Zoanne Clack and Peter Paige have significantly different backgrounds. Clack has a background in medicine and public health but secretly dreamed of working in a more creative field; Paige co-starred in five seasons of the groundbreaking Showtime series Queer as Folk and went on to co-create three other TV shows. But when it came time for the two to join forces to become the co-showrunners of Station 19 after the previous showrunner, Krista Vernoff, asked them to take over prior to season seven, they were able to quickly form a congenial partnership.
The Grey’s Anatomy spin-off — which began airing in 2018 and survived (nay, thrived) through both a global pandemic and one of the longest Hollywood strikes — has been beloved by Shondaland fans for shedding light on underrepresented storylines within the world of firefighting and its dramatic crossovers with the ABC flagship Grey’s. Though it was announced late last year that Station 19’s seventh season would be its last, it left the showrunning duo undaunted.
“They’re gonna get a great ride,” says Paige about what fans can expect from the final season. “We’ve got some great, big, dynamic incident episodes, and we’ve got some beautiful, smaller, kind of psychological and emotional episodes. And I think all in all, it’s adding up to be a really satisfying season.”
As Station 19 premieres on Thursday, March 14, with 10 weekly episodes on ABC, we get the lowdown from Paige and Clack about how they got the gig, how they want to end the gig, and what is most important for them to leave behind for both the characters and writers of the show.
On their paths to Shondaland
“I started as a doctor, then went to public health,” says Clack. “Working in public health was me trying to figure out what my next steps would be because I was burnt out with medicine. I never got to pursue any kind of creative track because my mom was like, ‘This is how you are successful: You are a doctor or a lawyer.’ So, I said I would be a doctor. But as a kid, TV raised me. I’m an only child of a single mom. Eventually, I got to the point where I wondered if I could be successful but also do something that I loved.”
She continues, “The opportunity came when I was at Emory University Hospital — I was in the right place at the right time and said the right things to the right person. I hadn’t been open about my desires to pursue a more creative life — you just don’t do that as a doctor, someone who literally needs to be saving people’s lives. But I’d told some people I was thinking about moving to Los Angeles, and I had all kinds of other excuses, like I wanted to explore getting out of academic medicine, I had friends there, that kind of thing. For some reason, I mentioned to one of my mentors that I had applied to be a tech adviser on the show ER, for which I’d seen in an ad at the back of the national ER magazine, but I hadn’t heard back. My mentor said, ‘Oh, I trained with that guy. You should just mention my name. He actually named a character after me in an episode!’ So, I wrote off another letter and got an interview. And that was my first job in television. My second job was on Grey’s Anatomy.”
“I am a classically trained actor, graduated from Boston University, struggled mightily for about a decade, and finally got my big break on Queer as Folk,” says Paige. “I spent five years on that show, but within a few months of getting that job, all the things that people had been saying to me my whole life — ‘you’re really a writer/director’ — suddenly rang very true.I loved being an actor, but I was always a little bit frustrated. I always felt like I wasn’t using all of the ways that my head works. I sort of resolved to start training myself, and I used my time on Queer as Folk like grad school: I never sat in my trailer, I was always on set, I would go to every department and ask anybody, ‘What do you do? Why do you do it? Tell me about being a grip.’ I got to learn firsthand from these brilliant craftspeople — their vocabulary, their purposes, their intentions, and how they try to be additive to the process. And it just got me incredibly excited and engaged. After that, I wrote and directed a feature that had a little life. I got a writing partner, and we started writing and selling pilots. We created a show called The Fosters in 2012, which ran for five seasons and spun off to a show called Good Trouble. I left it in some very capable hands, and that’s when Krista Vernoff sort of snapped me up. I directed an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and she was like, ‘Please don’t leave!’ And I haven’t left since.”
On being given the reins for Station 19
Clack and Paige kind of knew their ascension was coming for about a year given that Vernoff had been running both Station 19 and Grey’s and had been talking to people about possibly taking a break soon — though no one wanted her to go.
“The conversations about the two of us [taking over] started pretty early on,” says Paige. “And that was great because it meant that we got to have really frank and candid conversations with each other about how we were going to do things — how we were going to be respectful of each other, what we were each going to bring to the equation, and what our expectations of each other would be. It was a great gift.”
“What’s interesting too about those conversations is that Peter has run shows before, so I didn’t want to impose on him [as a new showrunner],” says Clack. “But we were very simpatico from the start about the kind of culture we wanted in the writers’ room, and to make sure that people got heard and had ownership of their materials.”
Adds Paige: “We were also pretty simpatico on our vision for the show — what was important to us, both in terms of the storytelling and in terms of how those stories were getting made. It was a fortuitous moment in time: We found each other at a good moment and in a similar place.”
On celebrating the legacy of Station 19
“When the news came that it was going to be the last season that, of course, reframed everything,” says Paige. “We wanted to honor the growth of these characters, the changes they’ve made in their lives, but also honor the legacy and the philosophy of the station and how it resonated in the world.”
It was also about honoring the way stories are told through these characters, says Clack. “We always wanted to be able to tell authentic stories about underrepresented people in the world [of firefighting] and to be able to show through our firehouse how we can actually affect the community and effect change in that community. Although they are heroes, they’re also people, and showing the humanity of different people coming from different places in life was always important to us.”
On final arcs
Without giving anything away, “Andy became captain at the end of season six,” Clack says.
“And her main goal throughout this season is to find out what kind of leader she is. Is she going to be like her father, the first Latino captain in a Seattle firehouse? Or is she going to be like Maya or Sullivan or any of the other captains that have come through? And how does she find who she is as a leader as opposed to following someone else’s brand of leadership? [This season is about] bringing out the characters and what they’ve learned through six seasons before, and what they will add on to that learning.”
“One of the things we did when we got the news [about the show ending] is we brought all the actors in and asked them what they needed to feel resolved about their character journeys they’ve been on,” says Paige. “And to our credit, 95 percent of what they said was stuff we were already talking about. But there were some beautiful little gems they gave us, some interesting little surprises and thoughts and moments. In one case, even a little line of dialogue, perhaps, that has stayed with us in a deep and meaningful way. But they’ve been on this incredible, very specific journey, and they’ve been shepherding these characters so beautifully through it that we really wanted to honor them as actors and creatives as well.”
On the end of Station 19
“One of the great things about it being the end is that you get to actually manifest all the change,” says Paige. “In TV, change is often quite small and incremental because you’ve got to come back next week and tell another story; characters can’t grow like they can in a movie, right? They can’t change in these big, meaningful ways. But we know we’re ending the show, and that’s been a real blessing and quite satisfying for the actors to get to see and inhabit those journeys coming to the next level.”
Adds Clack: “It allowed us to take the storytelling to another level and have big bigs, as we like to say. Our stamp on the show was to have very big moments and then have these more introspective episodes where we get to do a lot of character work. Our fans, who are so lovely and so dedicated, will really get to see these characters’ internal lives, and how their jobs and their histories and their childhoods and all of that are affecting the way that they’re working today.”
On memorable showrunning moments
“I have one that just happened last week,” says Paige. “Our PA came in and asked us a favor. We were happy to hear it and talk to her about it, but she burst into tears. We were like, ‘Why are you crying?! What’s going on?’ And she said, ‘I’m so grateful that this is where I work. My friends are all assistants all over town, and they’re all miserable, and all they do is complain about their bosses, and I just feel so privileged.’ That had been such a conscious goal of ours, so to have that mirrored back to us was a really proud moment.”
Did Paige cry too?
“Of course! I cry all the time,” he says.
“You cry all the time,” laughs Clack, who says she has a more overarching take on her favorite moments as a showrunner this season: “There is just so much love in the writers’ room, so much positivity. I love that we’ve been able to give our writers ownership of their own scripts. We’ve had them really delve into their scripts and change things and move things around and work with us. We like them to do three or four outlines, but then by the time that they get it, they really can just write the script and have their words on the screen. It’s such a beautiful thing to be able to give to people, to take them through the process, which we do. Peter is really into post, and he takes writers — some of whom are really seasoned but have never done it before — through the entire process of editing, color grading, music, et cetera. It’s wonderful to be able to know that these people are going out there and will take this kind of [mentoring] vibe out to the world.”
