CHICAGO P.D. Post-Mortem: Gwen Sigan Breaks Down Cook’s Addition to Intelligence
October 23, 2024 by Marisa Roffman
[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Wednesday, October 23 episode of CHICAGO P.D.]
After working a heartbreaking tender age case with Intelligence on the Wednesday, October 23 episode of CHICAGO P.D.—after also assisting Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) in “Blood Bleeds Blue” earlier this season—Officer Kiana Cook (Toya Turner) received an intriguing offer: She was invited to join the unit.
And though viewers have known that Turner is a series regular since before the season started, Cook is now officially going to be a steady presence on the show. “We get to see her in the next episode, she’s there,” CHICAGO P.D. showrunner Gwen Sigan tells Give Me My Remote. “Voight definitely supported the decision, obviously, and told Torres to go ahead and make this offer. And I think for her, it was a pretty easy decision.”
“She had a bit of a rough go…we find out in this episode what her path in the CPD has been…it hasn’t been what she imagined it would be, which is such a disappointment to her,” she continues. “And then to just be handed this golden opportunity, in her mind, I think it was an easy yes.”
Cook’s previous history being burned—and a rocky relationship with her previous supervisor, Sergeant Montgomery, who retaliated against her—does lead to her being a bit wary about placing too much faith in her new team. “[The offer is] also one she didn’t maybe trust completely,” Sigan acknowledges. “Like, ‘Is this really [what it seems]? I’m just gonna be allowed to be in it?’ And so it’s been fun to write her. I think it’s fun to see her not only learn that she really can trust the unit or the unit’s there for her, even when it gets challenging, but also to sort of fall in love with this kind of policing. It’s a different kind of unit and it’s a different kind of policing. And it’s nice to see that, yeah, she sort of falls in love with it over the next few episodes of being a member of 21.”
Sigan also acknowledges the “door’s open” to potentially explore more of Cook’s backstory with her old unit, especially her former boss. “It’s an open thing that we get to play with, if a story arises that feels really great for him to come back,” Sigan says. “But also, in the more immediate sense, it colors a lot of you know her journey into Intelligence and how she looks at the team and emotionally. And as we get to know her more, as we get to know her character and find out things about her past and where she comes from and what her family’s like, it highlights how something like that would have been hard to deal with.”
“In this episode, she doesn’t know Torres completely,” she continues. “She’s still putting on a facade a little bit. She’s not telling him all of her deepest emotions about this thing. She seems to be very much self-assured, and that [the problems she’s had] has no reflection on me…But of course I think it has bothered her and we’ll learn a little bit more about why: Why somebody not seeing who she really is, and sort of affecting other people’s viewpoint of her, why that would hurt.”
Cook’s first two episodes showcased her dynamic with Ruzek and Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar), and the showrunner acknowledges she’s been having so much discovering how she fits in with the rest of the team.
“It’s been fun because we don’t usually get to have these new characters come in,” Sigan says. “So we get to form all these new relationships. We’re seeing her and Voight; it’s fun because it’s different. She’s not really looking at him like a father figure, like I think everyone else does. But we’ll find out she has a great relationship with her father. So she doesn’t really need another father. So they have a little bit of a different thing.”
“There’s been some moments just watching dailies with her and Atwater that are really fun,” she continues. “I think they have a nice sort of chemistry brewing. Burgess has been very welcoming, which, for Cook, even in this episode, we see moments where it’s just like this easy acceptance, that they just accept her into the unit and Burgess is just part of that. It’s going to be fun. We’ll get a little taste of each of them forming a different relationship.”
CHICAGO P.D., Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC
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