‘9-1-1’: Aisha Hinds & Tracie Thoms Talk Hen & Karen’s ‘Fractured’ Family and Shocking Secret Weapon

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 4 “No Place Like Home.”]

Oh, that episode title is so fitting! 9-1-1 ends on such a happy note that we admittedly can’t help but be worried about what could be coming.

But first, the joy: Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Karen (Tracie Thoms) get Mara [Askyler Bell] back, Gerrard (Brian Thompson) leaves the 118 to go work at Hotshots, and Bobby (Peter Krause) returns to the 118 as its rightful captain. And all of that is connected! Councilwoman Ortiz (Veronica Falcón) was responsible for putting Gerrard at the 118 in the first place, to ruin Hen’s life, and once Bobby appeals to Gerrard about what’s in his best interest, the other man records Ortiz (on the body cameras she wanted the firefighters to wear!) detailing her vendetta against Hen, who plays that during a hearing to shut down the 118 completely to help with budget cuts.

To celebrate, TV Insider spoke with Hinds and Thoms—who are just as much a delight together offscreen as on as Hen and Karen—about this episode.

First of all, I’m so happy that Hen and Karen’s family is back together! Do you think either of them had been losing hope, especially as this continued and the more Ortiz wouldn’t budge, the reveal that she was why Gerrard was at the 118… It was just one thing after another for them.

Aisha Hinds: Absolutely. I lost hope. [Tracie Thoms laughs] When I got the pages for that initial courtroom scene, there was so much hope because I was reading through the pages, and I was like, oh, okay, I think we have some momentum that’s leaning in our favor. And then when they brought up the fact that we had been spending time with Maddie [Jennifer Love Hewitt] and Chimney [Kenneth Choi] and we had been photographed doing so, and that was an infraction, I was so devastated in a real way. And I was like, well, where do we go from here? There’s no recourse. And we didn’t yet even have the pages for the next one, so we didn’t know that the victory was around the corner. So in that moment we kind of traveled through those emotions and those feelings and that sense of defeat in real time. But then it made the victory that much sweeter.

Disney/Christopher Willard

Something I loved is how strong and stable Hen and Karen stayed as a unit throughout this process because it could have easily led to some tension.

Tracie Thoms: Well, yeah, we have to be united front, and I think that we are so desperately wanting to have our family be calm and peaceful and together and all the work we did with Denny [Declan Pratt] and Mara and getting Mara to open up and getting her to come out of her shell and getting to teach her that she’s loved and she’s worthy and she has a place to call home and she’s never going to be homeless without family again. And this all happened. We had to come together and be as strong as possible for her and fight for her.

And then talk about filming that reunion at the end, to actually be able to have that joy.

Thoms: It was such a relief, such a relief really, her running into the house. It was just so great.

Hinds: That was heartwarming. We’ve had the fortune of being able to do this show for a while and build these relationships in an organic and authentic way. We never know if we’re about to kind of lose a character on the show or we get to continue to build our family, and so when she ran back in that house, it was like everything in the world was right in that moment and it felt good to just embrace as a whole family again,

Aisha, it turns out Gerrard can do the bare minimum to be a decent person if it benefits him in this one instance. Even still, how surprising was it for Hen to have him actually step up to help?

Hinds: Completely. That was not on her bingo card, I can tell you that. Knowing what Hen knows about Gerrard, I think she just was going along to get along. When he returned as the interim captain at the 118, I think she was doing what she needed to do. And the last thing that I think Hen could have seen coming was that he would be the secret weapon in getting Mara back. But how redemptive is that, that for all of the trauma that he inflicted on Hen that he was a part of sort of bringing healing into her life and being a part of being a vessel who ushered her family into being back together again. So yay for that and continue doing that work, Gerrard. More like that, Gerrard, more like that.

Disney/Christopher Willard

Well, the good thing is now he’s out of their lives. Bobby’s back at the 118! Everything’s now back to normal going forward for the 118, right? They can relax. They can have dance parties again, like Hen had them do right after Gerrard was taken to the hospital.

Thoms: [Laughs] I know, that dance party was hilarious. I loved it. I laughed.

Hinds: It’s kind of like all families are back together and that’s the way that you want it to be. Our families were fractured for a minute, but now we’re all back together again.

Thoms: Yeah, it’s just so crazy how that one woman could cause so much damage. And it spanned a whole season to the next season. I’m like, wow, she really did. She did a number on us, but we got over it. We persevered and we are victorious.

I have to say how much I’m loving all the Hen and Karen and Maddie and Chimney scenes we’ve been getting last season and this one. What are you both enjoying about those, and are there more to come?

Hinds: I love it as well, because Tracie mentioned before about just having more moments where we can exist as a family and just in a healthy dynamic, and I think it just gives us an opportunity to kind of have these adult and kid playdates on screen with characters that we don’t always get the opportunity to share time with all together. Like Hen and Chimney work together, but here we have the opportunity to have Hen and Karen and Chimney and Maddie and Jee-Yun and Denny and Mara all together in one space. That’s so much fun, especially when we have audiences who make it a point to watch our show as a family. That’s something that’s a lost art in the times that we live in where families are gathering to watch television shows together and we have a huge contingency of families who watch our show as a family. So it’s great when we have storylines that kind of reflect family, right back to them.

Disney / Mike Taing

Karen has always seemed to seamlessly slot in with everyone in Hen’s life, but now we’re really getting to see it.

Hinds: Yes, exactly.

Toms: Yeah. I mean, they went above and beyond to help us out with the situation. It’s a horrible situation with Mara, but it just gave us an opportunity to play together more. And 9-1-1 really is a family. Everybody loves each other so much, so going to work is still fun. We get to hang out with each other at work and there’s a lot of fun behind the scenes, lots of laughing and having the time. And also we’ve grown so fond of these kids. We watch them grow up. We literally watched Declan grow up as Denny and we’re watching the sisters grow up as Jee-Yun, Hailey, and Bailey [Leung]. They’re amazing. And now we have a new wonderful young actress who’s brilliant. Askyler is just brilliant and we’re getting to know her better I’m so looking forward to watching her grow with our family. So it’s very meta in that way. We really are a family off-camera as well.

But I do have to say because there’s so much joy at the end of this episode—the family’s back together, Bobby’s back, Gerrard’s gone. It kind of feels like there has to be some kind of pain coming there. So is there, and for whom?

Hinds: [Laughs] There’s always pain coming.

Thoms: It is 9-1-1, okay? Can’t be too happy for too long.

Hinds: We have to sit in our joy when we can. And just respond to the pain when it comes and who knows? Who knows who it’s going to be next?

Thoms: Yeah, I know. I mean, I get excited to see new scripts, but I’m also like, okay, what’s going to happen now?

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What else is coming up for Hen and Karen?

Thoms: Well, I think we’re just going to try to move forward and repair whatever damage has been happening to our family and just really, really survive as a unit and do things that normal families do now that we’re all together.

What’s been your favorite scene to film together?

Thoms: Oh God. All of them.

Hinds: That’s true because Tracie and I have such a fun time shooting everything. On any given day, we’ll turn our dialogue into a musical in an effort to try to remember the things that we have to say to one another. But [going back to] our ability to kind of forge through things over the years, and I think it is those scenes that kind of make us really hold tight to one another and work through whatever the challenge is of that moment. So even in this episode tonight, just sitting at that table with the hope in our chest that we were going to be able to get our daughter and then being defeated and kind of holding each other outside the courtroom on the bench, that was kind of a sweet moment, for me, for us to really lean on one another in that moment and try to figure out how to reclaim our power so that we can forge forward.

Thoms: Yeah, and it’s so funny because we have these super emotional scenes all the time, the two of us. Sometimes they’ll be so emotional that we’ll say cut and we’ll just start laughing hysterically. It’s like, oh my God. Because Aisha and I have been friends for 20 years now, we’ve known each other for about as long as Karen and Hen have known each other. So it’s kind of very meta for us to do this. And we have absolute trust with each other. We have no questions about whether or not we can rise to the occasion because I know I just look at Aisha, you know what I mean? We come in, we do the stuff. I look at Aisha, I just hook into her and she brings me right to where I need to be at the time. And to have that trust in another actor for so many years is such a gift because it doesn’t always happen when you’re always going to be on the same page and you know that if you are falling, the other is there to pick you up every day. So it’s all a gift. It really is.

9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC