Explained the death of Cammie’s husband, Kimberly Williams-Paisley

SPOILER ALERT: This story provides key 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 of Kimberly Williams-Paisley’s 9-1-1 call operator Cammie — and sets up a multi-episode emergency when the ABC drama returns in January.

The episode showed Cammie interacting with a choking victim via video chat, showing the woman 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 suffocating in front of her eyes as she watched helplessly. When she tried to call 9-1-1 for help at the time, the call went to voicemail.

Her husband’s tragic death prompted Cammie to give up her career as a music producer in Nashville to become a 9-1-1 operator and make a major donation to the center. “9-1-1: Nashville,” showrunner Rashad Raisani said Variety that Cammie’s backstory stemmed from a real-life choking death he witnessed.

“The first thing that inspired me to do it was director Brad Buecker and I were having dinner in Nashville in early spring,” Raisani said. “We were still doing location scouting, and while we were there, unfortunately, a woman at the table behind us died 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-boggling. As 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 a great thing’. origin story for a character who had one life, and then that happens, then the second half of her life will be something completely different’.

Williams-Paisley said Raisani told her about what he saw 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.

“Knowing that these things happened, it’s something I’ve thought about a lot,” Williams-Paisley said. “While working on my character, I emotionally delved into her backstory, and what that must have felt like. I also went to a 9-1-1 call center. I also think a lot about those operators, and how they keep their home lives at home while 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 tonight in this episode – and in the next episodes coming up. January.”

Although Raisani noted that this was “the first time we’ve worked deeply 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 the episodes will showcase Cammie’s time as a major music producer in Nashville.

“Yes, that’s actually something I’m filming right now. Today I’m on set, and yes, we’ll definitely explore that further,” 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 she was doing for years before she changed careers. There are some really fun things that come with it, too.”

The midseason return of “9-1-1: Nashville” will also feature a multi-episode arc that revisits the hackers who took over Los Angeles on “9-1-1” a few seasons ago and were never caught. Now they’ve set their sites on Nashville and taken over the emergency operating system towards 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 yielded,” Raisani said. “And since they never caught the ‘9-1-1’ hackers, I thought, ‘Why did they stop? They got a lot of money, so maybe they’re ready to attack a new city.’ They went to the other show and never got caught.

An immediate consequence of that chaos was Jessica Capshaw’s Blythe being knocked off her horse and thrown into a barbed wire fence, before being left unconscious and bleeding in the wild. The animal was spooked by the natural disaster warnings issued by the hackers, leaving Blythe unconscious and alone.

“There’s a lot going to happen in the city in Episode 7, so part of our dramatic tension will be Blythe and no one even knows she’s missing,” Raisani said. He added that Blythe “has a lot of guts and toughness, and I wanted to put her through a crucible.”