Det. Jay Halstead’s brother will be joining the “Chicago P.D.” crime scene — not as a cop but as a doctor, a role he’ll reprise on “Chicago Fire’s” upcoming hospital episode that might spawn a spinoff, “Chicago Med.”
Nick Gehlfuss (“Shameless,” “The Newsroom”) has been cast as Dr. Ryan Halstead, showrunner Matt Olmstead said in a recent interview. We’ll get to know the physician in two “P.D.” episodes before he’s in the Chicago Med-focused installment of “Fire,” the 19th episode of the season. (FYI, the 14th episode of “Fire” airs Tuesday.)
“He’s a doctor with a little bit of trouble in his past,” Olmstead said, describing Ryan as “a bit of a playboy, and that past is starting to catch up with him. He’s got some situations he’s got to work out with Jay’s help.”
“You see them as real polar opposites in lifestyles, choices and careers,” Olmstead added, “and yet they’re tight.”
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Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) — a character we first met on “Fire” before “P.D.” spun off in 2014 — served in the military prior to joining the police department’s elite Intelligence Unit. His brother Ryan followed in their wealthy father’s footsteps to become a physician.
“As much as [Jay] Halstead did the right thing, so to speak, and went the military route and police route, the Ryan character got the doctor genes from the dad,” Olmstead said. “It was all kind of laid out for Ryan — it’s come easy for him, whereas Halstead knuckled down and did the work.”
Gehlfuss recently played a troublemaker on Showtime’s “Shameless,” another series set in Chicago. He had an affair with Fiona (Emmy Rossum) while she was dating his brother. Let’s hope Jay’s bae Det. Erin Lindsay (Sophia Bush) doesn’t fall into the same sibling sex trap.
“The actors look similar,” Olmstead said about Soffer and Gehlfuss. “They can definitely play as brothers.”
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We’re starting to get a better sense of the people who would populate “Chicago Med” if NBC decides to turn this so-called “embedded spinoff” episode into a full blown series like Dick Wolf’s other Chicago dramas, “Fire” and “P.D.”
Deadline reported Monday that Yaya DaCosta (“Whitney,” “The Butler”) has been cast as a nurse and love interest of Lt. Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney).
“It’s a bit of an experiment to see how those characters come out,” NBC Entertainment President Jennifer Salke said about the potential spinoff at the TV critics’ press tour last month in California.
“He’s [Dick Wolf] had such a good run with the crossover episodes and created a world that moves around, with these shows that move around each other,” she said. “I think it’s natural that he wants to create a medical component to that. It’s sort of an organic way to see if it feels like it can sustain its own show.”
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