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

The Chicago Fire Season 8 premiere was explosive, literally. And as many fans guessed, not everyone was going to make it out of that mattress factory fire alive.

Some casualties hurt worse than others, though, and this one will take a while to get over. 

If you haven’t seen the premiere yet, by the way, please stop reading this and go watch it. Then come back with your tear-filled eyes once you’ve finished, because there are spoilers ahead.

I’m not kidding. Please watch the episode first.

After watching the emotional season premiere for myself, and after wiping all of my tears out of my eyes, I had the chance to speak with Yuriy Sardarov, who plays Brian ‘Otis’ Zvonecek, about his character’s shocking death and his departure from Chicago Fire.

“I spoke to Derek Haas at the end of last season. Derek and I go way back. I actually did a film in college with him and Mike Brandt when I was still a senior at the University of Michigan, so we’ve been close for a long time,” Sardarov began.

“We had a discussion about the character and where he was headed, and I was very upfront with him about the fact that it’s been eight years, and I started when I was 22, and now I’m 31. The communication was very open and honest, and we both walked away from it feeling really good,” he shared.

“Going into the eighth season, sometimes you need something that’s going to get the engines revved up a little bit, and what better way to do that than to kill someone so beloved and someone so warm and sweet and funny? I think in many ways, Otis is the one character that people don’t expect to die.”

“It was difficult, but it was also necessary,” Sardarov continued. “It was a combination of me wanting to move on and them needing something akin to what’s going to happen. And I think those two things met at the perfect time.”

Sardarov then went on to describe what it was like filming the season premiere, including the scene where Otis dies in front of Cruz. He said that day was a hard one.

“It was incredibly difficult emotionally, not to mention physically, and the prosthetics and keeping it all a secret. It was tough — it was really tough. In that last scene, Joe Minoso does such an incredible job, and the tears in his eyes were real and the tears in my eyes were real.”

“I think it’s a morbid desire of every actor to die on stage or on screen,” he said. “I was really excited about the prospect of doing that, and we did so many takes from so many different angles. It was hard because I was so emotional and I had to be catatonic, pretty much. And so to get those ten seconds of footage, it took quite a few starts and stops.”

“It took me a while to really focus and commit. Once I did, I think the results speak for themselves, but it was both exciting and just so emotionally taxing. I’m not sure I ever want to do it again in that way.”

Sardarov’s final days on set were also made memorable by a special gift, and one that took on a little extra meaning.

“Christian Stolte, in Season 1, his daughter was like eight or nine at the time, and he was telling us how he was reading the Harry Potter series to her at night,” Sardarov explained. “He’s a whittler, and so he would make Greta magic wands, like Harry Potter wands. She had a whole wall assembled of these wands. And I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. So I was like, ‘Oh! Stolte! I would love one of those wands!'”

“So I walk into my trailer on the first day of my last episode, and there’s a wand sitting there for me. I have a tattoo on my arm — it’s the first letter of my name. It’s Cyrillic. I’m named after my grandfather, so he has a similar tattoo, and that letter is emblazoned on the wand, and it has this really beautiful stand that’s been cured. It’s just gorgeous,” he said. “And at the end of the first day, we’re all exhausted, and everybody’s phone lights up because they get the second episode. [But] obviously I don’t. Stolte’s reading it, and he jumps out of his seat, and I go ‘What? What?!’ He gives me the phone, and on the phone is a line from Episode 2 that Mouch actually says. The line is: ‘Otis loved magic. I wish I could have made him a magic wand.'”

Sardarov said the actors were surprised and called Derek Haas to find out if he’d known anything about the wand Stolte had made, but the line was a complete coincidence.

“He made me a magic wand, and in its own way, it made magic,” Sardarov laughed. “So if I ever needed a sign that I was making the right choice and making it in the right way, that was the sign.”

If all of this doesn’t have you emotional enough, Sardarov also took some time to reflect on his time working on the show.

“In many ways, I came in as a boy and I get to leave as a man. A lot of that I attribute to the people that I got to film with. I was such an enormous fan of Eamonn Walker coming in,” he admitted. “I came into it being in awe of the people I was working with, and a lot of times you hear, ‘don’t meet your idols because they’ll let you down.’ But Eamonn has always been such a constant professional and gentleman, and father figure. In many ways, Eamonn, David [Eigenberg], and Christian were sort of the triptych of father figures that I had on the show, and they taught me so much in their own different ways. And Joe [Minoso] and Charlie [Barnett] were like brothers.”

“Monica [Raymund] was a sister to me, and Kara [Killmer] and Miranda [Rae Mayo]. And probably more often than they’d like to admit, they were like mother figures to me as well,” Sardarov continued.

“And none of this works without good leads. Part of me wishes I could tell you that Jesse Spencer and Taylor Kinney were like, Hollywood bigshots and assholes, but they are not. They’re incredibly professional, they’re always on time, they always set the tone. They’re always there when you need them. So I was so lucky to walk into a situation with people that were ready to work and with people that were just so happy to have this job and proud to represent firefighters in Chicago. And this isn’t some line that I recycle, this is coming from the heart. Every single person that I’ve worked with all these years is incredible, and I wish them nothing but sustained success. And I’m sure the show will go on for fifty seasons.”

Sardarov was also quick to share how some of the most difficult days of filming had formed some of his favorite memories, namely, working in the freezing cold.

“We’d be outside at 5:00am and filming. It’s a miserable experience. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. But I knew that as soon as I’d be done I would look back on those memories and I would cherish them. There’s days like the lakeside rescue where literally the wind coming off the lake, I think it was negative 45 degrees [with] the windchill, and our feet were frozen in our boots,” he remembered.

“You’re just standing there and you have to have this look of great concern on your face, but you are frigid and frozen to the spot. I think about that day so much, because in the moment, all we wanted for it to be was over, but it’s moments like that, where everybody’s like, ‘please kill me,’ where the connection that you make and the camaraderie that you build is completely indispensable and so special.”

As for what’s next for Sardarov, he did confirm that there were some things in the works for him, but most importantly that he was excited about making a change.

“There comes a point where you have to move on. Change is the only thing that’s a constant in life, and if you’re not ready to change, you stick around for too long. I’m from a family of refugee immigrants. I was three-years-old when we came to this country. We didn’t have any money and we didn’t have any resources.”

Sardarov said he felt it was important to keep challenging himself because he was lucky that his parents allowed him “as a firstborn, to go to acting school and not become a lawyer or a doctor, which is the trope, of course.”

“I’m so lucky to be here, and I’m so glad to have this opportunity,” he continued. “And if I’m not willing to just sort of jump without having a landing pad, then I’m doing a disservice to my family and what they had to go through to get me to this place. So at the end of the day, Ashley, it’s all gravy.”

Sardarov did have one last message for fans of the show, and it’s one that included a little tease about the remainder of the season: “I just want them to know that creatively, they’re in good hands. You never know — you may see Otis some way, somehow, in the future.”

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Chicago Fire airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on NBC.

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