“Station 19” is about to reach a huge milestone, but it’s bittersweet.
Just three days after production began on Season 7 of the “Gray’s Anatomy” spinoff, as plans for a celebratory 100th episode began to develop, new producers Peter Paige and Zoanne Clack discovered that the show had been canceled. Season 7 will also be the last, tasking them with not only ushering the show into a new era but also delivering a satisfying ending. They weren’t ready.
“I used to sit on the floor in my underwear writing,” says Paige Selection. Clack adds, “I was on a panel in front of 100 people getting landline calls, trying to play it off. I only heard what the accurate information was after the panel.”
“Station 19” premiered in March 2018, midway through the 14th season of “Gray’s Anatomy.” A backdoor pilot introduced Meredith Gray (Ellen Pompeo) to her firefighting counterpart, Andy Herrera (Jaina Lee Ortiz), but the common thread between the two shows was Ben Warren (Jason George), Miranda Bailey’s up-and-coming husband ( Chandra Wilson). Being a surgeon was no longer fulfilling for him, so he decided to try firefighting. In Seattle, firefighters are also licensed paramedics, which means their medical training would not go to waste, but it can be at the bottom of the ladder, so to speak.
Andy, however, had a legacy to maintain. Her father, Pruitt (Miguel Sandoval), was the captain of “Station 19” and although he cherished his daughter, he was strong with her. His death in Season 3 boosted her ambitions: she would eventually become captain, earning the job the right way, without special favors. Finally, at the end of Season 6, she was given the new title, just in time to help her own team deal with a dance floor collapsing beneath them, crushing friend and foe alike. Her promotion was such a huge moment for the series that Clack and Paige practically saved it for the next 100th episode, along with some other crazy ideas.
“Now we have two half-Korean characters and we talk about taking the gift to Korea,” says Paige. “Frankly, because of the movement and the deadlines, we didn’t come up with the idea long enough to make it happen… but then we came up with something that I think is even better.”
With the landmark episode, “we essentially wanted to pay homage to the show and the atmosphere of the show, and everything around it,” adds Clack. “We wanted to really stretch our thinking and think outside the box.
field a little more.”
The episode airing April 11 is filled with celebrations and challenges and brings things full circle, says Ortiz. She is very grateful to have reached 100, but it is a number that also makes her feel “a little out of date”. Your knees and back aren’t the same as they once were, because although the fires may not be real, the equipment is still heavy – a relentless reminder that being a firefighter is a physically demanding job. , and not everyone can deal with it or survive. This is especially true today, where every individual risks their lives almost every time they go to work.
While Andy hasn’t reached Meredith Gray’s levels of trauma yet, she has indeed been through it. Her best friend died, then her father died and her marriage ended because of addiction. Furthermore, she discovered that her “useless” mother really wasn’t useless. Much of what she’s dealt with is classic melodrama, but some of it has hit Ortiz hard — especially since she lost her mother in 2019.
“It was a bit of a cathartic experience, having to grieve my mother and not only having time to deal with that, but also being able to work with my character as her mother comes back into her life and (she deals with) missing her father,” he says. Ortiz. “It definitely helped make everything simpler. I am infinitely grateful to our past and present writers and showrunners who took the time to delve into our personal lives so the characters could come to life.”
Ortiz, Paige and Clack agree that “Station 19” is at its best when it’s as genuine as possible. None of the stars have ever performed any real firefighting, but they all know what it’s like to stay on the planet the show is trying to portray.
“People think they’re watching a fire show,” says Paige. “But they’re really watching a show about women and black, brown and queer people navigating strategies that aren’t necessarily suited for them to be successful.”
Clack, who has worked on and around “Gray’s Anatomy” as a producer and medical marketing consultant since 2006, has always made it her mission to seamlessly incorporate social justice issues and public welfare messages into the show’s material so that they are “very ingrained in the entertainment of the show, and never wagging the finger or telling people what they should think.”
“Station 19” has seen many ups and downs over the years as showrunners and actors have come and gone, but Ortiz considers the seismic events of 2020 — the global health pandemic and the death of George Floyd — a turning point. . The worldview of frontline workers has changed, and so has the present.
In Season 5, then-executive producer Krista Vernoff introduced both real-world trends “into our storyline, and that allowed all of the actors the opportunity to talk about their identity,” says Ortiz. “This was an opportunity we’d never had before, and as our show is one of the biggest events around, we had a range of different experiences and opinions, and it opened up so many extra conversations.
For the first time, Ortiz felt like she could truly symbolize her Latino culture in a way she hadn’t been able to before, connecting herself and her castmates to their characters in a whole new way.
“I think the fact that we lived through this made us so much more grateful for what we had,” she says.
Clack points out that identity is key not only to “Station 19” but also to the ongoing episodes of “Gray’s Anatomy,” the show that quietly gave rise to it and recently returned for its 20th season.
“In the first few seasons, it was enough for viewers to see a black chief of surgery or a black cardiothoracic surgeon, a Latino orthopedic surgeon, and they just lived their lives being who they were,” she says. “But as society has progressed and as ‘Gray’ has progressed, it’s become more important to know what their experience is as a person of color and how that is reflected in the way they deal with people or lead their lives. ”
The century-old episode of “Station 19” will air soon, but the show’s legacy will live on beyond the little fire engine that made it.