CHICAGO FIRE Boss Teases Roman’s Return in Crossover with CHICAGO P.D.

CHICAGO FIRE and CHICAGO P.D. have crossed over a number of times in the past—both as a duo and as a larger part of the ONE CHICAGO universe—but the latest event came in the aftermath of their largest crossover (in scope) in the franchise’s history.

“When you do the big ones, it’s basically taking up the spaces of three episodes,” executive producer Derek Haas says. “And you’re having to make your cast available at all times, so you’re really trying to write around that in the next two episodes. Just eliminating a third of it off the jump, makes it easier.”

The latest collaboration was initiated by the CHICAGO P.D. writers, who pitched Roman (Brian Geraghty) return for the event. “Then it just became up to us to come up with the cool first hour to hand off to them,” Haas notes. “And I have got to give a shout out to Matt Whitney, who wrote the [FIRE] episode, because he did a really good job.“

“We’ve done a few of these with P.D.,” he continues. “We try to match their tone a little bit more, so we [when we cross over, it’s] less of like a giant spectacle—which would take up a lot of production time—and more, ‘Okay, what’s the cool crime?’“

In FIRE’s “Off the Grid” and P.D.’s “Burden of Truth,” “our rigs are called to an overdose situation,” Haas previews. “And jumping out of that overdose situation with a bunch of teenagers is that Roman’s teenage sister has gone missing. Roman, like Severide, he doesn’t wait for the hands of justice to roll around. He wants to find out answers, and he knows we responded to that. So he comes straight to us saying, ‘What do you guys know?’“

Though P.D. plays heavily into both hours with Roman’s plight being central to the crossover, Severide’s (Taylor Kinney) own history made him a natural in for the FIRE world.

“We love to draw on our history because we have eight seasons now, and it’s fun to go back and pick up threads that would inform characters,” Haas says. “Way back in season 3, Severide found out he had a sister and that sister went missing in similar circumstances. So Severide’s heart goes out for Roman as soon as he hears what’s going on. And Severide is also one who wants answers when that kind of stuff goes down [anyway].”

Haas—who developed CHICAGO P.D. and worked on it in the early years—has a particular soft spot for Roman and was excited the shows were able to bring him back.

“I was there when the inception of Roman, and we always said, on P.D., let’s give [Burgess] a partner that’s kind of in the Severide mold,” Haas recalls. “And that was the Sean Roman introduction. I got to work with him on two really memorable episodes: One was the one with Burgess where they were stuck in a warehouse together way back in season 2. And then also the [CHICAGO] JUSTICE kickoff episode, which was a big Roman-centric episode. So I was excited just from a personal standpoint to bring him back on. And from a character standpoint, he actually had a little fling with Brett—everybody forgets about—in the second season. You have to imagine most of these characters were at Molly’s together, they all knew each other. They certainly cross paths many times. So it’s great.”