One Chicago actors have been hugely popular during pilot season. See which Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med names have booked new pilots!
It’s pilot season—the time when actors are being cast as networks shoot the pilots for potential new TV series. And this pilot season, familiar faces from the One Chicago franchise have been in high demand!
A half-dozen performers you’ll recognize from either Chicago Fire or Chicago PD have landed new jobs this pilot season, and there’s still plenty of time for that number to increase. Check out who’s moving on and where you’ll (hopefully) be able to find them this fall in our slideshow!
We’ll update this article as necessary as more casting news becomes available. Remember that these are just pilots, so for most of these shows, we won’t know if you’ll be able to see them until networks formally announce their schedules around May.
But here’s who’s been cast in new TV shows so far:
Brian Geraghty
One Chicago fans were elated when former Chicago PD star Brian Geraghty agreed to reprise his role of Sean Roman for the first time since leaving the series in 2016. Geraghty returned as Roman in the recent crossover event between Chicago PD and Chicago Fire, as Roman searched for his missing sister and ultimately murdered the drug dealer who killed her.
That plot twist wound up being a little bit ironic, as shortly after the crossover aired, Geraghty was cast in a series regular role in David E. Kelley’s (Big Little Lies, Mr. Mercedes) new crime drama The Big Sky. His character is a truck driver who has kidnapped two women in Montana, and they may not be his only victims.
Geraghty joins Kylie Bunbury (Law & Order: SVU), Katheryn Winnick (Vikings), and Ryan Phillippe (Secrets & Lies) in the drama, which has a straight-to-series order at ABC, meaning that One Chicago viewers will definitely get to see it next TV season. No word yet, though, on if this is a limited series or not. Certainly, one would expect Brian Geraghty’s character wouldn’t get away for very long.
Charlie Barnett
Charlie Barnett’s career has been on a very fast rise since he was let go from Chicago Fire as the team’s then-newest firefighter, Peter Mills. Over the last two years in particular, he’s been going from project to project, and so it was no surprise when he was also snapped up during the newest pilot season.
The One Chicago alum has landed a series regular role in Ordinary Joe, which follows parallel timelines in the life of one man (played by Mad Men and Zoo actor James Wolk) based on a key choice that he makes. Barnett is playing Wolk’s character’s best friend, though if he’ll appear in all of the timelines or just one or two of them remains to be seen. At least it sounds like he’ll have a lot of screen time.
Of all the pilots that have been announced so far, this series is one of the best. For those not in the know, Wolk is a pretty darn good actor, and the idea of him sharing the screen with Barnett is an appealing one; the two should work well together. Plus, the concept could be great if it’s handled right; does anyone remember a little movie called Sliding Doors that starred Gwyneth Paltrow and remains one of the great romantic comedies of all time?
Perhaps the best part of his casting is that Ordinary Joe is intended for NBC, so if the network does go forward with the project, Barnett will be back on the same network where he had his breakout role with Chicago Fire.
Sophia Bush
Since her much-publicized departure at the end of Chicago PD season 4, Sophia Bush has been in the pilot season mix a few times. Last season, she was set to play a high-ranking NSA agent in the CBS pilot Surveillance alongside Downton Abbey‘s Allen Leech, but the network could never quite figure out what to do with it and ultimately passed on the project—one of the last pilots to learn its fate during that development cycle.
Well, good news for all those One Chicago fans who still miss her: she’s back this year with a new pilot, and this one also seems like it has legs. Bush is going to play the title character in a medical drama called Good Sam. Her character Dr. Sam Griffith is the daughter of department head Dr. Paul Griffith (portrayed by Jason Isaacs), and when he falls into a coma, she takes his job. But Dad soon comes back—and the two are forced to work together.
If you’re a One Chicago fan, there are two reasons to feel confident about this one: it’s also for CBS, which seemed keen on working with Bush based on how long they waited to make a decision about Surveillance. And it has Jason Isaacs, who has been phenomenal in everything that he’s been in (Star Trek: Discovery, Brotherhood, the Harry Potter films, even NBC’s short-lived sort of crime drama Awake).
Will those two have the chemistry needed to make Good Sam work, since it hinges on Sam’s complicated relationship with her father? They’ve never worked together before, so this will be new. But both are talented actors who are no stranger to playing strong characters, so if they can click, this should be a shoo-in for the new fall season.
Jon Seda
Since he was written out of Chicago PD at the end of season 6, it feels like not a day goes by in the One Chicago fandom without someone mentioning Jon Seda. The actor who portrayed Antonio Dawson was always one of fans’ favorites, and then came the announcement that producers had let him go from the series after last season.
But given his popularity, it’s likewise not a shock that Seda was offered another series regular role now that he’s been back on the open market. He was announced last week to have joined the main cast of a disaster-themed pilot called La Brea, in which a giant sinkhole opens up in Los Angeles and divides the city in half. But there’s a twist: somehow, this sinkhole also sends some characters sideways into a strange new world. How? Well, we’ll have to see if the show gets picked up to find out.
Seda is going to play Dr. Benjamin Glass, and all anyone knows is that his character is a former Navy SEAL. What kind of doctor is he? Is he part of the regular LA storyline or this alternate plot? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? There isn’t a single clue, and that put together with this show’s kind of confusing storyline, and we’re not really feeling confident—or that excited—about La Brea.
But One Chicago viewers will always enjoy seeing more of Jon Seda, and this is another pilot that’s in contention at NBC, so it would bring Seda back under the NBCUniversal roof for yet another new show (he’s worked extensively with the network on Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order and others besides Chicago PD).
Josh Segarra
You might have forgotten that Josh Segarra is a One Chicago alum. The actor is better known for his roles like playing Adrian Chase/Prometheus on Arrow and most recently a co-starring role on the RuPaul-led Netflix comedy-drama AJ and the Queen.
But before all that, he recurred on Chicago PD as Justin Voight, Hank Voight’s (Jason Beghe) son who was always in trouble. It was Justin—originally played by Joe Sinopoli on Chicago Fire—who got in the car accident that originally introduced Hank into the One Chicago universe. Segarra took over the role on Chicago PD, where Justin once kissed Erin Lindsay and eventually was tragically murdered.
Voight promptly killed the person responsible for Justin’s death, and covering up that crime is the story that unraveled during season 5 and landed Alvin Olinsky (Elias Koteas) in jail, where he, too, was murdered. So Segarra’s character had a pretty big part to play in One Chicago canon, even if the actor only appeared in a handful of episodes.
Josh Segarra is actually known more as a comedic actor, though, and he’s booked the starring role in NBC’s TV adaptation of the movie Night School. Segarra will play the same character that Kevin Hart played in the movie, with his character going to night school and winding up with a bunch of misfits and a hot-tempered teacher (portrayed by Shanola Hampton, taking over for Tiffany Haddish). It sounds like he’s still going to end up getting into some trouble on his new series, but since this is a comedy, he shouldn’t get killed off.
Richard Brooks
Richard Brooks only had a small part in One Chicago history, thanks to the untimely cancellation of Chicago Justice. Brooks appeared in the Justice episode “Uncertainty Principle” as Paul Robinette, the defense attorney who squared off against Peter Stone (Philip Winchester) while Stone had to try and prosecute Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins).
But he’s worth including on this list because longtime Dick Wolf fans know how important Brooks is to the Wolf universe. He originated the role of Paul Robinette on the original Law & Order, where he was a series regular for three seasons until NBC mandated that Wolf add female characters to what had been an all-male main cast. Jill Hennessy took over as Claire Kincaid, and Brooks was let go, although he did come back as a guest star later on.
His pilot is also an NBC pilot, and like La Brea, it delves into the fantastic. Brooks is a co-star in the new series Echo, which will be one-part cop drama and one-part sci-fi show. His character is a cop who joins a specialized task force to prevent crime by time-traveling backward before it happens. As if that’s not challenging enough, the other catch is that they travel by transplanting themselves in the bodies of the intended victims.
That’s definitely a departure from Chicago Justice, but certainly old-school fans will get a kick out of seeing Richard Brooks on NBC airwaves again.
The same could be said for most of the actors on this list, since the majority of these shows are for NBC. We loved their work on One Chicago and hopefully, if the networks pick up these pilots, we’ll get to see them on a weekly basis—many on the same network as our favorite franchise!