‘Chicago Fire’ to revisit Shay with memorial service, new footage

“Chicago Fire” fans haven’t seen the last of Leslie Shay.

New footage of the fallen paramedic, who’s being memorialized in what’s sure to be a triple-tissue episode Tuesday, will soon surface on the NBC drama.

Actress Lauren German came back to Chicago earlier this season to film the scene captured on one of the myriad DVDs that Shay and Lt. Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) made before the EMT was killed in the line of duty.

“We shot some home videos and whenever I’m feeling nostalgic or want to reminisce, I pop these in,” Kinney said about his character, who does just that in next week’s Feb. 10 episode. “She was weighing heavy on my mind after we find the evidence that this was arson, not an accident.”

We last saw Severide watch one of his Shay DVDs in the emotional season three premiere, “Always.”

“It really split him in half,” said showrunner Matt Olmstead, who noted that the rescue squad leader has a different reaction this time around. “It’s interesting because he’s able to watch her and access a good memory as opposed to before, when he was devastated. It’s a nice bookend from the first episode in that he’s able to actually watch it and smile.”

Plenty of viewers weren’t smiling when they learned Shay’s fate in the season opener. One fan asked me to find out if the memorial in Tuesday’s “Three Bells” episode was always in the cards or was it added later in an attempt to placate upset fans?

“We were always aware of the fact that they do these memorials,” Olmstead said about the real-life ritual of honoring fallen first responders with bell ringings or placement of their names on the door of an ambulance or fire truck, for example. “We kept that in our back pocket for whenever we wanted to use it. When Shay died, we started to revisit the issue. It wasn’t a late-inning call, so to speak. We always knew that was available and this was the time to do it.”

Veteran TV producer Dick Wolf, who created “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago P.D.” and the long-running “Law & Order” franchise, said Shay’s death resulted in some hate mail from disgruntled fans, but it had to be done. And you can bet it will be done to another main character at some point.

“It’s an absolute necessity, especially for long-running ensembles,” he said. “You have to bring in new blood. The storytelling gets very insular if it’s the same people year after year after year. ‘Law & Order’ was a six-person ensemble and there were 26 people who were regulars over the course of the show. With ‘SVU,’ the only member of the original cast left is Mariska [Hargitay].

“Change is good,” Wolf added. “It’s almost always an opportunity to jigger the drink differently. It will happen again. It’s part of television life.”

“Chicago Fire” airs at 9 p.m. Tuesdays on WMAQ-Channel 5.

READ MORE:

Check out the latest stories about “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago P.D.”