Joe Minoso Reacts to the ‘Chicago Fire’ Season 8 Premiere’s Big Shocker and Describes Filming the Episode’s Most Emotional Scenes [Exclusive Interview]

Last time I spoke with Joe Minoso, he said the writers of Chicago Fire seemed to find a reason to make him cry every season.

Well, they started early with Chicago Fire Season 8. If you haven’t yet seen the season premiere, stop reading this now, go watch the episode, and then come back once you’re finished. 

And brace yourselves. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions, that I can promise you. 

Chicago Fire Season 8 Episode 1, “Sacred Ground,” picks up where we left off at the end of Season 7 with a major cliffhanger that left everyone’s lives hanging in the balance. And no, not everyone made it out alive.

The casualty was a painful one. We said goodbye to Brian ‘Otis’ Zvonecek played by Yuriy Sardarov.

It was an emotional episode for all of the characters on the show, but this loss hit Joe Cruz particularly hard because of his friendship with Otis. It was all pretty emotional behind the scenes, too.

I recently spoke with Joe Minoso, who plays Joe Cruz on Chicago Fire, about filming this emotional episode as well as what we can expect from his character this season and the upcoming #OneChicago crossover.

Minoso described his reaction to the news that Otis’s character would be killed off, therefore meaning that the actor who plays him, Yuriy Sardarov, would be leaving the series, as “personally devastating.”

“Yuriy is, quite frankly, my best friend on this show and has been since we started. We lived together the first year we started this show, and we became the tightest of friends. He was one of my groomsmen at my wedding. So in a lot of ways, both Yuriy and I have grown together with [these roles],” Minoso said. “It broke my heart. It still does. Daily, I still think I see him amongst all those firefighters when we’re all in our gear, and it throws me for a loop. It was devastating. When he called me and told me it was going to happen, I was kind of speechless.”

“But you know, he is a tremendous professional,” Minoso added. “I think he’s going to do outstanding no matter what he does.”

Minoso went on to describe what it was like filming the haunting scene where Otis dies before Cruz’s eyes.

“The sequence where Otis passed away was the very last scene for Yuriy. That was the scene right before he wrapped. It was, thankfully, a closed set,” he said. 

Minoso said the episode’s director, Reza Tabriza, spent a lot of time working with the actors on shooting that scene. “At one point in the middle of the scene, Yuriy’s head just kind of turns over and his eyes look right at me. And I completely lost it. I remember it was so hard to stay in the room and be there for the cameras to catch it, because I was so raw that it was like a physical pain. And I remember staying in there as long as I could, and then I had to run out of the room and take a minute,” he recalled. “Thinking about it actually gets me kind of worked up.”

“I’m lucky in that I’m capable of tapping into this particular emotion,” Minoso continued. “I think that’s one of the reasons the writers tend to write what they write for me, but this one was really — the nerve was so raw. It was so close to home, and that took a bit of a toll. But you know, I’m lucky to have had the opportunity to do it. I recognize the drama of it.”

As difficult as that scene was for Minoso to film, he said the ending scene when Boden reveals the memorial was even more so.

“That was actually a harder scene to do because I didn’t say anything. So it’s all reactionary, and that, I think, is the harder job. It’s all about listening. And the luckiest thing in the world is that I had Eamonn Walker saying those words because he brings such weight and gravity to everything he says. It really makes it that much more impactful.”

“You’re also surrounded, literally, by the entire cast, and you just kind of feel that,” he explained. “What’s beautiful about it is you don’t feel any negativity. It all feels like love and support, but it was crazy because I never saw their faces. I never saw what they were going through. And all those people have their relationships with Yuriy, and some would argue just as close as I do, if not closer. And I’m sure they had their own process as well, and I have to hand it to the writing. Falling to my knees at the end there, that was written in. It was an excellent choice, but it wasn’t mine. Kudos to the writers for a beautiful moment, and the story is really well-told.”

This isn’t the first shocking exit we’ve seen on Chicago Fire, but Minoso was happy with the way this one was dealt with. “In all of our deaths and all the experiences we’ve had in losing characters on this show, I really feel like this one got handled the best, and that they really gave him a beautiful exit,” he said.

Obviously, the death of his best friend is going to have an effect on Joe Cruz, and Minoso shed a little light on what that was going to look like and what else we can expect from him this season.

“Cruz has no choice but to, for lack of a better term, grow up. He’s lost his brother in arms. I think that is going to leave a big gap and it is going to require some sort of a life transition. And, we’re about five or six episodes in, and I can definitely say that you’ll be seeing more of Chloe. It’s been great working with her. She’s been fabulous. Kristen [Gutoskie] is just such a wonderful human being, and we’re just lucky to have her from The Handmaid’s Tale long enough to have her come in every once in a while.”

He said we’ll also be seeing a lot of growth from Cruz overall, which sounds like it’s going to be fantastic to watch. “I think he sees things with different eyes. I think there’ll be a new perspective to the way he sees things.”

Minoso also gave a few hints about what we can expect from the upcoming crossover with Chicago Med and Chicago P.D. He revealed that the crossover would involve the spread of an infectious disease.

“The whole city of Chicago is on lockdown, and we obviously have to unravel the case,” he said.

“We’re actually in the process of filming them now, and what’s crazy is in order to be able to facilitate all of the actors being available for the different hours of the crossover, we filmed our chunk first, and now Med is filming theirs. Even though these all air at the same time, that means that typically they would all be filming at the same time, but instead they moved the schedules around so that they are filming the fourth episode as their sixth, and then P.D.’s doing it as their seventh, in order for all of us to be able to situate the schedule.

“This year I do know that all of the episodes are written by Derek Haas, and he takes great pride in making some really killer crossover episodes. So I think it will be a lot of fun,” Minoso added.

In addition to Chicago Fire, Minoso can also be seen on the upcoming season of Get Shorty on EPIX. Minoso called filming that show “tremendous fun.”

“First of all, it feels great to be cast in something after doing the same thing for seven years. You start to wonder whether or not anyone thinks you can do anything else, so it is great to have the chance to stretch my muscles with something new,” he said.

“Everyone, the whole cast and crew, was just incredibly generous, and wonderful, and very sweet. It was a blast. And I got to play a bad guy, and that is the antithesis of Cruz! I couldn’t have been happier as an actor just to be able to do something new and fun and to work with great people who I admire.” 

On top of that, Minoso has something else in the works that Chicago Fire fans will appreciate.

Christian [Stolte] and I are working on finalizing some financing for a movie that I’ll be directing and he’ll be starring in, hopefully, this summer. That’s called The Last Hurrah, and it’s on its feet and we’ve got a team in place,” Minoso shared. He said that hopefully, they’d have a film for Chicago Fire fans to see sometime late next fall. 

—

Be sure to catch Joe Minoso on Chicago Fire, airing Wednesdays at 9/8c on NBC.

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Join our One Chicago fan group on Facebook.

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

Yuriy Sardarov Opens Up About That Devastating ‘Chicago Fire’ Season 8 Premiere and Why it Was ‘Necessary’ [Exclusive Interview]