Angela Bassett had hoped 9-1-1‘s Athena Grant and Bobby Nash would be together forever.
But the Thursday, April 17, episode of the ABC procedural ended on a shocking note, as Peter Krause’s Bobby met his demise. The second half of the show’s 9-1-1: Contagion two-part event saw the 118 crew be rescued from a lab containing a dangerous virus. After Chimney (Kenneth Choi) received the only anecdote for the disease, Bobby revealed he had secretly been infected and shared a tearful goodbye with Athena (Bassett).
Just last month, Bassett, 66, gushed about Athena and Bobby’s onscreen relationship in an interview with People, stating that the show “would be so different” if one of them left the series.
“I don’t even know what the show would be like without them together,” she told the outlet in an interview published on March 27. “It’s hard to imagine.”
Bassett dubbed the pair as “your metaphorical, weekly mom and dad,” lovingly adding, “We’ll keep you safe.” The actress went on to praise Krause, 59, calling the Parenthood alum “so strong, and stable, and secure.”
She continued, “He’s just calm. He’s just a calming influence. He’ll joke a little bit, but he [doesn’t] mind being the butt of the joke. Yeah. So he’d always have one.”
9-1-1’s Athena and Bobby have been together for the majority of the show’s run. The two went on their first date during the show’s 2018 season 1 finale and tied the knot in season 2. The spouses have gone through many ups and downs together over the seasons, most recently rebuilding their house after it was burned down by a dangerous cartel in season 7.
Krause gave his TV wife a special shout-out in a farewell letter shared by Deadline on Thursday. “I will miss my partner, Angela Bassett. Her strength and her sweetness, and us holding hands. We parted ways too soon. Much love.”
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He noted that he “won’t have a relationship like that again on TV” in a Friday, April 18, interview with Good Morning America. “It’s been a fantastic eight years. I’m going to miss her a lot.”
Bassett revealed to Deadline that she didn’t know that Bobby would be killed off until she got the episode’s script. “I remember [showrunner] Tim [Minear] called. He said, ‘Someone’s going to pass away,’” she shared. “I said, ‘Is it me?’ Self-preservation, you know. I went through the list, you start with yourself, but I was very surprised that it was my husband.”
Noting that she “enjoyed” filming Athena and Bobby’s dramatic goodbye, she added, “You’re separated by the glass, by the partition, by everything that separates people, your metaphor for whatever separates people, the virus, all of it. And seeing them, seeing their eyes, the memory of who they are, who they are to you, it was just there, every moment, every take for the two of us — the history, the bond.”
Minear, 61, told Variety that Thursday’s episode “is not Peter Krause’s final appearance this season,” and that the decision to kill Bobby was not because Krause expressed interest in leaving the show.
“I still think people grip their seats and are excited when Athena lands a plane on the freeway or a ship capsizes — but after eight years, it just felt like, if we have any hope of creating stories going forward that have actual stakes, then someone’s got to die,” he explained, stating it “made sense” for that character to be Bobby.
“If you track the tragic arc of his character, of where he started, and how he came to L.A. looking for atonement, it just makes a kind of tragic sense for his character in a way it wouldn’t for another character,” Minear shared. “But also, I just didn’t want to go small. Not that any of the characters are small, but Bobby’s death affects every single character’s story in a way that really no other character death would.”
9-1-1 airs on ABC Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET.
