahead for Gina Torres’ character.
Sierra McClain’s Grace may no longer be on 9-1-1: Lone Star, but the actress’ presence is still felt on set.
On Monday’s episode of the Fox first responder drama, EMT Nancy (Brianna Baker) gets tested for breast cancer after her boss, Tommy (Gina Torres), notices a lump in a nude photo Nancy accidentally sent to the whole firehouse. But, in the final moments of season 5, episode 6, it is revealed that while Nancy’s lump was fine, the same could not be said for Tommy, who got tested in solidarity.
“We didn’t want to just go too straight on Tommy’s cancer,” 9-1-1: Lone Star co-showrunner Rashad Raisani tells Entertainment Weekly of choosing to first focus the story on Baker’s character, adding that the creative team had been looking for more ways to “explore Nancy’s backstory in a profound way.” (Raisani previously revealed the nude photo fiasco was inspired by a local newscaster who caught her thyroid cancer early thanks to a viewer who wrote in after noticing a lump in her neck.)
But as for giving Tommy cancer in the first place, that idea actually stemmed from a conversation McClain had with Raisani prior to dropping out of the show ahead of its current fifth and final season.
“She and I are very close, and we met to talk about her character but then she brought up Gina,” Raisani says of his conversation with McClain. “She said, ‘I think that Gina Torres is just such a special actor and she could take on an arc that could be even bigger than anything we’ve ever done for anyone, with more depth and more stakes.’ And she said, ‘I mean, I don’t want to speak for another character, but what if she found out she had breast cancer?’ And I just thought, ‘Wow, that was kind of a genius pitch.”
Raisani sees this cancer storyline as a way to “begin both Tommy and Nancy’s closing arcs for the series because, not to get ahead of ourselves, but Tommy is going to have to deal with this monster that is cancer. It’s going to affect everyone.”
Tommy’s cancer not only keeps McClain in the fabric of the show, it also marks the return of 9-1-1: Lone Star’s partnership with Stand Up to Cancer. “It’s an incredible organization,” says Raisani. “They helped us a lot with Owen’s cancer story in the first few seasons. And then, because he went into remission and beat cancer, we weren’t working with them in the way that we had loved our first few years,” he continued of the nonprofit, which they found a way to feature briefly in season 4 as well. “They worked so closely to us, episode by episode, to make sure that we were getting our terminology and our treatments and all of these things correct and plausible and telling them with, hopefully, as much humanity as we could. We’re so grateful to have them involved again.”
