- - ‘9-1-1: Nashville’ Boss and Kimberly Williams-Paisley on the Real-Life Tragedy That Inspired Cammie’s Backstory in Midseason Finale

Jennifer MaasNovember 14, 2025 at 4:00 AM

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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major plot details for Thursday’s midseason finale of ABC’s ”9-1-1: Nashville.”

ABC’s “9-1-1: Nashville” midseason finale, which aired Thursday, revealed the tragic backstory for Kimberly Williams-Paisley’s 9-1-1 call operator Cammie — and set up a multi-episode emergency coming when the ABC drama returns in January.

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The episode showed Cammie dealing with a choking victim over video chat, walking the woman through how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on herself. After that incident, Cammie revealed how the emergency hit very close to home for her: Her husband had died by choking in front of her as she looked on helplessly. At the time, when she tried to call 9-1-1 for help, the call went to voicemail.

Her husband’s tragic death was what pushed Cammie to give up her career as a Nashville music producer to become a 9-1-1 dispatch operator, and give a large donation to the center. “9-1-1: Nashville” showrunner Rashad Raisani told Variety that Cammie’s backstory was born out of a real-life choking death he witnessed.

“The first thing that inspired that was, director Brad Buecker and I were having dinner in Nashville in the early spring,” Raisani said. “We were still doing location scouting, and while we were there, unfortunately, a woman passed away at the table behind us from a choking incident. It happened in the dark, and her poor husband was there, just helpless. We didn’t even realize what was happening until it was already over. It was really mind blowing. While we were talking about Cammie’s character and what would make her unique — I still get goosebumps thinking about it, that poor family — I just thought, ‘well, that would be such an origin story for a character who had one life, and then that thing happens, then the second half of her life is going to be something very different.'”

Williams-Paisley said Raisani told her about what he had witnessed the “first time we talked” about the role of Cammie. It “definitely adds weight to what I’m doing in the performance” on “9-1-1: Nashville,” she said.

“Because I know that these things have happened, it’s something I thought a lot about,” Williams-Paisley said. “Working on my character, I really dug into her backstory, emotionally, and what that must have felt like. I did also go visit a 9-1-1 call center. I think a lot about those operators, too, and how they keep their home life at home when they’re at work. They have to, in order to do a good job. But inevitably, sometimes your real life comes into your work life, and that’s what happens in this episode tonight — and in the following episodes that will be coming in January.”

While Raisani noted this was the “the first time that we’ve done a deep cut with Cammie,” the episode is “just the tip of the iceberg for her” and her backstory. When the show returns in January, Williams-Paisley said episodes will showcase Cammie’s time working as a big-time music producer in Nashville.

“Yes, in fact, that’s something I’m shooting right now. Today I’m on set, and yes, we’re definitely going to be exploring that more,” Williams-Paisley said. “That was a big part of Cammie’s life before everything changed and she lost her husband. But it’s still a big part of her, and it’s something that she spent years doing before she switched careers. There’s some very fun stuff coming up with that as well.”

The midseason return of “9-1-1: Nashville” will also feature a multi-episode arc that revisits the hackers that famously took over Los Angeles on “9-1-1” a few seasons ago, and where never caught. Now, they’ve set their sites on Nashville and take over the emergency operating system by the end of the episode.

“‘9-1-1’ had a hack a few years ago, and what I always thought was that we left a little bit of money on the table about what that hack could have turned into,” Raisani said. “And since they never caught the hackers from ‘9-1-1,’ I thought, ‘Well, why did they stop? They got a lot of money, so maybe they are ready to attack a new city.’ They hit the other show, and they never got caught.”

One immediate effect of that chaos was Jessica Capshaw’s Blythe being knocked from her horse and thrown into a barbed wire fence, then left passed out and bleeding in the wild. The animal was startled due to the natural disaster alerts set off by the hackers, leaving Blythe unconscious and alone.

“A lot of stuff is going to happen in the city in Episode 7, so part of I think our dramatic tension is going to be Blythe and that nobody even knows she’s missing,” Raisani said. He added that Blythe “has a lot of grit and toughness, and I wanted to put her through a crucible.”

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”