As Chicago Fire Season 12 hurtles toward its conclusion, Andrea Newman is responsible for keeping the dramatic fire burning. Newman, who has been with the NBC series since its beginning, took over as sole showrunner following Derek Haas’ departure from One Chicago. And so far, she’s served up a season with plenty of romance, fire department power plays and even the theft of a fire truck.
Newman spoke to CBR about celebrating the show’s 250th episode with Chicago Fire Season 12, Episode 11, “Inside Man,” which also served as a showcase for original cast member Taylor Kinney. She discussed the truth behind that wild story — as well as what’s to come in the rest of Season 12, including the return of Paramedic Chief Robinson. And what goes into the jaw-dropping ends of every Chicago Fire season?
CBR: “Inside Man” was one of the more action-packed episodes in Chicago Fire Season 12, as criminals stole Truck 81 with Kelly Severide hiding aboard. Even for this show, it seemed like a wild idea; how did you come up with it?
And then it’s crazy the amount of rigs that just get stolen out of the house and sold for parts. The more we read about this, we were like, shouldn’t they have guards? [Laughs.] But they don’t. When people come looking for help, they’re supposed to be able to walk right in.
That episode is also a really wonderful showcase for Taylor Kinney, who since his leave of absence has really been doing some great work in Season 12. How much has it meant to have Taylor back in action, literally and metaphorically speaking?
He loves that [action] stuff. He’s so game for anything. [Laughs.] Once Boden went to spend some time with his stepson James, Severide became the ranking officer in the house, and so he’s been doing the behind the desk work. He’s like a coiled snake, ready to snap. So this felt like the perfect episode where he gets to go full Severide hero mode.
And he’s had some cool calls. I love that call with the car on the second floor and Kidd trapped inside [in Season 12, Episode 10, “The Wrong Guy” ]. He was fantastic in that, but this is really Severide-centric. Severide getting to have his own little action-thriller movie, which was fun for us and Taylor was so game, and Severide was ready to pounce. And it was our 250th episode — so it was perfect timing.
Chicago Fire Season 12 is a shortened season, but you’re still having to deliver the same amount of action and drama that the One Chicago fans expect. What was the process of breaking out the final three episodes, and working toward the huge, catastrophic event stories that every finale seems to have?
Joe Minoso as Firefighter Joe Cruz with his fellow firefighters recovering the body of Brian ‘Otis’ Zvonecek in Chicago Fire episode “Sacred Ground”
Well, they have to be huge and catastrophic. And luckily, there are plenty of those to go around. Hopefully, we won’t run out of those. But how we approach them is story first. What’s the big, emotional character story we want to tell? And then what’s a call that can serve that story? It’s always character first, then action.
We pitch these episodes out to the studio [and] network before we write them. And we look for a video we can show, a picture we can show, where everybody looks like they want to throw up, or they scream, or something. We want to get the biggest reaction we can — and then we know okay, that’s going to be our finale.
As you approach the Season 12 finale, you’ve had a bit of a revolving door with the characters. There was new paramedic Jared Lennox followed by Lizzie Novak, and the arrivals of firefighters Derrick Gibson and Jack Damon. How did you navigate adding, and in some cases, subtracting new players throughout the season?
