Unexpected dangers are the name of the game in the 9-1-1 TV franchise created by Ryan Murphy — and the proximity between absurdity and reality still delights Chris O’Donnell, the star of its latest installment, 9-1-1: Nashville, as it approaches its midseason finale.
In the series, O’Donnell’s character, Captain Don Hart of Firehouse 113, works with his team — including his two sons — to save the citizens of Nashville from every possible sort of disaster, from tornadoes to faulty Murphy beds to kites gone wild in the wind.
“Sometimes I’ll read these scripts and go, ‘Oh, come on,'” O’Donnell, 55, tells PEOPLE. “It seems like it’s just so unrealistic, but then you read that some of these things actually happened.”
A few recent disasters on the show really surprised him: “The whole tornado and lightning stuff we’ve been doing — I get that stuff because those are the highlights we see on The Weather Channel. But some of these little things, these little disasters — like the episode where the water slide breaks apart? Sure enough, on my social media, I’ve got these things popping up with these crazy situations where this really does happen.”
(Earlier this year, a Royal Caribbean cruise guest was injured following a malfunction on the ship’s water slide that looked frighteningly similar to the incident on the ABC show.)
“Every time I laugh and I call [the producers], they’ll send me a link to an article,” O’Donnell admits. “I was laughing about the girl who gets eaten up by a Murphy bed. I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,'”
ut the actor, who joined the franchise after 14 seasons as a lead on NCIS: Los Angeles, has embraced the 9-1-1 ethos.
“It’s insane, and it never ends,” he says, pointing out that the original series, 9-1-1, recently sent its characters to space. “Anything is possible, and that’s the show. A lot of my friends thought, ‘Oh, Chris is doing a fireman show,’ and they’d never seen 9-1-1, so they turn on the first episode, and they’re like, ‘What the hell is this? A girl got swept away with a kite!'”
“It is a very specific brand,” O’Donnell adds. “People want to tune in and see this chaos. … You have to have fun with it.”
In addition to all the musical elements that are worked into the rescue plots thanks to the show’s location, 9-1-1: Nashville has another storytelling layer that stands out from the franchise’s previous iterations.
“Our show is a little different because there’s this soap opera, Dynasty-type thing piled on top of it,” O’Donnell says, referring to Don’s family drama with his wife Blythe (Jessica Capshaw), sons Ryan (Michael Provost) and Blue (Hunter McVey) and Blue’s mother Dixie (LeAnn Rimes).
Still, the drama stays on the screen, according to O’Donnell: “Our cast couldn’t be nicer,” he says. “We have really good energy.”
Earlier this year, Todd Chrisley received a pardon from the President. However, Patricia Altschul is a tougher sell. Unlike POTUS, this Southern Charm star refuses to absolve Todd of his verbal crimes. Instead, this queen honey bee is standing ten wealthy toes down, adamant that Charleston is not a place for a “felon” like Todd.
Todd and Patricia are the reality feud I never saw coming. Their tiny tit for tat started after Todd’s release from prison. “During the [post-prison] press conference, I had stated that we are doing a hotel and it’s going to be near Charleston, South Carolina,” Todd explained. In response, Patricia said, “Well, there goes the neighborhood.”
Well, Todd did not like that. So, he made several jests about Patricia, which mainly focused on her older age and her finances. Overall, it was gross.
So, recently clapping back via Decider, Pat quipped, “He’s very irrelevant. I said four words—there goes the neighborhood — and he went on, and he did a whole program about me. It was just a comment in passing.” Nevertheless, Patricia stands by her original stance, saying, “We just don’t need any more felons in Charleston.”
Todd and his wife, Julie Chrisley, were indicted on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the United States back in 2019. They swore they were innocent. Yet, they were still found guilty. In all, The Chrisleys: Back to Reality stars received a combined 19 years in federal prison, but thanks to their pardons, they walked out of their prison cells for good in May of this year.
And now, Ms. Pat wants them to heed her words and not walk toward her in Charleston.
Southern Charm Season 11 premieres on November 19, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo. New episodes are available to stream the next day on Peacock, or Hayu in Canada, the UK, and Ireland.