9-1-1’s Tracie Thoms Talks Henren Appreciation & Filming That Big Emergency

Hen and Karen are the cornerstone relationship of 9-1-1. The one couple who precedes the pilot has been through many ups and downs over the years, but they always find each other on the other side. 

9-1-1 Season 6 Episode 6 saw Karen in severe danger, and they interspersed her journey through the devastating explosion with a look into the beginnings of Henren.

We were lucky enough to talk to one-half of Henren, Tracie Thoms, who let us know what it was like being in the big emergency and getting a peek into the start of Henren’s story.

Tracie was an absolute joy to speak with, so grab a little snack and enjoy this one, 9-1-1 fanatics!

How excited were you when you heard that there would be an episode exploring some of Karen and Hen’s past?

Well, I was super excited. I didn’t know. It kind of came out of nowhere. 9-1-1 keeps things pretty secret, even from us. So I look at the script, it’s like, “Wait, what?” Because I’m recurring on the show, I’m not there all the time, so I don’t hear a lot of rumblings.

I’m just over here living my life, minding my business. And then suddenly, what happens is they start to block out days. They ask you, “How many days are you available?” And I’m like, “Wait, there’s a lot of days here they’re asking me about.” And then suddenly I get the script, and I’m like, “Oh my God.” I was so excited.

I was so nervous about it because it asked so much of me. And it’s very rare that a project asks that much of me. So it’s one of those things, be careful what you wish for because, certainly, it’s there. It’s like, can you step up to the plate? Can you deliver?

And the director, Joaquin Sedillo, texted me and was like, “You have any questions? Let’s talk about it.” And we were very much in contact the whole time. And I was very honored and very humbled that the writer, Nicole, believed in me.

And Kristen, our producer, pitched the idea, and she believed in me, and everyone believed I could deliver this episode. So I was very honored and humbled. Best thing I could say. I was honored.

Yeah, you definitely delivered for sure.

Oh, well, thank you. Thank you.

You’re welcome. A very emotional episode, but there’s a lot of good in there too. They gave you guys a lot to play with in the past scenes, learning how they met and all the Eva stuff. What was it like stepping into the past and going into Karen and Hen from the past?

It’s funny because when you’re involved in a show for this many seasons, Eva always comes up. She pops in here and there. So I knew a lot about the journey with Eva, but I didn’t know how it originally came up. We don’t see the inception of it. We know how long she’s been involved with it.

We know my very first scene of the entire series was about Eva, which was also my audition scene was about Eva. So it’s so interesting for me, just as a fan of television, to learn, “Oh, this is how Eva came up in the beginning. This is how this conversation went.”

In addition to playing it and being excited to explore what that felt like, it was cool to see how Eva was brought up at the date. The very first time Eva came up in conversation was so interesting to me to see how it rippled through our entire relationship, just backtracking it.

And it was very fun to explore it. I have to reverse-engineer it. I’ve known how much she has wreaked havoc on our relationship. So you can’t play the whole thing. You have to play it from the beginning.

So it’s challenging because I know Tracie in my body, I know how much havoc she’s going to wreak, but I can’t play that in the scene on a date when she first brings her up. I have to be like, “Oh, this is going to be something we should deal with,” but I can’t know too much.

That’s challenging to not play too much. But like I said, as a fan of television and a fan of 9-1-1, because I love the show, it was really exciting to me to unearth that and peel those layers back to figure out how it all began.

What was it like being a part of one of the big 118 emergencies?

Oh, it was wild. It was wild because I’m never involved in any emergencies. I’m always at home when horrible things happen, and I’m always like, “Well, does Karen know about these things? There’s an earthquake that has happened. So was Karen involved with the earthquake? Were Karen and Denny affected by this at all?”

And this gave me an insight into how hard the cast works and how hard our crew works because you can’t tell. When I’m watching, I’m like, “How much of it is practical? How much of these fires are put in later?” I have no idea how these things come together.

And I got an up-close view of how incredible our crew is and how incredible our cast is to do all these scenes and these big firefighter turnout costumes. It’s crazy what they have to do all the time. And I was just in awe. I was in awe standing there. I’m like, “Oh, let’s set actual fires in my face. Okay, great. That’s a fire. Okay, great.”

There’s so much acting you can do or need to do with actual fire. And it’s all very safe, and they still control it very, very well. And I never felt unsafe, but it’s very much they put you right in the center of the action, and it’s just incredible. I’m overwhelmed by what they get to do.

At the end of the episode, Hen decides that she wants to go back to the 118 and forgo medical school. And Karen has been extremely supportive of Hen’s passion and her journey. Walk me through how Karen feels about Hen’s change of heart.

Well, it’s so interesting because it happened so quickly at the end of the episode the way it was. Karen is ready to go to bat for her. Karen has put everything in place. Karen has called social services and told them that we’re no longer going to be able to foster children. I’m ahead of her.

I’ve thought of things that Henrietta hasn’t thought of because I’m so invested in making her dreams come true. So I think her change of heart is very surprising to Karen. But Karen wants to support her in everything she does. And I think it’s the callback to the fact that Karen gave up on her dream for her family.

And then Henrietta, well, she is not really giving up on her dream. Her dream changes, and it’s just a matter of time to figure out the moment we realize our dream has changed. Karen wasn’t there when Henrietta had this change of heart because she was in the hospital.

So Henrietta has had this change of heart, home with Denny. And so it’s surprising to Karen, but I think Karen’s just happy to have her wife at home. She’s going to be happy to have a wife at home. But she was willing to sacrifice for Henrietta to realize her dream because Karen had her own dream.

Speaking of Hen and Karen, they have been through a lot in their relationships, but they are in a really good and healthy place right now. What is it that you admire the most about their relationship?

What do I like most about their relationship? What I love about Hen and Ren is that because they’ve gone through so many things together, they’re just so fortified right now. And they both realize the mistakes that they’ve made.

They both have come to conclusions about how their own issues have come up and come in between them in the past. And I think because of all these issues they’ve had, and they’ve leaned on each other so much, and Denny is now ten, and he’s the glue in between them, they just realize they’re not going anywhere. But it takes a long time.

They’re fortified by fire. They’ve gone through so many things. They’ve gone through the loss of their opportunities to have children. That was a whole thing. And the loss of foster care, they really wanted to adopt.

And they’ve gone through the whole thing with Eva over and over again. I’m always ready for Eva to pop up in the script, like, “Where is it going to come up again?” But they’ve gone through so many things.

And one of the episodes that I love so much is when Karen had to come to a realization that she was keeping Eva alive, and it actually was not Henrietta, that Karen couldn’t let Eva go because she was so ready to be hurt all the time. She had to learn how to trust her wife.

So I love them because they really are such good friends, and they’re such a team, and they’re great partners in addition to being lovers and parents. And they connect on so many levels, and they’re both passionate about the things that they love to do. Karen loves her job, and Henrietta loves her job.

Therefore, they understand that about each other. Karen’s not like, “Why aren’t you home more?” She goes, “Well, you got to go. You got to go.”

She went through all this work that Henrietta was doing to become a doctor when Karen put her foot down, “You can’t do both. You have to pick,” it wasn’t because she didn’t want Hen to live her dreams.

“She wanted Hen to be safe. Once Henrietta was like, “I fell asleep at the wheel,” she’s like, “Nope. Okay. Enough. Pick.”

“That can’t happen. You’re burning the candle at both ends. You have to pick, and I will be here to support you. I will clear your day so you can study. We’ll figure this out. But you have to be safe, and you have to be here for us.”

And they love each other so much. They remind each other about their priorities and how to keep them straight.

***This interview has been edited for length and clarity.***

You can watch 9-1-1 on Mondays at 9/8c on FOX.

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