Jasmine Blu
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And once again, Station 19 closed out the season with a harrowing cliffhanger that’ll have us biting our nails until its return.
Jack collapsed at the end of Station 19 Season 6 Episode 18, the ramifications of yet another head injury, and we’re left wondering how he’ll fare healthwise and if he’ll ever be able to tell Vic the truth about Theo.
We had the privilege of catching up with the sweet, funny, charming star, Grey Damon, whose name totally contradicts his natural ability to be human sunshine, to discuss all things Station 19 and Jack Gibson.
If Jack is hard of head, pun intended, Damon is pure of heart and soul.
It’s something that unironically comes to light multiple times throughout our half-hour chat, so we hope you enjoy the read.
Aside from the puns and jokes, we discuss Jack’s future, that shocking cliffhanger, Jack’s family arcs, his fanboying over costar Danielle Savre’s directorial debut, and more. Check it out!
Hi, Grey, How are you?
I’m good. How are you?
Well, we’re both doing better than Jack right now!
Yeah, totally better.
I was going to joke about your name since it’s gloomy, rainy, and gray here right now. But I promise I’ll keep the corny jokes to myself.
No, I’m into it. Throw them at me! Jokes are my forte.
Well, first, let’s talk about Jack. Poor Jack never makes it out of finales without stressing us out.
I said the same thing!
I know! Why do you think they always use you to leave the series on these cliffhangers? Is it to keep you on your toes or to keep us on our toes since we love you so much?
It’s a lack of being able to stay on his toes that is the problem. See? I got bad jokes too.
I love them. [Laughs]
We’ve seen a few instances of Jack sustaining head injuries and not getting the proper help. I wanted to shake him, which would not do well with his head injury. Do you think we’re headed toward a TBI storyline or something in the future?
That’s interesting. I don’t know. I think usually, with footballers, they can start becoming aggressive. Their brain swells against the skull after too many head injuries. I wonder if something along those lines might happen with Jack.
I know that he has PTSD. We don’t show it much anymore, but I try to throw those little nuances in there when they aren’t writing about them. The writers are good at kind of heading one way, and then they’ll flip something on its head, “Actually, we’re going to decide that Jack is a Plumber now.” [Laughs] But no, I don’t know!
Ha! So you just go in blind sometimes and go from there?
You have no idea. And maybe Jack will go blind because of his injury. Who knows? [Laughs]
Oh yeah, it’s something that they could angle for there! [Laughs]
No, but this definitely opens up many possibilities. Jack puts a lot of stake in being a firefighter. So what would happen if he developed a serious health condition that prevented him from being able to do that? Can you imagine him making a shift to something else?
Right? Look, if it’s going to happen to anyone. It’s probably going to happen to Jack.
Blind kittens in traffic have better luck than him!
Oh my gosh. It’s insane. He’s this really great firefighter, but he keeps falling down and getting hit by things. He’s not very coordinated. He’s also a terrible dancer, but that’s my own little add-on.
Jack is a bit unsteady, no pun intended. But I’ve noticed he’s also a compassionate, supportive person to everyone else but himself. He’s struggled this season, giving himself the grace he extends others. Why is he so hard on himself?
I’m no clinician, but from a psychological standpoint, he’s trying to exude the love he wished he had gotten when he was a kid. In some inadvertent way, he has shown himself that kind of love by doing so for others, by proving to himself that he could be decent.
Speaking of love, it looked like he showed interest in Kate, well, at least until he caught her with Theo. Should we take that as hints at a romance for them? What attracted him to her? Because I’m worried, man. Jack’s love life is a rollercoaster.
Yeah, it’s something else. A lot of ups and downs, no pun intended.
Yeah, she’s a cute new girl at the station who clearly has no interest in him. But he’s in a weird transitional period right now.
He’s experienced a lot of growth. But perhaps subconsciously, he’s seeing someone who might have it together in a way. She can do things that he’s not particularly able to, which is to be a speaker of truth, bold, and not care too much about what people think about her.
He may be drawn to that. But it’s also been a while for him to have any real connection with anybody. Or he may be slowly reverting to old habits. Right?
I’m betting that Kate’s coatroom kiss canceled out the crush. I did find it interesting that Jack was the one to find Theo in that compromising position, given he and Vic shared that grief kiss before. I don’t know if that was a deliberate thing or not.
You know what? I’ve never made that correlation, so that’s a good catch.
It looked like Jack planned to tell Vic right away. How do you think that will affect the relationship between all of them moving forward?
Regardless of his past with Vic and how it had been rocky, especially towards the end, he does have a bond with her that is pretty special because of Dean. His and Vic’s kiss was water under the bridge because they understood where it was coming from, a place of immense pain, and them trying to alleviate that.
So I think Theo, Jack has his relationship with him too, and they have that sort of similar bond and feel responsible for the death of a fellow firefighter. But Theo also has been a bit heavy to be around lately. So that has probably alienated Theo to a degree that essentially made it easier for Jack to say, “I don’t owe this person anything anymore.”
I think he wants to go to Vic and immediately tell her, but when it comes to it, when they’re face to face, he may hesitate. I’m speculating here because I don’t know what the writers have planned, but knowing Jack the way I do, he would hesitate and realize that he needs to pull it back a little and choose his approach more wisely.
Or he could blurt it out and cause a lot of ruckus: one extreme or the other. Jack’s growth and that moment of frustration and hurt especially getting rejected and his lack of dating — that hit him in a particular way.
Jack’s the wildcard right now.
Yeah, if he had caught up to Vic, he would’ve intended to tell her because he’s reactive and upset, but then refrained maybe last minute and would’ve understood that he hasn’t done great things with relationships either.
But that’s just the fantasy I’m holding on to so that, if anything, we can drag the drama out a little bit. Maybe it would be a thing that he wants to tell her, but he doesn’t know how.
It’s definitely going to be so much drama I can already anticipate it. Now, one of my favorite moments this season for your character was Jack’s reunion with his foster sister. I was actually surprised that we didn’t spend more time with it afterward.
He also connected with his biological sister but hasn’t met his birth parents yet.
There’s so much pain there for him. It’s the thing that hurts him the most, not feeling wanted and abandonment issues.
It’s why he has these excessive relationships with women and all of that. He’s definitely been hesitant to meet them anyway. I’m unsure if he wants to since he’s assumed they didn’t want him, and with the little things that are siphoned out to us about that, I’m excited to see where that goes.
Maybe there are even going to be some interesting correlations in terms of serendipity, with other people he knows or other people that might have wronged him or righted him in his life that will have some connection with the family and infiltrate his life that way and complicates or make things better.
I’m speculating, but you never know.
Of course. There really is so much to explore with the character, especially from that angle. As I said, the reunion with his foster sister was a great, emotional, beautiful moment. I hope we get to see a lot more of that because my brother has hearing loss.
Is he fully deaf or hard of hearing?
He isn’t, but I have other family members who are. I love seeing any storyline exploring that, putting ASL at the forefront, or casually incorporating things like that; it’s so important.
The Deaf community is so beautiful just by default because when you use your hands to speak, everything looks like art to me. It looks like an interpretive dance, or they’re almost painting in the wind or something. But that’s always been something really beautiful to me about the community.
As human beings, one of the sole things we want to do is communicate with each other, which is ironic because we are terrible at it, but we’re all desperate to understand each other and our environment.
And it’s interesting to me how the Deaf community, while unable to hear, is often more intuitive and understanding of their environment than the rest of us. I absolutely thought that was a beautiful moment, though. I would love more of that, too.
Following up on that, what was your favorite storyline to explore with Jack this season, and what do you hope you might delve into a bit more next season?
I’m not going to lie. At a certain point, I mesh the seasons together. It’s always one blur to me.
I don’t know if the story I love was actually last season or this season. I always talk to Boris [Kodjoe], like, “You came in… wait, you came in? And he’s like, “Season two,” and I’m like, “Are you sure? That can’t be right.”
Especially after COVID, my sense of time is completely warped.
I completely agree. It’s horrible. I’m the same way. The holidays and all of it, it’s just all a blur. I don’t know. I’m not even entirely sure what month it is right now. I have no idea.
Yeah, a month feels like a week to me. It’s a whole thing.
But favorites, one of my favorite scenes was in Station 19 Season 6 Episode 16; it was Danielle’s episode, actually. Danielle Savre, which by the way, I know Danielle’s awesome, but I didn’t know she was that awesome where she totally kicked that episode’s ass and made it her bitch.
But I think it’s a default or a precursor with actors who also decide to direct. They understand how to talk to actors. Danielle, she’s just so badass. I want to put that out there because I’ve meant to talk about it, but I’ll just do it here. I’m always blown away by that person. She’s just so on it and aware.
Especially after she directed her shorts and then was going to direct the episode, a few episodes before, I talked to her about shots and stuff, and we were one-upping each other.
I was like, “Well, actually, if the lighting does that, then it might conflict with this.” She’s like, “Well, not really, because the camera’s angle would be like this.”
So it was really fun to share that kind of dichotomy with her. Directing is like science and art. She didn’t start that long ago in directing itself, like shadowing and stuff. We have great directors. But Danielle, her directorial debut was one of the best I’ve ever seen. We can all just savor her beautiful episode.
But I loved Jack’s moment with the steering wheel guy. The actor is amazing, a truly lovely person, and his wife plays his wife.
But that kind of a scene that he comes across with these senior-aged people who’ve gone through it, that he’s seeking some sort of wisdom, some wizard on a journey to help guide and advise him on life, I love that.
His relationship with Marsha is wonderful too. She’s his rock. That person is instrumental in his growth and helping him feel loved, appreciated, respected, and supported in a way he didn’t have.
But here’s this man showing Jack things about himself and discussing how he navigated the world and obtained things by holding onto hope and the idea that good things can come back to you. It can still happen, even if it’s way later. It was a special, profound moment for Jack.
I love Jack’s innate ability to connect with people on calls and during emergencies. It’s one of his greatest character strengths.
Yeah, it really is. There have been some great ones. I remember way back with the homeless kid; he saw so much of himself in this kid and tried to be to him what he didn’t have. And there was the autistic kid as well. He has these pivotal moments through these interactions with people in his life.
It’s funny with that last one; it resonated with me because I had a similar connection with an autistic kid I met once.
I was at a petting zoo because I’m a child, and my girlfriend at the time indulged me because we were at a festival, and I wanted to hang out with the goats and pigs because it was more attuned to my comfort level.
But I’m just standing there with her, and we’re watching the animals be ridiculous. And this little boy comes up to me, and he just holds my hand, and I look over. For some reason, it was so beautiful to me. He was smiling, and he just wanted to hold my hand.
And I looked at my girlfriend, who was tearing up and smiling. And nothing in that moment was corrupted or ruined by the world or life. He was just so present, taking it all in and enjoying himself.
But that moment really gets me. So when we do things like that in the show where you’re having these connections with people, they are just so beautiful, have so much weight, and are so pivotal in life and remind us how important connection is and community.
I love those moments, too, and how meaningful they are. That’s a beautiful, touching experience. Clearly, it’s something you have in common with your character. He must have really picked up on your good spirit and comforting energy and connected with you at that moment.
His brother came up apologizing, I guess he’s used to dragging him away from people, and I’m like, “It’s fine!” To me, it was such a sweet, pure moment.
***This Interview was edited for length and clarity.
It’s always best to leave things a little better, more hopeful, and brighter than you found them, so I can’t think of a better place to conclude this interview.
So, over to you, Station 19 Fanatics! Sound off below with all of your thoughts and reactions.
If you need to catch up with the series and follow Jack’s complex journey, you can watch Station 19 online here via TV Fanatic. You can also check out our Station 19 Reviews.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is an insomniac who spends late nights and early mornings binge-watching way too many shows and binge-drinking way too much tea. Her eclectic taste makes her an unpredictable viewer with an appreciation for complex characters, diverse representation, dynamic duos, compelling stories, and guilty pleasures. You’ll definitely find her obsessively live-tweeting, waxing poetic, and chatting up fellow Fanatics and readers. Follow her on Twitter.