Pascal makes an interesting impression on the team at Firehouse 51. Kidd already doesn’t like him much just because he isn’t Boden, and while Severide and Herrmann do a great job showing the team how to respect the chain of command, there are plenty of firefighters who are still unsure about Pascal and some of his changes. (Cell phones in a bin during meals?! How dare he.) He manages to win some folks over, though, especially when he walks into a fire without any additional protection from the debris dropping from the sky — which he instructed every member of his team to make sure they had — and when he supported Violet and paramedic Lyla Novak (Jocelyn Hudon) when they wanted to follow up with a young girl from a car accident. It’s obvious that his presence is going to be pretty polarizing for the team, at least at first.
Chicago Fire fans are likely to have seen Dermot Mulroney, the actor playing Pascal, just about anywhere — since he began acting in 1986, Mulroney has held nearly 150 different roles. He is best known for several romcoms he did in the ’90s and early ’00s, including My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), which he starred in opposite Julia Roberts, and The Wedding Date (2005), where he played a male escort that Debra Messing’s character hired to accompany her to a wedding. He also played Everett Stone in The Family Stone (2005) with Sarah Jessica Parker, Luke Wilson, and Rachel McAdams, among others, and his most recent romantic comedy was Anyone But You (2023), the Netflix film starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell.
Dermot Mulroney has had a storied career, but there’s one role he hasn’t ever played — the role of Dylan McDermott. For about 30 years, the two actors have often been mixed up, usually just because of their similar names. Despite being mistaken for one another, even jokingly, the two men have never been in a film or television show together. The closest they’ve come is that both men had roles in American Horror Story, but Mulroney was in Season 7, and McDermott was in Seasons 1, 2, 8, and 9. Perhaps one day, fans will get to see them on screen together, even if it’s solely to point out that they’re not the same man.
Mulroney’s career on television has also been incredibly robust, and he often pops up as the father or boyfriend of a main character for just a few episodes. In 2003, he appeared on Friends for three episodes as Gavin Mitchell, the man who seems to have taken over the job Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston) did before she went on maternity leave. Mulroney guest starred in four episodes in the first season of New Girl as the boyfriend of Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel) and even came back for episodes in seasons 2 and 7, and from 2015 to 2017, he played Sean Pierce, the fiancé of Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum), on Shameless. Fans of Station 19 will also recognize him as Greg Tanner, the father of police officer Ryan Tanner (Alberto Abrezza), and he had a particularly memorable 4-episode stint as John Wesley Seasons in the first season of The Righteous Gemstones. Mulroney’s extensive and varied career shows he’s a talented actor, and just the first episode of Chicago Fire‘s 13th season proves he’ll be bringing all of that talent with him to Chicago.
With just one episode under their belt so far in Chicago Fire‘s 13th season, there is a lot that fans don’t know about Dom Pascal. He has promised to bring changes to Firehouse 51, which fans already began to see in Season 13, Episode 1, “A Monster in the Field.” “You’re going to thank me,” Pascal said at one point in regards to changes he was making. “Either that or you’ll decide I’m a dick.” Pascal clearly has his own way of doing things, and both Severide and Kidd have already noted that something feels off. They’re not wrong.
Part of the way through “A Monster in the Field,” Lieutenant Stephen Vale (Phil Donlon) stops by to see Pascal. Their conversation is brief, but it tells audiences that there is something Pascal is hiding. “I heard about what happened in Miami,” Vale says. “You okay?” Pascal says he is, but Vale doesn’t believe him, even trying to tell him that he heard differently, but Pascal obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s never great when a character on Chicago Fire is hiding a secret, especially when it’s about the job. Audiences will have to wait and see what Pascal is hiding and how the team will continue to deal with him, but one thing is crystal clear — Dom Pascal is making waves at Firehouse 51, and the repercussions will likely last all season long.
