[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1: Lone Star Season 5 Episode 10 “All Who Wander.”]
It’s the calm before the storm on 9-1-1: Lone Star ahead of the series finale (airing February 3). And for Judd and Marjan, the antepenultimate episode is very different tonally. We had to talk to both Jim Parrack and Natacha Karam about the episode’s major moments for their characters as part of TV Insider’s after show, First Response. (Watch the video above.)
While Judd has been going to meetings, with Owen (Rob Lowe), after his captain discovered he’s been drinking to cope with his wife Grace’s (Sierra McClain) absence, he hasn’t stayed sober. “There needed to be some substantial consequence for Grace not being around anymore,” Parrack says. It’s a journey he’s familiar with, and he shares about his own recovery. What was important for him was that “hopefully within the network TV constraints we can do as truthful a version of this as possible.” His conversations with co-showrunner Rashad Raisani included the importance of planting seeds along the way. He also wanted to “make it messy, make it a real problem.”
As the episode details, Judd has lost his faith in God — and it gets dark. Bullets are flying in an ammunitions factory during a fire, and he just walks right in, without a care for his own life; a bullet goes right by his head and he doesn’t even flinch. Even though others might have seen surviving that as a sign, “it wasn’t enough for Judd,” says Parrack. “He just kind of saw it as another thing he failed at. That was my take on it, is, ‘Man, I can’t even go die accidentally.’ I don’t think that Judd would be willing to kill himself outright and abandon his responsibilities like that. But I think he was in a place of like, yeah, well if I get killed on the job and die a hero’s death, see you later.”
Kevin Estrada / FOX
The episode fortunately ends with him in a much better place, having gotten the sign he needed in the form of a text from, then call with Grace. “Judd’s never been on as sturdy ground as she has been on,” admits Parrack when detailing his character’s tricky feelings about his wife being away helping others. “And so she can handle it as I go into these tough situations every day, and Judd wasn’t there yet, but by the end of the episode, think he’s there and he’s ready to be the man he’s supposed to be.”
So going forward, “he’s solid,” according to Parrack. “I think really the underlying thing for a lot of alcoholics is a crisis of meaning in their life. And Judd was smack in the middle of a crisis of meaning and didn’t have his wife to turn to because she was gone. But by the end of this episode, Judd and God are on good terms. Judd and Grace are on good terms. Judd and this wonderful extended family at the firehouse are on good terms and he’s moving forward. We do see he’s got his daughter back, so I think he’ll be alright. I think this character is exactly the kind of man that would help a lot of other people get sober, too. And that’s part of Judd’s heart, is to help people. So now there’s this new fight to fight on behalf of other people, which is to help them overcome the problem he overcame.”
Then comes the happiness of the episode: Marjan’s wedding! (“When we do joy on show, I think we do it very well,” notes Karam.) Yes, there’s an engagement and a wedding all in the 40-something minutes. Marjan and Joe (John Clarence Stewart) get married, though it’s not an easy road. He meets her parents (Michael Benyaer and Anne Nahabedian) in the same episode, and they’re not exactly on board with the nuptials … because Marjan doesn’t seem so sure about the life that the couple had planned for themselves in the face of her parents’ questions. That gave Karam the opportunity to play something that’s “very real”: a different side of her character in those scenes.
“It was interesting to get the opportunity to do that because we keep seeing her in the same way, in the same places that bring out similar responses from her. So to put her in a completely different environment meant the audience got to know her in a different way,” she explains. “I thought it was really important for it to feel new to the audience, but familiar for Marjan and everything at the table was just going further and further downhill.”
She particularly enjoyed the scene in the parking lot after for Marjan and Joe, where he questioned the changes to their plans. “You see that they’re sort of established in their familiarity with each other. And we wanted it to feel like you could feel a chemistry that was to do with familiarity, but not to be something that was about sexuality because not what they do,” Karam continues. “They’re courting and it’s kind of beautiful to see intimacy explored in that way on TV because it’s rare that you get to see it.”
Once her parents know she’s sure of Joe, they’re all for this relationship — though they are surprised with how quickly the couple plans to wed. (When you have the 126 and you’re an influencer with millions of followers? Easy.) Marjan’s dress is, of course, gorgeous.
Kevin Estrada / FOX
“It was a to-do because you can’t tell Marjan she’s getting married and expect understated even if it’s last minute,” Karam shares. (The same is true for the actor filming such a scene.) She worked with the costume department on that outfit. “Not for one second did we want the audience or Marjan or anyone watching it to feel like she was shortchanged, but it still wanted to feel realistic.”
Karam calls filming the wedding and reception “one of the best days of my career. When I came home that day, I just felt so warmed.” She praises the “beautiful display” as well as the religious and cultural sides of the ceremony. “The cultural side of it was very Lebanese and I am Lebanese and they’re known for their extravagant weddings, and there was so many cool cultural things we got to tie in that felt familiar and fun. And it is so special to get to show anything and everything you could do to show Arabs in a positive and affirming and realistic light. There’s been so many negative stereotypes and for so many years, and they do have very real consequences. And so to get to do this big party and to show people having fun and dancing and the community and the music, and it just felt like I’d come a long way from when I first entered Hollywood and the kinds of things that were being offered to me and the kinds of roles that I saw Arab women in, very subservient and very toxic stereotypical.”
Watch the full video interview with Parrack and Karam above as they break down this episode, discuss Judd’s crisis of faith, Marjan’s wedding (and the special cameo!) and wedding night, and much more.
9-1-1: Lone Star, Mondays, 8/7c, Fox