When Angela Bassett started filming Season 8 of “9-1-1,” she had no idea of the heartbreak in store for her character.
Bassett plays police Sgt. Athena Grant on the long-running first responder procedural drama. The eighth season, which aired from September 2024 to May 2025, opened with Athena having to land a plane after a swarm of bees caused a midair crash (really). But it ended with the truly unthinkable: the death of fire Capt. Bobby Nash (Peter Krause) — who has been married to Athena since the show’s Season 2 finale — after he sacrificed his life to save his team during a tragic lab accident.
In an exclusive interview with TODAY.com, Bassett reveals she found out about Bobby’s tragic end “late.” In fact, she says she first received a “fake script” which portrayed the death of a different character, probationary firefighter Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody).
“We did twice as much work. We filmed (Ravi’s) demise, and then the real one,” Bassett says.
But after she found out it was Bobby who was being killed off, she recalls waiting until she got to set to speak with Krause. Once she arrived, she immediately asked for her co-star, ran upstairs to speak with him and then, “we just sort of looked at each other,” she says.
“I mean we’re grown-ups, we know things can go this way sometimes. I remember saying to him, ‘Listen, I’ve died a horrible death a number of times. Even as a queen, they’ve taken me out,'” she adds with a laugh, seemingly referring to the death of her character Queen Ramonda in 2022’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
“‘It happens to the best of us,'” she recalls saying. “You know, you try to make light, you face the reality of it.”
She adds that they embraced and felt “grateful for the time and the love and the camaraderie and the moments that you did have together.”
“As he said, I am his longest actor wife,” she says.
Bobby’s death sent shockwaves throughout the “9-1-1” fandom as it marked the first major character death in the show’s entire run.
During the two-episode event, which aired April 10 and April 17, members of LAFD station 118 were trapped in a research lab and exposed to an aerosolized, mutated version of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. After Chimney (Kenneth Choi) displayed symptoms of the virus, Athena and Buck (Oliver Stark) hunted down the one cure. After it was given to Chimney, Bobby revealed he was also infected, and Athena watched him die in quarantine through a glass wall.
In a statement published by Variety after the episode aired, Krause said he would miss his “9-1-1 family,” with a special shoutout to “my partner, Angela Bassett. Her strength and her sweetness, and us holding hands. We parted ways too soon. Much love.”
