Brian Cummings, a retired former Los Angeles fire chief, joined Station 19 as the fire technical adviser, not entirely knowing what he would be doing on a day-to-day basis. But that didn’t really matter. When the opportunity arose, his wife, Mallory Lewis, said take it. Perhaps that was because, in a way that feels fated, Cummings’ career trajectory was eerily similar to Station 19’s Captain Andy Herrera’s.
Right after World War II, in 1947, Cummings’ father, Lewis Cummings, joined the Los Angeles City Fire Department during a period of time when there were only two firehouses where Black men could work. Lewis was eventually promoted to engineer (the person who drives the truck), so naturally, Brian Cummings spent a lot of his childhood in and out of firehouses. Eventually, the firefighting bug caught Cummings, and he left UCLA, where he was pursuing an engineering degree, to join the Los Angeles Fire Department. As Cummings recalls, “I said, ‘Hey, Dad, I think I’d rather do what you did for your whole career.’ … He called me a dummy and said, ‘Do you want to work for a living?’ And I said yes. I got hired four days before I turned 21.” Before long, people were approaching Cummings and asking if he was Lewis’ son — just like Andy Herrera! — and so began Cummings’ storied 34-year career through which he worked up the ranks and, in 2011, became the fire chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department. He retired in 2014.
Since Cummings joined Station 19 in season two, his job as the fire technical adviser and co-producer helped ensure that, all the way through the final season, realism was sprinkled throughout the show by guiding the writers, actors, stunt coordinators, directors, and the crew to create not only a drama-filled show but also an accurate one. So, read on to learn more about Cummings, how he landed this unique opportunity, and which cast members from our fav fire station squad he calls “the fearsome five.”
REBECCA SNOW: When you first watched Station 19, what were your initial thoughts as a firefighter?
BRIAN CUMMINGS: Before my interview, I had never watched the show. It was very dramatic, and one of the things I told them is that I really think you guys have captured the interaction between firefighters because it’s just that way. There’s the drama, the humor, the poking at each other. It’s like this crazy, dysfunctional family. And I loved that about our show. But I said, “We’ve got to work on making them look more [like] firefighters.” That was my mandate, and I’m lucky that I lasted my first season.
It was interesting because [when I was first hired], they didn’t really know what my role was. At the time, they said, “We want you to look at the outlines that writers come up with, and then work with them on their stories, and then work in preproduction with the special effects and with stunts and with props. And then, we want you on set to [advise] them what to do.” I remember getting some of the first outlines from the writers and just red-penning the hell out of it. I was merciless — no, they would die. No, they can’t do that. No, that’s wrong. I was insufferable, but halfway through the season, [director and executive producer] Paris Barclay and I had lunch, and he said, “Hey, you’re doing a great job. Love what you’re doing. But here’s the thing: Writers are delicate creatures. Whenever you give them suggestions or comments, make it a compliment sandwich. Tell them what they did really well, give them a suggestion of something, and then compliment them at the end.” And he explained the triangle of competing interests here. We have the drama piece, which is huge. We have the cost piece, and then we have the realism piece — we’re constantly shuffling those things, but drama’s the king. The drama has to be there. And then, cost is also pretty important too. You’ve got to find a way to sprinkle your realism in there. And that really helped me find my place. I’m not shooting a training video. I’m shooting this drama that unveils all these aspects of humanity, and every now and then there’s an emergency that they have to deal with.
RS: Your role evolved from fire technical adviser to being a co-producer. Did that have a whole host of new responsibilities? Were there new challenges with that, or was it just more and more of the same, would you say?
BC: I had been doing the job [as a co-producer] since season five, and I don’t know the business. And my wife finally said to me, “You should be a co-producer.” I don’t know if you remember Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop — she was a lamb puppet, and Lewis was a ventriloquist, and she was on TV from [1956] until 1997. My wife, Mallory, is her daughter, who produced her mom’s show for 25 years. Mallory said, “You should be a co-producer.” I ask, “Well, what does that mean?” And she told me, and I said I already do that. I get the outlines of the script, and then I talk to special effects and VFX to find out the best way to make the scenes. And I talked to costumes about what they wear, and stunts about what we needed in props. So, no, my job didn’t change at all; I just got another title. It made things so much easier when even the art design folks and the construction folks had a question, they knew they could come to me, and I could give them examples of what this emergency is supposed to look like and how we should build it. I enjoyed the fully immersive part of that because it allowed me to really help everybody build a really coherent story.
And I’ve got to say, we had a wonderful med tech on the show, Christy Menefee, who was phenomenal — her attention to detail, to the little minutiae of all the medical stuff we did since we spun [off] from Grey’s Anatomy. And she took that seriously, and that really helped out working with her because it took it that farther step from emergency field medicine to the hospital care because we had a doctor on our crew.
RS: Then, looking back at your time on the show, what are some standout moments that you have from the set or favorite interactions that you’ve had with the cast or crew?
BC: I’ve got to say, the crew was absolutely fantastic. Some of my favorite times were being on set and just walking around and talking with everyone and seeing what they do. It’s like being part of the fire department because whenever we have a large incident, we set up different divisions and different groups to handle specific parts of it. And it’s the exact same thing on set. Going from an idea in a writer’s head to those 42 minutes of TV just blew me away.
Seeing the actors in between takes when they are just relaxed and are laughing and goofing around, and how good they got at doing the firefighter set — it was at a point where I told them all during this season that in a lot of the basic skills they were doing, I would put them up against regular firefighters. They could quickly get into their turnouts; they could get in their SCBAs and their masks. They could use hose lines, axes, chain saws. They were just as proficient as firefighters. And I also told them that they probably wear turnouts a lot more than firefighters do because on a day of shooting, there’s so many takes where they’re in that gear a long time. And most of the time, an average firefighter may be in it for 35 to 55 minutes, but that’s it. The cast was really committed to making this thing look real. Most of the actors would insist on using the real tools because then they didn’t have to act. You didn’t have to pretend something was heavy; it was really heavy. And I love the writers. For all that I was a tyrant in season two, the writers are my favorite. It all begins with the words — they’re phenomenal people. And then, just the crew, the hustle and drive that they have to make it look right.
RS: Was there a favorite fire or disaster that you helped coordinate?
BC: One of the doctors, Owen Hunt [Kevin McKidd] from Grey’s, had crashed his car down in a ravine, and we actually set that up with an aerial ladder. We rappelled down and raised Jason George and McKidd in a litter-basket operation that I would put against any fire department in the country. They did it so well.
One of my favorite directors of photography and director was Daryn Okada, who just had a way of capturing heat while working with our lighting guy, Roger Sassen. I’ve got to tell you: I had no idea about lighting. Lighting changes everything. With his interactive lighting and special effects doing practical smoke, we were able to make buildings look like they were on fire, and I couldn’t believe it. And we just shot some amazingly cool stuff there without even delving into VFX. It was crazy shooting the finale because we’re out at Disney Ranch. It’s raining. It’s muddy. We’re trying to shoot a wildfire, and everything’s green and lush, and there’s puddles of water, but it came out brilliant. They got the angles right. I’ve got to say in six years with the show, for me it was like I had this opportunity to take this master’s level class in how you make a TV show with these amazing people that taught me so many things.
RS: I feel like, as a viewer, the Station 19 firefighters push the boundaries a lot. It’s all for the good of people, of course, but they take a lot of risks. If you were in charge, who do you think you would fire or at least discipline?
BC: Yes, they pushed the boundaries and for many reasons. Firstly, the fire service in America is tragically homogenous. It’s 1.1 million firefighters in the country. Seventy percent of those are volunteers, by the way, but 80-plus percent are still Caucasian, and close to 90 percent are males.
RS: So, the diversity in Station 19 does not reflect very many other firehouses?
BC: No, in no way, which is beautiful. I love that. That’s part of it. That’s amazing. And the fact that they touched on so many issues that are real to the fire service — PTSD and suicide, substance abuse, and the cancer issues that are there. They touched on so many things that are real issues that are going on right now in the fire service. But who would I discipline? You cannot have sex in the fire station. We come down hard on that. It happens, but if you’re caught, people get fired for that all the time. I know that in the Seattle Space Needle one, Vic had a rant on the mayor there, but I don’t think we would’ve fired her for that. I wouldn’t have fired any of them. The system would’ve fired anyone that got caught using drugs or alcohol. That’s just a system, but if someone comes to the agency [and] says, “Hey, I’ve got this problem,” then we’ll help get you into rehab, and we’ll help you get better. But if we catch you with [such substances] in your system or using, we’ll generally terminate you. Sullivan would’ve been gone, Beckett would’ve been gone, Jack probably would’ve been gone.
RS: Who’s the standout firefighter of the cast? It sounds like everyone eventually picked it up, but is there someone special that you have in mind?
BC: My favorite five are Jaina, Jason, Jay, Danielle, and the sleeper of them all is Barrett. She’s not the most vocal person on set. She’s not asking all the questions or anything. If she did have a question, I would talk to her, and then she’d just nail it on anything that I gave her. Those five, the fearsome five.
RS: Would you hire any of them for your own crew?
BC: Oh, absolutely. I would hire any one of them. I’d hire Boris too, but I’d tell him, “You know what? You got to stop just standing around giving those smoldering looks.”
RS: That’s not going to put out any fires, Boris.
BC: He’s going to be starting them [laughs].
RS: What are you going to miss most about going to the Station 19 set?
BC: I think other than the people, which is such a phenomenal group, we show the entire rainbow, and I love that because that’s what the fire service should be about. The fire chief of the Los Angeles City Fire Department right now, Ms. Kristin Crowley, she’s going to be one of the grand marshals in the Pride Parade [this] month. She is the first openly gay fire chief for the city of Los Angeles, and she’s a grand marshal in the parade, and I love that.
I think that right there, that makes me more proud of my fire department than so much of the other stuff that they’ve done because it shows that — you know what? — if you’re capable of doing this job, it doesn’t matter what you look like or who you are. If you come to this with that service attitude and your desire to help people, I can make you a firefighter. That’s why it’s important to show that diversity, and it doesn’t matter what baggage you have. It’s like when the bell goes off, you go, and you take care of the public, and you make things better.
