‘9-1-1’: Kenneth Choi Loves That Chimney ‘Solved His Own Emergency,’ Plus What’s Next With Maddie?

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 6 Episode 14 “Performance Anxiety.”]

Annual performance reviews lead Bobby (Peter Krause) to send Chimney (Kenneth Choi) back to the academy because he’s not “outstanding” when it comes to leadership… and it, of course, turns out to be just what the first responder needs on 9-1-1.

Of course Bobby had a lesson for Chimney to learn — and a member of the 118 (Anirudh Pisharody’s Ravi, hesitating in his recovery after a not-so-easy save) to bring back. “The moment that I read Bobby’s sending Chimney to the Academy, I had the same reaction that Chimney has: ‘What the f**k?'” Choi laughed. “‘Is Chimney being demoted?’ But the show is called 9-1-1 and it’s about people’s emergencies. They wrote this wonderfully because Bobby is such a sort of omniscient presence, and that’s what makes him a brilliant captain that he sees [the] one thing that’s holding [Chimney] back and Cap’s the kind of guy that wants you to walk through that experience.”

“Chimney’s emergency was that he’s still been stuck from this moment in his history with Kevin. Bobby sensed it and in sending him to the academy, Chimney figured out on his own. So he sort of solved his own emergency. And that’s what I love about that storyline is it was Chimney’s own little mini emergency, but you don’t realize it until he’s in that moment,” he explained.

Read on for more from Choi about this episode as well as what’s ahead.

This felt almost like “Chimney Begins His Next Chapter,” with him learning to teach, with callbacks to “Chimney Begins,” passing on the “hand it off” advice he once got from Eli (Mac Brandt), and the mention of Kevin. And he realized Bobby sent him to the academy to get Ravi. Is Chimney maybe more ready than he’s ever been to take some sort of next steps, with some kind of leadership/mentorship position or something else professionally?

Kenneth Choi: I hope so. And that’s very accurate. You’re right. This is almost an extension of “Chimney Begins.” It seems he’s come full circle to the experience that, one, made him want to become a firefighter in “Chimney Begins,” and two, what’s been holding him back this entire time. I think now that he’s realized what’s been holding him back, he can move forward — I think most people in real life are held back by their traumas — and he can become a better firefighter, a better leader, and a better friend.

But does he know what those next steps might be?

I don’t think he [does]. I don’t think Chimney is someone who plans that far ahead. I think he kind of runs his life by the seat of his pants. But now that he has sort of unlocked this big puzzle in his life, what’s been holding him back, I think now he can move forward — professionally and personally, because that’s usually what happened with people in real life. The writers have this great knack for really establishing human behavior in all of the character arcs. I think it’s taken him all this time, six seasons, to finally figure it out with the help of Bobby sending him back to the academy.

Jack Zeman/ FOX

So he won’t say “never again” if he’s offered interim captain like he did earlier this season?

Exactly. Let’s hope so because I personally think he would be a great captain. His problem has always been that he has a lot of self-doubt. One of the pieces that we addressed in this episode is the death of his friend Kevin, [and with] his relationship with his father, I think that’s been a big piece of the puzzle as well. [Recently] he sort of found a semi-resolution with his father. So I think those two big puzzle pieces being discovered, he can now move forward. So as far as being interim captain, I think that he’d accept the challenge more willingly, absolutely.

Speaking of his relationship with his dad, is it the best it can ever be at this point?

I think that it’s at a good place right now for Chim. I have tremendous hope for Chimney and his dad. I personally experienced a similar issue with my own father. I wanted to be an actor since I was 10, and being a very traditional Korean family, very much like Chimney, my father didn’t accept that as a serious career choice. So I literally dropped out of college and I literally ran away from home for five years to become an actor because acting wasn’t something my father would allow him to do.

They have such a knack for writing our characters in a way that parallels our lives. Oliver Stark and I have joked since Season 1 that they bug our trailers and our homes. Meredith, I swear to God, Oliver and I will be talking about something in the trailer and the next day it’s in the script.

My relationship with my own father very much parallels Chim’s with his father. We eventually worked it out, so I have high hopes for Chimney and his dad that the relationship can get even better, especially now that he’s a father. I don’t have children, but a lot of my friends who have children say once you have your own children, you can understand the plights of your own parents. So I think that they have further to go.

Speaking of being a father, we got that sweet scene near the end with Chimney joining Maddie and singing to their daughter.

It was lovely. Part of it is it’s lovely just to watch Jennifer Love Hewitt. I love working with her. She has her own children and she’s one of the best moms I’ve ever seen, so she transfers that energy to our TV daughter, who is the most adorable baby, I think, in TV history, our little baby Jee-Yun. But watching Jennifer sing, watching her interact with the baby, there’s a thing that I do with Jennifer, she’s just so real and emotionally available that it makes my job so easy. I literally just learn my lines, show up on set, and all I do is look at her and react. So for that first part where I enter the scene, I’m literally just watching Jennifer as Kenny watching her interact with this beautiful child and she kind of does all the heavy lifting for me. I literally just bounce off of her energy.

There is always the question of whether Chimney and Maddie might get married. Where is his head at the rest of the season when it comes to that possibility?

I’d love to just see Chimney and Maddie have some genuinely happy times. They’ve suffered so much trauma in their relationships, in their personal lives. In the next episode, there is this sort of inciting incident that happens that forces their hand to make some decisions that they have not spent enough time thinking about, meditating about. I am hoping that they make the right ones.

Jack Zeman/ FOX

When Buck (Stark) was struck by lightning, he’d gone up the ladder instead of Chimney. If Chimney had, what would his coma dream world have looked like? One where Kevin lived? Something else?

I think Kevin would definitely be in there. If you see the story arc with Buck when he’s dead, it goes through all of his traumas, so I think it would be similar in the sense that perhaps his family life would be idyllic very much like Buck’s was with his parents and Kevin would absolutely be a huge part of it. I’m wondering if there would be a little Tatiana [Rachel Breitag] nod in there. You remember Tatiana?

Yes, and I remember how that ended.

[Laughs] So she might have reared her head in Chimney’s fever dream.

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And he would’ve turned to Hen (Aisha Hinds) first, right?

100 percent. Hen is his best friend and his partner, in life and in work — I shouldn’t have said that because Maddie would probably be jealous of that,

I don’t think there’s any partnership on 9-1-1 that’s as “ride or die” for each other as Chimney and Hen.

I believe so, too. Yeah, they’ve been there since the beginning. They were there before everybody. Chimney was there when Hen arrived. I love seeing how their relationship evolves.

9-1-1, Mondays, 8/7c, Fox