‘9-1-1’: Oliver Stark Says Season 7 Buck Is ‘A Brand-New Man’ & Doing What Makes Him Happy
Q&A
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The promos for the new season of the first responder drama make what’s to come look amazing, but we shouldn’t be surprised. “It’s 9-1-1,” Oliver Stark, who plays firefighter Evan “Buck” Buckley, tells TV Insider. “It always goes bigger and louder than it did the previous season.”
Season 6 ended with the entire 118 injured after an overpass collapsed. But don’t worry, everyone’s back at work in time for the next disaster: Athena (Angela Bassett) and Bobby’s (Peter Krause) cruise ship is the emergency. Of course, they can’t go on their honeymoon without something going wrong. Again, “it’s 9-1-1,” laughs Stark.
Below, Stark previews the new season, what self-discovery looks like for Buck now, and more.
Talk about filming the cruise ship disaster.
Oliver Stark: It’s been a real kind of mind-blowing experience for all of us, just because of the scale of it. 9-1-1, the tradition has always been at the beginning of the season, we go big. This time, I would say we’re really, really going huge. These episodes, I walk onto sets and I’m just like, I can’t believe this is a network TV show. These feel like movie sets, these feel like big blockbuster productions, and the things they’ve built and the sets they’ve managed to put together, it really feels like something that should be out of the grasp of such a TV show. But we’ve pulled it together, and that’s a huge credit to the crew and everybody involved with production.
When we spoke at the end of Season 6, you said you wanted to see something death-defying that doesn’t go as planned, and Buck can be injured again.
Did I say that? That sounds like me. [Laughs]
Did you get that wish?
There’s no injury coming up for Buck, but there’s certainly plenty of death-defying action. It’s the world of 9-1-1. Nothing ever goes smoothly. Nothing ever goes to plan, and I don’t believe anybody would want it to.
Disney/Chris Willard
This season is one of self-discovery for Buck. How is that different from what we’ve seen in the past and how does what we’ve seen in the past inform this next chapter?
It’s probably a line—self-discovery—I’ve used a number of times over the years, but I think that’s very true to life. We’re talking about a character in his late 20s, early 30s. I think this is the age when you probably are constantly reinventing yourself and trying out fresh identities and thinking that you’ve moved one step forward, but actually, then you take two steps back. He’s been kind of trapped on this hamster wheel of thinking he was escaping his past self. But I really do believe that the culmination of everything that happened to him last season where he technically died is what he needed to break that repetitive cycle and move into this next phase. We’ve joked about it over the years of, oh, Buck 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. This is like a whole new upgrade. This is not just a new version. I think we’re looking at a brand-new man.
How does that affect how he looks at his personal life and his career?
In his personal life, he’s just open to doing the things that make him happy, finding what it is that he wants to be and the things that make him feel good, and being in pursuit of them in a way that carries no shame with it. And he will go after the things that make him feel good, which is what I think we should all be. And by the same merit, I think at work that also means that he’s more settled. He’s not constantly feeling the need to try and prove, I can be captain one day, I can be this. I think there’s an understanding of, I’m good at what I do, and I’m on the right path. Let me just continue helping people.
Does Buck know what he wants in his life? Or is he enjoying figuring that out?
I don’t think it’s a conscious “I know what I want, and I’m going to go and get it.” I think it’s more just I’m open to things, and I’m open to floating wherever the wind takes me. And if this feels good, great. And if it doesn’t, we throw that out and we try something else. I think he’s just in a very open phase of his life where he just wants to find the things that bring him joy.
That’s probably better for him at this point.
Yeah, I feel like he’s always had this image or this view of what he should be doing and how life should be looking for him, and I think that can actually be quite restrictive. By him dropping those beliefs and just opening himself up to the world, I think he’s going to find himself in a much better position.
Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Chimney’s (Kenneth Choi) wedding is coming up. What can you preview?
Nothing in the world of 9-1-1 ever quite goes to plan, so I am sure no one is expecting that for their wedding, either. It’s a really interesting way to tell the story of a wedding. It’s not the story that I saw coming, and I don’t think it’s the story the audience will see coming. I would say it’s definitely going to be, I think, one of the highlight episodes of the season. … [Buck’s] in the wedding. There are certain roles that he has been tasked to fulfill, and we’ll see how successfully or unsuccessfully he fulfills them.
Disney/Chris Willard
Buck and Eddie (Ryan Guzman) will be helping Christopher (Gavin McHugh) with dating problems. They haven’t had the best of luck with relationships. How does that go?
Hey, come on. You know how it is, sometimes it’s easier to give advice to others than it is to give advice to yourself or to live by that advice. I think Buck has been through many different relationships with varying degrees of success, and we learn from our mistakes. If he’d only been in one relationship ever and it’d been a success, I don’t think he’d be as well-equipped to advise. I think all those failures have put him in a better position to be able to lend an experienced voice into Christopher’s life.
What are Buck’s most important relationships this season?
There’s some really beautiful stuff between him and Eddie and kind of them being open and sharing things with each other that they may have been reluctant to share with—I know how that’s going to be taken. [Laughs] But it’s true. [They’re] there for each other in a very kind of open and non-judgmental way.
Which relationship will be challenged the most?
Almost with himself. Because on one hand, he’s going to go after all these things that make him feel good. But sometimes they’re not the things that he would’ve expected them to be. And I think that then causes some self-reflection and some self-study that he maybe wasn’t expecting to have to do.
Episode 100 is coming up. Congratulations. What can you preview?
It’s a really interesting episode, and it’s off the back of this huge cruise ship disaster, so it’s everybody coming back together and a number of different characters have really meaningful storylines in the episode. Obviously, there are emergencies, but it also leans very heavy on character. At this point, we’ll have spent 100 episodes with these characters. It’s nice to let them be and just look at their lives and explore where they are a little bit as we look back and think about all we’ve done and all that culminating.
I feel like the combination of emergencies and character stories is what’s made the show so successful.
Absolutely. And when those emergencies do reflect things going on in the characters’ lives, that’s when the show, for me, is really thriving.
What else is coming up for Buck?
He’s at a point where everything is coming up for Buck. And what I mean by that is he’s just open and letting things happen to him. Whether that be in a pursuit of love or professional advancement, he’s not going to force anything. He’s just going to let the universe do its thing around him, and he’ll take from it what he can, and he’ll drop the things that he doesn’t need.
Will he be looking to do anything in any sort of leadership position?
He’s not pushing for it, not at the moment. And I think that’s a big change from last season. We have seen him like, hey, I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready.
He was so upset that Bobby didn’t want him to fill that role.
And I understand that. It’s funny because that has definitely rubbed off on me where if there is a leadership thing, I’m like, what about Buck? I want to speak up on his behalf because I do believe he’s moving closer and closer to being ready for it. And I think that’s actually evident in the fact that he’s not pushing for it. I don’t think he feels the need to assert himself in that way. He just would rather do his job and prove his capability than talk about it constantly.
We’ve seen Buck in therapy, and you’re talking about him figuring things out. Is he going to go back to therapy, or is it more him doing it by himself and maybe turning to those around him?
I think the 118 is keeping Frank [Eddie McGee] in business at the moment. We start the season with Bobby and Athena talking to him. I could see that. I could see there being scenes of Buck going to some kind of therapist later in the season. This is me just making it up. But I could certainly see that being something that plays out on screen again at some point.
There’s nothing really different though about the show moving to ABC, right? You still have the big disasters, you still have the character stories.
Yeah. The day-to-day of the show feels very much the same. I think the only thing that feels different, I would say, is just the level of freshness and excitement, and it feeling like the rightful home for it and that being felt in the cast and the crew and the creators. And yeah, I think there’s just an overall feeling of being settled in our rightful home and being excited about it.
And reaching 100, it kind of feels like you can do another 100, right?
Yeah. I might need some massages to help with my aching back and knees. [Laughs] But yeah. Hey, we can do it. I’m down. I’m game.
9-1-1, Season 7 Premiere, Thursday, March 14, 8/7c, ABC
