In the premiere of the new One Chicago Podcast, the actor says he went from near retirement after Sex and the City to playing Hermann for a 14-year run.
It’s hard to imagine David Eigenberg’s acting career being in jeopardy, especially considering he’s played Chicago Fire fan favorite firefighter Christopher Herrmann for more than a decade.
Yet in his candid interview for the premiere of the One Chicago Podcast, Eigenberg shared that he felt his acting journey was reaching its conclusion before landing the life-changing role. In a September 18 episode of the new podcast, Eigenberg chatted with host and P.D. producer Brian Luce about the dawn of Chicago Fire, opening up about some of the challenges he faced before joining Firehouse 51’s ranks.
Check out highlights from Eigenberg’s interview on the One Chicago Podcast, below:
David Eigenberg’s career took some twists and turns before Chicago Fire: “Sounds like I’m making crap up”
Luce was eager to ask Eigenberg to reflect on the day he found out he scored the role of Herrmann, a life-changing call for the seasoned actor. “What do you remember?” Luce asked.
“I walked in and I was like, dead in the water seven years after Sex and the City…” Eigenberg told him. “And I had no career. I went back to contracting. I got my [general contracting] license in California. We left New York. And I’d gone to a job at a copper smelter plant — sounds like I’m making crap up right now — out in Salt Lake City. And I was dead.”
But fate had other plans when Eigenberg bumped into an old friend who asked what he’d been working on. “I said, ‘I’m dead. I’m over. It’s washed up,'” Eigenberg teased, revealing his colleague helped land him his audition for Chicago Fire.
“I was pretty much done, but I walked in to get back to that point. Dick [Wolf] was sitting very close to the front. He was right there.”
Eigenberg reminisced about his first meeting with the series creator, who was interested in Eigenberg’s life outside of acting and where he got his sense of humor. Wolf was percolating, and Eigenberg felt confident that he had made his mark.
“I said to my wife, ‘I don’t know what happened there, but I know that Dick responded to me.’ Because if they don’t respond to you, you can’t win them,” Eigenberg said, then recalling the moment his agent called him to tell him he landed the part.
“I gave [my wife] a thumbs up, and I said, ‘Okay, thank you. Close the deal. Whatever they offer me, whatever they’re giving me, don’t change it. Take it, before they take it back…'” Eigenberg teased. “I would have done it for half of what they were going to give me, and it was good.”
Earlier in Luce’s interview with Eigenberg, the P.D. producer recalled the moment he first met Eigenberg on the set of Chicago Fire, when showrunner Derek Haas referred to the Sex and the City actor as a “ball of fire that shouldn’t have been.”
“I’m like, ‘What do you mean by that, Derek?'” Luce recalled, adding that Haas had initially envisioned Herrmann quite differently. “He had a whole different person. He was thinking someone larger than life, like Little John from Robin Hood.”
Luce continued, “He said that what happened was is you came into an audition, and within seconds, they knew that that was our guy, that David Eigenberg was gonna be their Herrmann. They found their Herrmann. And what was more important than that, they said that they found the heart of their show.”
Herrmann continues to be the beating heart of Firehouse 51, and we can’t wait to see what action-packed rescues he pulls off next.
