Angela Bassett knows firsthand how brokenhearted “9-1-1” fans still are over Season 8’s major plot twist.
“My sister’s one of the fans, and she won’t stop talking about it,” Bassett tells TODAY.com.
Bassett has starred as Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Athena Grant since Season 1 of the first responder procedural. The show opens with Athena’s first marriage headed for divorce, but by the end of Season 1, she finds love with Fire Department Chief Bobby Nash, played by Peter Krause. The two marry in the Season 2 finale.
That relationship, known to fans as “Bathena,” became one of the emotional centers of the high-stakes show, and together, they survived a tsunami, a sinking cruise ship and a plane crash. But in Season 8, Episode 15, Bobby died after he was exposed to a deadly virus in a lab accident. The plot twist marked the first major character death throughout the show’s eight season run and sparked an outpouring of emotions from fans, from grief to anger.
“She is mad,” Bassett says now of her sister, about four months after the episode aired. (Season 8 ended May 15. Season 9, which was officially renewed in April, is currently in production.)
She says her sister, like many fans, still asks her: “It don’t make sense … Is he coming back?”
Bassett’s answer? “I have to keep his memory alive in some way,” she says. “I’m making no promises. I’m wondering just like you, just like the fans.”
In the aftermath of Bobby’s death, some fans theorized it wasn’t the end of the road for Krause’s character. Season 8, Episode 15, ended with a body bag being removed from the lab with Bobby’s helmet abandoned on the ground. In the next episode, Krause returns for flashback scenes and as a figment of Athena’s imagination as she struggles to cope with the loss and make funeral arrangements for her husband.
In the end, she decides to bury her husband back in Minnesota, beside his first wife and two children, who died in a fire before the events of Season 1.
But many fans cling to the fact that technically, audiences didn’t see Bobby’s body — though “9-1-1” showrunner Tim Minear has said in multiple interviews that Bobby is really dead.
Plans for Season 9 remain a mystery, but we know actors Corinne Massiah and Elijah M. Cooper, who play Athena’s two children, May and Harry, will serve as series regulars for Season 9, putting a spotlight on Athena’s family life in the wake of her husband’s death.
“It’s interesting how sometimes, a lot of times it seems, storylines in the show will mirror in a way what’s going on in real life,” says Bassett, who shares twins Bronwyn Golden and Slater Josiah with husband Courtney B. Vance. “Young boys, just thinking they know it all and they’re grown and making their own decisions, which is not quite what mom had in mind.”
“They still need mom, but they don’t think they do,” she adds.
So while Harry has “growing pains, becoming a man,” she describes Massiah’s character, May, as being stuck in the middle.
“Either she’s on my side or his side. She is his sister, so, help me out girl,” Bassett jokes.
Bassett also confirms, “Of course they’ve got to put me in some sort of life-threatening dangerous situation.” After all, fans may recall Season 8 opened with a “bee-nado,” or bee tornado, that caused a midair crash and left Athena to land a plane on the L.A. highway.
Reflecting on that dramatic Season 8 plot point, the Oscar nominee lightheartedly jokes, “You don’t know how I shake and grab onto seat mates in a plane when I feel a little bit of turbulence… OK, so now I’m landing a plane?”
As for how she finds out about the shocking circumstances ahead for her character, Bassett says she usually gets wind of what’s coming not from scripts, but from the crew behind-the-scenes.
“Maybe I have to go in for a fitting, so maybe I’ll hear, ‘Oh, you’re going to be doing something crazy,’ because a lot times the heads of the department will get, if not the script, the idea of what it’s going to be about before we do so they can get a little head start. And then sometimes they can’t help but share,” Bassett says.
“And then the script comes,” she continues, “and I’ve always made it out to be crazier in my head, just hearing about it, then when I read it, it’s like, ‘OK, this is doable. I guess.’”
