Marina Squerciati was worried about the repercussions of one moment.
Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) has been on a rollercoaster for the last year of Chicago PD. While characters like Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) and Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) have had a steady barrage of bad things (no other way to put it, really), Burgess has had both good and bad.
The season 11 episode “Safe Harbor” was a perfect example. The character navigated a devastating case involving refugees, and then she came home to an engagement from Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger). Talk about emotional whiplash.
Marina Squerciati was scared to shoot the proposal scene
It was a rewarding moment for both characters, but Marina Squerciati admitted that she was scared to shoot the film in which her Burzek got engaged. She told CinemaBlend that she wasn’t sure what the future for the couple would look like, since they’ve been struggling for so long:
“I think I was a little scared because I was like, ‘What’s gonna happen now?’ We’re so used to tumult between them. But [showrunner] Gwen [Sigan] is like, ‘No, they’re steady now.'”
To Gwen Sigan’s credit, she’s absolutely right. Burgess and Ruzek have been put through the ringer so regularly that the logical next step for them as a couple is to embrace stability. At least, as much stability as their emotionally taxing jobs allow.
Burzek is going to be more ‘stable’ in season 11
Squerciati praised the Chicago PD showrunner for recognizing the importance of furthering the story, and for insisting that Burzek need to derive trauma, or storylines from other sources:
“So now we find other sources of drama, because they’re the steady couple, which I love. The fans deserve that.”
It’s also worth noting that stable couples have been hard to come by on Chicago PD, historically. It seemed as though things would stabilize for Hailey Upton and Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) after they got married, but it actually coincided with their most difficult stretch yet.
Halstead quit the force and moved out of the Chicago, and as we saw from the season 11 premiere, the couple are now divorced. Hank Voight and Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) are currently single, and Dante Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar) recently made the head-scratching decision to sleep with one of his informants…
Basically, Burgess and Ruzek are the most stable romantic pairing on the show, and we hope it stays that way!
