CHICAGO FIRE Post-Mortem: Derek Haas, Andrea Newman, and Hanako Greensmith on the Relationship Shifts

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the CHICAGO FIRE season 11 premiere.]

Two CHICAGO FIRE couples reached a turning point on the Wednesday, September 21 season premiere.

For Brett (Kara Killmer), after months of giving it a go long-distance—and visiting each other—she realized she couldn’t continue with her relationship with Casey (former series regular Jesse Spencer, who left the series in episode 200).

“Brett is a character that we really love, and one of the things we love most about her is the evolution of the character from when she started to where she is now,” CHICAGO FIRE co-showrunner Andrea Newman tells Give Me My Remote. “And she’s really grown so much and really toughened up, basically. And this decision that she makes, the long distance thing—she obviously loves Casey deeply; their relationship is intense and isn’t something that’s just going to fade away. That’s not possible.”

“But for her, you’ve seen her character make two major life decisions based on the men in her life,” Newman says. “The first one was when she started on the show, she had just basically run away from a marriage situation. The second one was with the Chaplain when she moved out of Chicago to Indiana to be with him. And so I think she’s reached a point in her life that she’s not going to make decisions based on somebody else’s life anymore. She really needs to focus on her own. And it’s part of that evolution that she’s gone through.”

And with Casey settled, for now, across the country, the duo reached an impasse. “Casey can’t leave; we know that,” Newman points out. “And she’s got her para-medicine program and the job she loves and her friends/basically family of 51 [in CHICAGO]. So I think she makes a very bold and tough decision based on all of that. But it’s hard to just turn off those feelings, so she’ll be totally struggling with it. But it’s the right decision for her going forward.”

Going in the other direction was Violet (Hanako Greensmith) and Hawkins (Jimmy Nicholas), who finally got on the same page and decided to give their coupling a real, public go of it.

And while Hawkins is transferring for work, “it’s more long distance on the job, meaning he’s not going to be in the same district as she is anymore,” co-showrunner Derek Haas notes. “So they used to run into each other…he’d call on the firehouse—he won’t be doing that anymore. But, conversely, that frees them up to be an open couple and we’re gonna get to see them unabashedly having fun in the new reality for the two of them…they’re not hiding it anymore.”

The duo won’t waste any time embracing the normalcy, either. “In fact, they’re gonna get to go out of town together,” Haas teases. “Or at least they hope to go out of town together.”

“Now we get to see the dramatics that come with a regular relationship, and see them navigate that,” Greensmith told reporters (in the video below). “So that’ll be kind of a nice, calming, and rewarding experience after the challenges at all of season 10 as a whole for [them].”

Watch the video for more from Greensmith…

CHICAGO FIRE, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC

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