‘One Chicago’ Three-Way Crossover Event Brings Explosions, Trauma for Major Cast: “It Feels Like a Movie”
Picture this: An underground explosion sends massive flames up a downtown high-rise building, injuring several people — some left fighting for their lives — who are now trapped underground in the city’s stalled “L” subway system, leaving a distraught, tearful Chicago Fire Lieutenant Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) assessing the scene.
Such a scenario could only mean one thing for viewers of this Wednesday’s One Chicago event on NBC: The three-hour crossover episode for ChicagoFire,Chicago Medand Chicago P.D. has begun.
The first One Chicago crossover since 2019 brings together all of NBC’s Chicago-based first responder dramas. Chicago Fire will take the lead when the action kicks off at 8 p.m., before rolling into Med at 9 p.m. and P.D. at 10 p.m.
“There’s a gas main explosion underneath the building, which causes major issues with the building above it, and then it causes a lot of destruction underground as well, including trapping a subway train under underground,” Med’sexecutive producer and showrunner Allen MacDonald explained to The Hollywood Reporter of how the event begins. “You know from the preview that Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) and Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) from P.D. and Fire, respectively, are trapped beneath with the passengers on that train. And there is a big group effort via all of our characters from all three shows to get everybody underground up safely, while at the same time, trying to solve the mystery behind-the-scenes of what caused this explosion in the first place.”
Chicago Fire showrunner Andrea Newman, meanwhile, told THR that this megaplan to again crossover all three shows was always the plan, but when it would air came down to the right timing.
“We’ve been wanting to do one for a long time,” Newman explained. “They’re always such exciting episodes and it’s so fun to bring everybody together. But there was COVID, there was a shortened season because of the strikes — there are a lot of reasons that it didn’t come together for the last four or five years. But we knew when we started this season that this was the goal to get to a big crossover, and that’s exactly what we did. And it’s an interesting one, it’s the biggest one we’ve ever done.”
Chicago P.D.’s showrunner Gwen Sigan broke down the process further, explaining how such a major event is a collaboration between all three shows.
“It was floated at the beginning of the season that maybe we’d be able to do one this year, and then the conversations got more real maybe around September,” Sigan explained to THR. “It started with Wolf [Productions] having conversations, and then it got to the showrunners, and then we brought in the writers. It started really broad. We were just chatting about big ideas of what could we do, and then this was the one that won the battle. Then it got progressively more real as it went around [the shows’ writers] and now it’s shot and about to air. It’s crazy!”
MacDonald added that the One Chicago lead writers — Victor Teran (Chicago Fire), Stephen Hootstein (Chicago Med) and Joe Halpin (Chicago P.D.) — really deserve credit for getting in the trenches, taking notes from Dick Wolf’s offices, and crafting a storyline that will be compelling enough to grasp viewers from beginning to end of the three-hour event.
Other key cast members from the three shows who will drive the action include Amy Morton, who plays Chicago P.D. Desk Sergeant Trudy Platt-McHolland, and Darren Barnet, who plays Chicago Med’s Dr. John Frost, a resident in Pediatric Emergency Medicine.
“I’m so excited about this crossover in particular; there’s just so much going on,” Newman added. “Because it is so big, there’s stuff going on above the surface, below the surface. It feels like a movie in a way that we haven’t had before. How cinematic the look of it is is gorgeous, and it’s a very emotional piece.”
She continued, “I know the audience likes a lot of the relationship stuff, and I do too. We have a lot of emotional stuff playing out for pretty much all of our main characters — Pascal, for sure, Stella (MirandaRae Mayo) and Severide (Kinney), and Violet (Hanako Greensmith) and Carver (Jake Lockett) have a lot going on between them as they move forward and try and keep their relationship and understand what their relationship really is.”
The One Chicago crossover airs Wednesday from 8-11 p.m. on NBC. All three shows are produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, in association with Wolf Entertainment.
