One Chicago crossover preview: ‘Mass destruction’ in Chicago?
Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med stars give One Chicago Center inside information on Wednesday’s bone-chilling One Chicago crossover.
This week’s One Chicago crossover is the NBC franchise’s scariest yet, as biological terrorism hits Chicago. And the stars of all three shows can’t wait for fans to see the three-hour event.
“I think the incident alone is super-exciting,” Chicago Fire star Annie Ilonzeh told One Chicago Center of Wednesday’s tripleheader. “The flesh eating disease is like ‘What?’ We don’t know if it’s airborne or via contact or how people are getting this disease and how it’s spreading. We’re not really sure.
“It’s a topic that, from what I know, and from what I’ve heard, they’ve never approached this.”
“We’re probably involved in each other’s episodes more than we’ve ever been,” Annie added. “Each character’s really in and out, bobbing and weaving throughout. That’s a lot of fun to really be in there, versus like, ‘Did you see me? Oh, you blinked. Okay, you didn’t see me.’ We’re really heavily in it, trying to make sure that Chicago doesn’t go down [in] mass destruction.”
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If that sounds huge, that’s because this fall’s One Chicago crossover is the biggest in franchise history. Where past events would feel like three separate chapters of one story, a concerted effort has been made to unify all three hours into an almost movie-like event.
Chicago Fire co-creator Derek Haas worked directly with Dick Wolf to create an outline for the entire event, which was then utilized by the producers and creative teams on each show. And trying to make it more unified also came with more challenges for the cast and crew.
“It’s not really a crossover. It’s one event and everybody from every show is in each scene, almost,” explained Chicago PD showrunner Rick Eid. “It’s a movie starring the people of One Chicago. So it’s structured differently, it’s written differently.”
It’s challenging enough to get a show done to get locations for. Now you have basically three shows operating as one,” he continued. “You have to borrow actors, [there’s] your schedule, you have to borrow sets. We can’t shoot there because they’re shooting there.
And this [crossover] is the biggest that they’ve ever done. So whenever you make something bigger, you make the challenges bigger. But it all comes together somehow. Even when you don’t think at first it will.”
Even the cast didn’t always know the totality of what was happening.
“We shoot so disjointed,” added Chicago PD actor LaRoyce Hawkins. “The crossover starts with Fire. And so while Fire starts [filming] that episode, we’re shooting a whole other episode that has nothing to do with the crossover. Then by the time it gets to us, most of the crossover’s already done. You don’t really know or have the greatest understanding of the history that you’re making until you see the trailer that morning and you’re like oh, that’s what we’re doing!”
Want to know what’s ahead in the One Chicago crossover? Watch the trailer below, then click over to the next page to get scoop from the cast about what their characters are facing—including the character who’s in the most trouble!