CHICAGO FIRE: Miranda Rae Mayo, Derek Haas Tease Stella’s ‘Emotionally Draining,’ ‘Physically Exhausting’ Ordeal in ‘Don’t Hang Up’

After months of prep, Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) is on the verge of taking her lieutenant’s test on the Wednesday, May 5 episode of CHICAGO FIRE.

“The thing about Stella is she cares about the team,” Mayo says. “She cares about the family. She cares so much about her relationships. And I think that that comes from a place of trauma. We’ve seen her in her relationship with her ex-husband, who was an addict. We’ve heard a little bit about how she really was on her own; she didn’t have a lot of people that she could rely on when she was coming up. And so to have found a family that has welcomed her in, where the stakes are so high, I think, for her, she really just doesn’t want to let anyone down.”

“Boden and Casey and all of these people keep telling her that she’s this great leader,” she continues. “With her, she’s like, ‘Okay.’ We’ve kind of played with this idea [of] this imposter syndrome that she has. So I think for this lieutenant’s test, it’s really the process of actually taking on board this feedback from her superiors and the people that she cares about. Like, ‘Oh, wow. Maybe I am [ready for this]. What does that mean?’ And of course, Stella, she puts so much pressure on herself. So I think that those are some of the things that she’s thinking, that she’s going through.”

But, naturally, things aren’t that easy. “We were trying to do an episode where it was leading up to the shift before she has to go take her lieutenant’s test,” CHICAGO FIRE boss Derek Haas previews. “And we thought, as writers, let’s give an hour where you, as the viewer, get to see what kind of mettle Kidd is made of, that shows you why she should be a lieutenant, regardless of what happens in the classroom.”

On tap? “She goes on a physically exhausting call,” Haas teases. “And then she gets this telephone call that is emotionally draining and suspenseful, [from] a girl in crisis, who Stella had an impact on. I love this idea that you impact people that you maybe even only had a brief encounter with. And that that person hadn’t stopped thinking about it, and then at a moment in their time of need reaches out to you. That’s, to me, the kind of impact Stella Kidd has on the world.”

But Firehouse 51 has their work cut out for them if they’re going to figure out who this mysterious girl is.

“She doesn’t get a lot from the first phone call,” Mayo admits. “For all she knows, it could be a prank. But it’s strange that someone called and asked for her by name. That never happens. And so I think, at first, she’s kind of like, ‘What is this? What’s going on?’ And then as the episode continues, the caller calls back. And we see that it is actually a quite dire situation.”

CHICAGO FIRE, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC

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