It's been years since fans have seen Charlie Barnett's Peter Mills—but the actor hasn't given up hope of returning to the drama someday. During an interview with TV Insider, the actor explained that he definitely would love to return to the show someday—and he even has ideas for a way to bring Peter back to the show.
“I don’t know if it will ever happen, but the wish and the prayer is still in my heart. I would be so happy to,” he said. “I’m fully open to it. I go back to Chicago often. My husband’s a set designer. He was just there staying with Joe Miñoso at him and his wife’s house, and I came to stay there for a month while he was working. And I definitely went into the Chicago Fire studios to be like, ‘Hey y’all, I’m still alive.'”
Barnett added regarding Peter’s return to the show, "I'm imagining, and I want this validation of him being like, ‘I’m called again. This was my father’s…’ Peter Mills’ dad was lost in [a fire], and that’s why his mom is trying to pull him away. It’s a deeper connection for him. It’s a deeper responsibility that he’s been away from for so long. I kind of envision him having, in North Carolina, already joined a force down there, and he’s doing his own work, and somehow it’s going to bring him back up somehow.”
It’s a fine and imaginative fate for Peter, an original member of Station 51 who left the show during Season 3. The character left not with a bang but with a whimper—he moved to North Carolina to help his family out with rebuilding following the loss of their restaurant. It was not an exciting conclusion to the character’s story arc, and while Barnett says he’s glad in the end that Peter had such a bland and simple fate—since, after all, it allows him to come back at any time. Still, the actor couldn’t help but wax fanciful about what might have happened to Peter had he been given a much more dramatic, much more interesting, exit to work with.
“I was super frustrated to leave the show. I’ve said that very publicly. I did not want to go. I wanted to stay there. I was very excited to be a part of that crew and that community. But when I left, when they wrote me out, I was even more frustrated that Peter Mills wasn’t going out in a blaze of glory. Literally, I wanted him to throw a baby out the window and burn in the… You know what I mean? I wanted it to be epic, like Peter Mills is a god. And they were like, ‘No, you’re just going to go to North Carolina and start working with your mom in a diner.’ It’s like, ‘OK.'”
Barnett adds that he keeps in close contact with many of his old cast members and attended Joe Miñoso’s going-away party when the actor wrapped work on his part on the show after years of service to the One Chicago world.
Charlie Barnett has not been resting on his Peter-related laurels since his part on Chicago Fire wrapped. Over the years, he’s captured recurring and regular roles on shows such as Secrets and Lies, Valor, Tales of the City, Arrow, You, Red Frontier, Ordinary Joe, Russian Doll, The Acolyte, Line of Fire, and Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. He appeared in the movies Bookends, Threshold, Last Weekend, Wild Game, The Catch and Apple of My Eye. He’s also managed to score guest starring roles on Orange is the New Black, Special, Mary and Jane, and Apex. Barnett has been everywhere even though his time as Peter is currently behind him—and he’s definitely staying booked and busy, no matter whether or not he manages to climb his way back onto a fire truck.
Add us as a preferred source on Google