Yahoo News 9-1-1′s Oliver Stark Reacts to Buck’s Sexual Awakening: ‘There Have Been Crumbs for Years’ (Plus, What’s Next?)
9-1-1 celebrated its 100th episode on Thursday with a milestone moment we were beginning to think would never happen. And it was hot.
After spending the hour growing increasingly jealous of Eddie’s newfound friendship with Tommy, Buck found himself conspicuously alone with the hot helicopter pilot, at which point he realized that his complicated feelings were about much more than “friendship.” As the pieces of Buck’s scattered brain fell into place, he also determined that Eddie wasn’t the one he wanted to notice him.
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“Trying to get your attention has been kind of exhausting,” Buck told Tommy, cuing up one of the most satisfyingly steamy sequences we’ve gotten from this show in a minute. The two continued to trade obtuse sentiments, their eyes darting nervously toward one another’s lips, until Tommy finally shut him up with a kiss. Boom. Fireworks. Pride Month has come early.
Though 9-1-1 showrunner Tim Minear had only formally pitched the kiss to Oliver Stark a few weeks before shooting, Stark believes that his character’s sexual awakening has been a long time coming.
“There have been crumbs for years and years,” he says to anyone who dares to act surprised by this turn of events. “If you look back, and I don’t know if it was even intentional from anybody in the moment, I think that the thread is there throughout. So coming to this moment now is really exciting and deserved and earned.”
And for those who have been waiting for this moment — even if you hoped the kiss would involve a certain single father with abs for days — Stark has a special message to share: “You were right.”
“I honestly believe that,” he says, “and I’ve probably believed for a long time that we should end up in this place. I withdrew myself a lot from social media because you would see these things [about Buck] and I would agree… but I couldn’t agree, right? It was such a fine line, because if things didn’t happen, then I’d have been quote-unquote queerbaiting. So thank you [to those fans] for sticking with the story, and I hope there’s an element of it that feels right. I also hope you continue to stay on board and enjoy the story as we tell it.”
So, what story is going to be told? Below, Stark and Minear answer that very question, along with several of TVLine’s other burning queries about this long-awaited game changer of a kiss. Grade the 100th episode in our poll below, then read on for our full interview about this milestone hour.
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Why Tommy?
We’ll start with the question on everyone’s mind: Of all the men in Los Angeles, how did Tommy find himself in the unique (not to mention enviable) position of becoming Buck’s first bisexual experience?
Following the “merry-go-round of different love interests we’ve had for Buck,” Minear felt that his storyline “needed a good smack to give it some new life.” So when Tommy came back into the picture, following Lucy’s unavailability to fly into the hurricane, Minear found himself struck with the idea. (“That’s when it occurred to me!”) From there, the idea evolved organically.
“I felt like the chemistry would be strong between Buck and Tommy,” Minear says. “Lou hasn’t been in a ton of the show. He was part of the boys club that persecuted Hen and Chimney at first. But I would watch those brief scenes with Lou, and that smile would happen, and I’d think, ‘This guy’s got a lot of charisma.’ I really felt like, if he was comfortable doing this story, I should reach out to him.”
Minear much preferred having Buck go through this experience with someone the audience already knew, rather than having to “invent some bi character for Buck to have an awakening with.” Fortunately for Minear, when he finally got them together, “they had chemistry!”
And it isn’t lost on Minear that Buck’s dynamic with Tommy echoes the one he once had with Eddie, calling it “almost a reprise of the dynamic from [Eddie]’s first episode where Buck was super jealous of the new guy. Now he’s jealous for a different reason.”
Is Buck Bisexual?
Not that we need to get hung up on labels, but it’s a fair question to ask: How is Buck going to identify now that he kissed a boy and he liked it?
When asked if Buck considers himself bisexual, Stark says, “That’s the way I have it in my head. We’ll see flashes of how he might look to label it in the next episode, but yeah, I think that would be the correct term.”
What’s Going Through Buck’s Mind During That Kiss?
We know how we reacted to that kiss (spoiler alert: it involved expletives!), but what about Buck? Did he even know he wanted to kiss Tommy until it happened?
“In that moment, I don’t think he’s thinking about the kiss until it happens,” Stark says, adding that Buck really “doesn’t know what he’s feeling the entire episode. We called it jealousy or whatever, but he didn’t understand his feelings at any point. There was a storm brewing inside of him, but he didn’t know what that meant.”
Once the kiss happened, however, Stark acknowledges that there was a definite “release” on his part. “It’s this ‘…oh’ moment,” he says. “I got really emotional watching it, which I didn’t expect. I just feel really happy for Buck, because it’s this moment of clarity. He’s obviously been searching for something, and this wouldn’t have even been one of his guesses. But then it happened, and he was like, ‘Oh, that was the thing.’”
How Will Everyone React to Buck’s News?
One of Minear’s favorite things about Buck’s new relationship is how it connects to Eddie and the rest of the 118.
“In the past, whenever I hooked these guys up with somebody, [their story] would be siloed off in its own universe,” he says. “It never lived organically with the other characters. This story affects Buck’s relationship with Maddie, it affects his relationship with Eddie, and it opens up opportunities for conversations about deep feelings and vulnerabilities.”
But the question remains: How will the people in Buck’s life react to his discovery?
“Some people will be surprised and some of them will not be so surprised,” Stark says with a laugh. “There will also definitely be a couple of instances of ‘It’s about time!’”
What’s Next for Buck and Tommy?
Not that we expected 9-1-1 to suddenly sweep Buck’s sexuality under the rug, but Stark assures us that his character’s journey of self-exploration will remain a key focus of the season.
“This story is not going away,” Stark says. “It leads directly into Episode 5, and I’m excited to delve into it further. I think the most honest way to tell the story of a man in his thirties discovering this for the first time is for him to ask: ‘What does this mean for myself? Have I been living a lie? Who am I?’ I’m excited for Episode 5, because we get to look into that a little bit more.”
Episode 5 will find Tommy and Buck grabbing those drinks they talked about this week, but we’d be lying if we said we aren’t worried about what their big night has in store: “You get to see their first date,” Minear says. “And you get to see how that goes a little… aground.”
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