Peter Krause Enters the ‘Line of Fire’ and Opens Up About His Shocking ‘9-1-1’ Exit

Peter Krause has spent almost his entire adult life working on television. Ever since landing his first small-screen role in 1990 opposite Carol Burnett in Carol & Company, Krause has built an impressive résumé defined by acclaimed family dramas — both biological and chosen — including Sports Night, Six Feet Under, Parenthood and, most recently, 9-1-1.

“I’ve been fortunate to do a wide variety of things, but somebody once said to me, ‘You play good men, or people who are trying to be good men,’” Krause — who has appeared on TV every year since 1990, save for a lone gap in 1993 — tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I would take the ‘men’ out and say that I am attracted to people who are trying to lead a good life, who are trying to answer to their moral compass.”

Krause’s latest role in Line of Fire continues that trend of playing complex everyday heroes. Created by Joshua Safran (Gossip Girl, Quantico) and executive produced by former First Daughter Jenna Bush Hager, the NBC action-thriller drama stars Krause as Secret Service agent Mike Hollingsworth, the patriarch of a family of law enforcement officers.

Joining Mike across various agencies are his estranged wife Jane (Hope Davis), a U.S. Marshal and their adult children: Clare (Kat Cunning), an FBI agent; Micah (Tommy O’Brien), a fellow Secret Service agent; and Russell (Taylor Bloom), a new analyst with the Department of Justice. After the Hollingsworths become the target of a trained serial killer in the premiere, they must band together and rely on their collective expertise to protect one another — all while wrestling with all kinds of soapy secrets behind closed doors.

As he prepares to enter the Line of Fire, Krause sat down with THR last week to look back on his TV career. During the wide-ranging chat, he also opened up at length for the first time about his controversial exit from 9-1-1, where his beloved character, fire captain Bobby Nash, was shockingly killed off last year.

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Having just come off an eight-season run on 9-1-1, were you in the market for an opportunity to lead another potentially long-running broadcast show?

I wasn’t necessarily, but my agents, Peter Levine and Jamie Feld, highlighted this [pilot] to me. They talked about how good the script was, and they were right. Josh Safran is very masterful at story architecture, and there are a lot of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming. I think without the family element, I probably wouldn’t have signed on. I’m particularly interested in exploring relationships and family. I also recognized that there was some humor in the script. Without it, I wouldn’t have done it.

As time has gone on — we’re [filming] episode seven now — I’m realizing that Jane and Mike have a very complex history. I don’t think I’ve ever hit the ground running on a TV series with a relationship as complex as theirs, so that’s something new for me. They struggle with their feelings with one another. In both good and bad ways, they have a combustible relationship. They love each other fiercely, but they’ve got some real issues that they’re going to try and get past — and maybe they can, maybe they can’t.

When we first meet them, Jane is dating Senator Terry Cross played by Campbell Scott, who’s a terrific actor and a very nice and enjoyable person, which makes it all the more painful for me to see my onscreen wife, Hope Davis, spend time with him. And all the young actors on the show are fantastic — Kat Cunning, Tommy O’Brien, Taylor Bloom. Charlie Barnett, who plays Jack, has kind of been in a movie all by himself, and eventually that will play out, but I can’t talk about that too much yet.

In the series premiere, Mike is trying to tie up some loose ends before he is forced to retire from his post as a member of the Secret Service, but this new conspiracy implicating his family means that he has to postpone his retirement indefinitely. What intrigues you about how Mike has balanced his duty to his country with his duty to his family? Has he found some kind of balance in his life?

I think he finds balance intermittently. There’s that kind of fundamental, existential question that’s inside of Mike at the beginning of the series: “Who am I without being a Secret Service agent? Who am I without my house? What’s going on in my world and my life, and who am I going to be moving forward?” He has a very specific relationship with the various individuals in his family.

Mike is a good guy. He believes in the importance of having structure, rules, and boundaries at the same time. He’s a rule breaker when he feels like it’s necessary and is even willing to manipulate his kids if he thinks it’s for the right reason. Micah is just a thorn in his side, and he really wants to try to set him on the right path. He’s a little softer with Clare being his only daughter, and there’s an episode upcoming where you get to see Mike and Clare share time together.

With Russell, we don’t really know after watching the first episode: Did Mike get him the job [at the DOJ], or did he not get him the job? It’s not clear. That’s an interesting place to come from with Mike, because he’s not always going to tell you the truth. He might tell you what you want to believe. At this time, his position as a Secret Service agent is still of value to his ego, but moving forward, we may see Mike do different things.

The great fun of this show is watching the Hollingsworths struggle to draw that line between their personal and professional lives. In the premiere, for instance, the characters weave in and out of the rooms in their old family home, bickering and juggling work phone calls in a frantic, farce-like ballet.

We just filmed [a scene] yesterday very similar to that dinner scene. It takes place at the Eisenhower building where the Secret Service offices are located, and people are picking up tickets to an event, and they have to do so in person. The president is going to be played by Chris Chalk; the former president is going to be played by Sam Waterston — there’s some wonderful guest cast on the show. But we do have a scene like that where people are coming in and out, and it’s like rehearsing a stage play. Other times, it’s a very standard television and filming format [with single-camera coverage]. But sometimes, it’s heavily rehearsed and choreographed.

You have now been gainfully employed on television for over 35 years, during which time you have established a really close relationship with audiences. What keeps drawing you back to this medium?

A lot of it might have to do with growing up on television. We watched a lot of TV in my household — Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, The Waltons, Roots. It’s a long list, but I loved television growing up. I didn’t design my career this way; it’s just what happened. I started working with Carol Burnett, and then I thought Sports Night was going to go 10 years when it started. I thought we hadn’t really seen this show before [from] Aaron Sorkin. And then for various business reasons, Sports Night went away after two seasons, and I was fortunate enough to go and do Six Feet Under on HBO, which was so different. [Those were] seven really magical career years for me to get to do those things.

I did have to separate myself a little bit from Nate Fisher. I became very known as that guy, and I didn’t want to just occupy that extreme emotional space as an actor. I wanted to do some other things as well, so it was fun to get to do Adam Braverman and a more optimistic [show in Parenthood]. Not that Six Feet Under was pessimistic in any way, but [there] was always sort of a happy ending on Parenthood, and that gave me some separation from Nate Fisher.

But it’s nice being a part of the cultural conversation and having a relationship with the audience and telling them stories about themselves, quite frankly. I was a fan of Roseanne and Home Improvement, and in some ways those were TV series that reflected some people in the country. I haven’t really done a suspense thriller like this one — I did the action of 9-1-1 — so that’s a new element to me. But I like the relationships, the family stuff.

Do you remember the show, the movie or the personal experience that made you want to become an actor in the first place?

In the beginning, it happened just by being a viewer. I really liked watching television and then I watched some movies, and particularly there were two films that starred Robert Redford and Paul Newman: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. I remember as a kid just wanting to be one of those guys.

When I was in college, I did some plays, and it was a small school in Minnesota, Gustavus Adolphus College, so I got to play the big roles. I got to play Teach in David Mamet’s American Buffalo, and I got to play Betty and Gerry in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9. Those are two terrific plays. Doing those plays really deepened my interest in the performed story — [seeing] what audiences would leave with, seeing great plays, made me want to continue acting.

So I was encouraged by the theater professors at that school, Robert Gardner and Cynthia Goatley, to audition for graduate school, and I was lucky and got into NYU, which was a fantastic program. I could list all the names — Zelda Fitzchander, Ron Van Lieu, Beverly Weidman, Nora Dunfee, Michael Kahn, Deborah Lapidus — but [there was] incredible faculty at the time, and I grew immensely during those three years while training as an actor at NYU. And then, strangely, my first gig was doing sketch comedy with Carol Burnett coming out of graduate school.

As far as first bosses go, Carol Burnett seems like a pretty good one.

She was the best. She made me feel welcomed and comfortable from the very start. That was a terrific cast — Terry Kiser, Richard Kind, Megan Fay, Anita Barone. Carol really just threw her arms around all of us, and it was an ensemble experience. I learned by her example. She was humble and prepared and on time and treated everybody nicely, and I think that set me up for success in the business to try to emulate her. I had a very nice experience.

She saw me after Six Feet Under came out and was very complimentary of my work, and remarked that it was so different from the sketch comedy that we did together. You don’t think about it that much, but funny voices and funny walks and being goofy on Carol & Company to some pretty deep existential and emotional work on Six Feet Under — it’s very different. I feel very lucky to have gotten to do all the different things I’ve done on TV.

Given that you are now back on NBC, who do we have to call to get you on Saturday Night Live, even as a special guest?

When I was a kid in confirmation class at Roseville Lutheran Church, the topic of conversation on Sunday morning was, “What happened on Saturday Night Live last night?” Even before I wanted to be an actor, I thought, “Oh, it’d be so cool to be on Saturday Night Live and do wacky comedy sketches.” I was a big Monty Python fan. I still feel like I’m probably a little long in the tooth, but it’d be fun to be a cast member on a sketch comedy series like that.

This year marked the 25-year anniversary of Six Feet Under. Looking back on the personal and professional impact of playing Nate Fisher — a character you’ve mentioned feeling particularly connected to — what was it about him that reflected where you were in your own life at the time?

It made me think about all the obstacles that were in front of me preventing me from leading the life that I wanted to be living. I think that was Six Feet Under for a lot of people: “What is all this stuff in front of me that I have to get through to be living the life that I want to be living?” By presenting the show [the way] in which [creator] Alan Ball did, every week was a meditation on life and death. “What are you going to do before the end, before that last page turns? What are the choices you’re going to make? How are you going to challenge yourself?”

I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me — and continue to, [including] younger people who discover the show — and say, “That show changed my life. It urged me to make different decisions, or to start living more fully.” During that time when we were making that show, people started getting married, having kids. I remember before my son was born, there were things I wanted to do. I went to surf camp and went surfing for a while, and I climbed Mount Shasta, and I was like, “I want to go out and do these things.” I think that Six Feet Under served to inspire people to live more full lives and to be more authentic.

Do you find that people still want to come up to you and talk about death and grief all the time?

I’ve had people tell me things like, “I was watching that show, and then my mother died and I couldn’t watch it anymore.” Other people would say, “It’s too depressing for me.” Other people say, “I’m starting to watch it again. I want to start over and watch it again.” And they’re like, “Oh, it holds up. It’s just as good as it was when it first came out.” Of course, people frequently will talk about the [series] finale.

Somebody was talking to me recently about how much they enjoyed seeing inside the character’s mind. Alan Ball had this construct — one of the most memorable ones for me is when Ruth Fisher, played by Frances Conroy, is speaking with someone and she’s listening, and then all of a sudden, she just goes, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” And then you go back to reality and she’s just listening, but you see inside that she’s holding onto this feeling. Somebody remarked to me about how they love that you’d see inside because that’s how they feel in life — that they’re always having these internal feelings and expressions that they have to clamp down on and not let out. I think that was the theme of the show too: “What are we all repressing and shoving down? Let it out!”

Can I ask you about your departure from 9-1-1?

Sure, go for it.

You told me a couple of years ago around the 100th episode of 9-1-1 that you could have made another 100 episodes of that show, but that was unfortunately not in the cards for you. What was your reaction to learning that you were going to be killed off, and how do you reflect on your time on that show now? [Read THR’s interview with showrunner Tim Minear and star Angela Bassett about Bobby’s death here, and Krause’s statement about his exit here.]

Well, Tim called me and let me know it was happening [ahead of time]. But I will say over the years, I suffered a lot of small injuries on that show, one particularly to my knee. I kept being active and things like that, but it was a hard show — the hours were hard, the demands of wearing the fire gear and running and all that. But I love that show; I love that cast. We had a lot of fun behind the scenes on that show, and Kenny Choi [who plays Chimney] has become a really good friend, as well as other people on the show.

[Kenny] would remark to me, “People don’t know how funny you are,” because I played more serious roles. But I did start in comedy, and we share a certain sense of humor. During the strike, we had put together a show about a couple of aging guys who had a yacht rock band that we shopped around that didn’t make it. But who knows? Maybe they’ll still have some life somewhere, because Kenny and I would love to work with each other in the comedy sphere.

I had a great time on that show. That show was very unique as well. We’d never seen a disaster show quite like that with all the crazy earthquakes and tsunamis, and then the smaller stuff too, like somebody with a microwave cemented to their head or whatever. That was a kooky bit of entertainment, but I’m very happy to be doing Line of Fire and something different right now.

Tim told me that he chose to call all of your former 9-1-1 co-stars to break the news of Bobby’s death, and nobody wanted to believe that he would actually go through it. Some of your co-stars were begging him to reconsider; some of them were essentially bargaining with God. Was it a difficult goodbye for you? Did you find yourself having to comfort anyone as you were going through your own processing of saying goodbye to Bobby?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. We built a family, and there was a bootcamp aspect to it. We did hard things on that show, and we did them together. When we filmed down in Mexico, being in the water for hours on end, we always had each other. We always had each other’s backs. I tried my best to always keep my eye on safety measures, but also to make sure that everybody was having a good time and felt welcome and that they were part of the family.

It sounds to me like you were not ready to leave 9-1-1, but maybe you were open to doing something else after so much time on one show.

Yeah, I think so, and life works in mysterious ways. I think it’s interesting for the audience to see Chimney assume the captainship and other people grow. I think that’s something that’s probably good for the show — to see those characters grow and also deal with loss. It was something more serious. We hadn’t lost one of our own [in eight seasons]. I do think that the theme of that show — which I always called a comic book about first responders come to life — is that they’re going to go through everything and keep on living. Something we hadn’t done was what ended up happening, was losing Bobby Nash. Yeah, it was a bigger deal, I think, than a lot of people thought it was going to be.

That was a particularly tough death for me. I remember showing up to my interview with Tim saying, “What were you thinking?”

Yeah, that was the sentiment shared by many. I will say that I loved Bobby Nash, so there’s no confusion about that. I love that character; I loved playing that character. It was a very complex character to play his battles with addiction and his relationship with the Almighty. It was an interesting character.

I’m assuming that some of your former colleagues have kept you in the loop about what is happening on the show now. Are you aware that there is still a subset of 9-1-1 fans who are insisting that Bobby is still alive somewhere — maybe in a government lab — because viewers did not see his body being taken out of that infected lab?

(Shrugs.) He could be! We don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t speak to that.

Well, if you leave the door even slightly open, I think people will walk through it.

(Throws his head back in laughter.) Well, who knows?

Regardless of whether we ever see Bobby again on 9-1-1 — even if it’s in some kind of dream or flashback sequence — the character has clearly meant a lot to TV viewers. Now that you have a little bit of time and space away from the show, what are you most proud of having been able to accomplish with Bobby in those eight seasons? What do you hope his legacy will be?

[I’m proud] that he forgave himself ultimately and allowed himself to love again and be loved, on the more therapeutic side of things. And on the other side of things, [I’m proud] that he remained a hero. He was a flawed person, as we all are, and he loved the people around him. Again, I truly loved not only that cast, but I loved being in the character of Bobby Nash. He had a tremendous amount of love from all of those other characters — [his wife] Athena, [his stepchildren] Harry and May; [his firefighters] Chimney, Buck, Hen, Eddie, everybody. But I also have deep relationships with those people too. I saw Guzie [Ryan Guzman] and Kenny in L.A. just a couple weeks ago!

And to loop back to [the fan theories about] him being in a lab somewhere, it would be within the language of the show for Bobby Nash to come to [his senses] with amnesia and for Athena to have to get in there and make him remember who he is again. Look, on a show where anything could happen, I think that that’s part of the fun of that show, and why the audiences were upset is because it’s like, “Come on! Anything can happen on this show. This isn’t bound by the same rules as other television shows. This is unbridled.” But I hope that they remember Bobby Nash fondly. I certainly loved him, and obviously audiences did too.

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Line of Fire airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC. Episodes stream the next day on Peacock.