‘9-1-1’: Jennifer Love Hewitt Says Maddie’s ‘Better at Fighting’ Than Day-to-Day Life

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 10 “Voices.”]

Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) knows how to fight. 9-1-1 has shown us that time and time again. (“Fight or Flight”? Still the most traumatic episode ever.)

Maddie spends most of this episode held captive in a basement by Detective Amber Braeburn (Abigail Spencer), who had once been a kidnap victim herself. But she’s the one who’s been responsible for the string of kidnappings and killings; Maddie hadn’t talked “John” through dying by suicide but rather Amber had been there and pulled the trigger on her patsy in the previous episode. Maddie fights for her life, even after Amber slashes her throat, and she’s the one to save her husband Chimney (Kenneth Choi) when he shows up to talk to Amber, thinking she’s just the detective in charge of the case. But she just knocks Amber out, and it’s Athena (Angela Bassett) who ends up shooting her before she can kill Chimney as he tends to his wife’s injury and calls 9-1-1.

Below, Hewitt shares her reaction to that throat slashing, discusses the fight in Maddie, previews an upcoming conversation with Buck (Oliver Stark), and more.

You find out Maddie’s going to be taken again, go through hell, again. This time, she’s pregnant. Then you see the script and Maddie’s throat is slashed. What was your reaction to that?

Jennifer Love Hewitt: I think I had the natural reaction of calling to make sure that I was going to survive it. [Laughs] I think that’s the reaction, right? It was to just be like, wait, what? But I mean, I was excited. Whether you’re supposed to say it or not, I really love doing these storylines. I really love playing Maddie in her sort of survival place. I think that’s who she is. I think that’s how she came into the series, and I think she’s just such a fighter that it’s so fun to play. I was nervous about what all of the throat-slashing stuff was going to mean and how we were going to do it and kind of all that stuff. But as we got into it, it just felt like, oh, of course that’s what happens to her next with this person because there’s so much between them in that small amount of time in that basement that you kind of understood that that’s where it was going next.

Disney/Christopher Willard

Yeah, because Maddie has been through a lot, both what we’ve seen in the present and flashbacks and what we can imagine happened that we didn’t see, but this feels like it was the toughest yet for her. Why do you think that is?

Because I think with the Doug [Brian Hallisay] situation, we’ve really seen Maddie survive it. We’ve seen her not only survive it, but thrive and find a new life again and put together a new life and do work on herself in therapy and find love again and become a mom, and then really pick herself up after the postpartum and now with child again. We’ve seen Maddie really, I think, for all intents and purposes, put herself back together again. And so I think what’s interesting about this is that the call center and these calls, they were where Maddie ran to when her life was the scariest. And so I think to have the dispatch center and to be a dispatcher and have this call turn into what it does for her, it is like the biggest loss of innocence for her I think that there is, in the world, particularly for this girl, because it has been her safety place, it has been the place where she has felt safe always.

Even in the Doug situation, she has felt safe there and protected somehow. And this situation just crosses the line, obviously, and goes into a different thing. But I think what’s different about Maddie in this basement versus her in Big Bear, and it was something that Jen Lynch and I really wanted to show, and Tim wanted to show, and I worked really hard to show is I think Maddie enters this kidnapping already a fighter. I don’t think there’s ever a moment where Maddie stops fighting or gives over to the idea that she’s not going to get out of there and that she’s done. And I think in Big Bear it was different. I think Doug was a beast that felt bigger than her. This feels like something that she’s fighting for, not only for herself, but for young girls out there who this person could take again. And I do think that Maddie’s empathy, even in really dangerous, crazy people like Doug and this woman, she sees something in them that’s different. She does have empathy for people’s dark sides, and some might say that that makes her really gullible and not so smart. I think it makes her brilliant. I really do. I think the ability to hate people and to be so hurt by people, but to also know that they are hurting is really a gift.

Because in the end, Maddie saves herself and Chimney even after her throat has been slashed and she’s putting the pressure on it.

Right? She’s a badass. I’m so proud of her.

That fight in her specifically in that moment, is it a need to protect her baby? Chimney? What she’s already had to survive? All of that combined?

Yeah, I think that’s Maddie. I think Maddie has fought her whole life, and I think sometimes Maddie is better at fighting hard for things than she is living an easy day-to-day life, and that’s her trauma. And so I think the fight in her, the reason that’s my favorite part of her is because I think that’s her most authentic self. I think she has fought for a very, very, very long time, and living a life of ease is actually harder for her than fighting to get out. But I also think Maddie’s really good at looking at the situations and going, oh, this is bigger than me. Getting out of the ocean in the postpartum, she wanted to be in that ocean, but it was bigger than her. She had a child at home and a man who loved her and had been through so much. So she got out of the ocean. She had to get out of Big Bear because she had to be a domestic abuse survivor because it was bigger than her. She gets out of this basement because there is no way in hell she’s going to let this woman hurt any other young girl again and receive that call. And I think that’s just who Maddie is.

Disney/Christopher Willard

So what does recovery and healing for Maddie look like now going forward? For Maddie, and for Maddie and Chimney?

Kenny and I laugh about it a lot. We’re sort of like, how many times do you think they have these conversations where they’re like, Are we good? I think we’re good. I think there will be PTSD from this for sure. And I think that in the Doug situation, Maddie was able to, in that sort of final fight with him and in sort of leaving him in her past on that mountain, walk off and feel cleansed of that situation. This will be different. I think she will fear calls. I think that she will fear being alone. There will be some real PTSD and I think that Chimney will also obviously suffer some PTSD worrying about her, obviously.

Yeah, I was going to ask, what is the return to the call center like for her?

It isn’t immediate. That’s all I can say. It isn’t like a next-day kind of thing. It takes a minute, and she will deal with some things that will be challenging to her in sort of getting back there again,

Abigail had appeared on an episode of Ghost Whisper. So talk about reuniting with her for these really intense scenes.

Oh, she’s tremendous. I think that, I mean, the overall messaging really is that when you put women, a female director and two female actresses, in a basement and you say, be creative while being loving, while being badass, while doing great stuff, they accomplish it. And it was really tremendous. I hope more than anything that these episodes really encourage people to allow women to have very complicated, ugly, traumatic, dark storylines and give them to us over and over again and let us prove that we can take them on and give them to female directors.

Abigail and I kept each other very safe in that basement. Jen kept us very safe. She looked over us and we looked over each other, and it was a tremendous honor to share that time with Abigail. It sounds silly because it’s really just acting, obviously, but we really went through it. I mean, we really emotionally, physically, mentally put ourselves in some interesting places to bring this story to light. And it all started with Tim Minear obviously being a genius and trusting us and allowing us to do it. But I really feel like we were able to go farther and deeper because we trusted each other and because we knew that we had each other’s back. And I think that is beautiful and that’s what art is supposed to be, and it was really nice.

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When I spoke with Oliver last week, he teased an upcoming Maddie and Buck conversation about something that Buck finds ludicrous, and it’s a conversation he never thought he’d be having. What can you preview?

Oh my God, I can’t say anything. Why did he say that? [Laughs] I can’t say anything. No, I mean, I love Buck and Maddie so much because I think Maddie deeply loves being his sister, but Maddie has also been highly functioning as his mother for a long time as well. And so there is sort of this motherly sister thing, and I think that Maddie and Buck are able to get into deep conversations out of nowhere with the most love and respect very quickly ever. And I love it. It reminds me of my relationship with my brother a lot, and I just love it so much. And so, yeah, we do have some fun, interesting stuff coming up.

One of my favorite parts of recent seasons is how we’re really seeing how much of a family, Maddie, Chimney Hen, and Karen and their kids are.

Oh, me too! Me too!

Are there more coming up?

Yeah. I mean, it’s the number one thing that we always ask for, and I literally squeal out loud every time I get a script and I know that I get to work with them. I think the crew doesn’t get as excited because they know that we’re going to laugh and act up the whole time. But we love it and it’s great. And I think that they’re such a great little family unit, and it’s nice for me personally to see Maddie sort of get the family that I think she’s always wanted. It took a long time for her to have faith in being friends with all the people at the 118 and not being judged for who she is and where she’s come from and all that she’s been through and all that she and Chimney have put each other through and all of that. And it’s just so nice now to see that they’re also her family and I adore it.

I know Aisha Hinds directed Episode 11. Talk about being directed by her.

Oh, she’s so fantastic. She got handed — so I mean literally within the first couple of days of her filming her episode, the Palisades and Altadena were burning down and there was so much uncertainty and we were all separately dealing with a lot and her grace and kindness and patience and love through all of the stuff going on in real life, but also making sure that the set was able to move forward and to get her episode was just tremendous to watch. She always surprises me, but it never surprises me truly how talented she is. She can do anything in the world that she puts her mind to, and I’m just really proud of her and it was fun to watch her step into her power that way.

9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC

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