9-1-1 cast thought Buck actually died: 'I had many texts and calls,' Oliver Stark says
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9-1-1 fans worried when last week's episode ended with the 118 desperately working to revive Buck after the firefighter was struck by lightning. But behind the scenes, the cast was worried about their costar Oliver Stark as well.
The worry started with Stark himself, who found out about his character's latest brush with death in a phone call with 9-1-1 showrunner Kristen Reidel.
"She called me and said, 'Look, there's something that has been in the works for a while and I want to give you a heads up now that it's for sure happening.' I said, 'Okay, great. That sounds exciting.' And she said, 'Uh, you are gonna die.' I said, 'Uh, oh. Okay,'" the actor recalls to EW. "And then she quickly added, 'Not forever, obviously.' And I said to her, 'Is that obvious?' And she said, 'Yes. To me, that's absolutely obvious. You're not going anywhere.' So, thankfully, I did get a heads up."
FOX Oliver Stark on '9-1-1'
But, Stark adds, "who didn't get a heads up was the rest of the cast and crew. So, after they sent out the script, I had many texts and calls saying, 'Buck is dead?!' People calling me asking, 'Are you leaving the show?!' Which I got to tell them gleefully, 'Not anytime soon.'"
Jack Zeman/FOX Buck (Oliver Stark) visited by Christopher (Gavin McHugh) on '9-1-1'
This week's episode saw Buck in a medically induced coma, mentally experiencing an "alternate-universe fever dream" in which his brother, Daniel, never died. Mad Men actor Aaron Staton guested as grown-up Daniel while Brian Hallisay returned as the abusive husband of Jennifer Love Hewitt's Maddie. In the It's a Wonderful Life alternate universe, Buck is a teacher, Maddie never left Doug, and Bobby (Peter Krause) died because of his substance abuse. Buck fights to return to his true life, though he struggles to leave behind the relationship with his parents he had always wanted.
"All season long, Buck has been talking about wanting to understand himself better and wanting to find a way to be the person he wants to be, not the person other people want him to be," Reidel says of the episode. "And when you're examining your life and looking to your future and trying to figure out your place in the world, nothing shakes you up quite as much as dying. This just felt like a way to really dig into some of Buck's issues, some of Buck's need to please and need to fix — and what would he be if he stopped trying to do that?"
For more on Buck's journey, read our full postmortem with Stark and Reidel. 9-1-1 airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on Fox.
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