Exclusive: Peter Krause Talks Previous Roles & New Season of ‘9-1-1:’ “I think that there’s an Adam Braverman underneath Bobby Nash”

With the new season of the hit first responders drama 9-1-1 on the horizon, we got to sit down with Peter Krause for a bit and discuss the progression of his character, Bobby, as well as some of his previous roles in great shows like HBO’s Six Feet Under, the long-running family drama Parenthood and the (sadly) short-lived finance drama Dirty Sexy Money.

You’ve been in some very successful shows over the years. What do you think you get recognized for the most now?

It’s a smattering. I take great pride in being called my character names when I’m out and about. So I get called Casey from Sports Night, but I get called Nate from Six Feet Under; or if you’re a Parenthood fan, I get “Fever” because of Adam Braverman’s dancing. For a while I’d hear a lot of Fever. On this show, it’s Cap. I’ve been in the grocery store and had people say, “Hey, Cap.”

Bob D’Amico/ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection

I was a huge, huge fan of Six Feet Under. I’ve probably watched it a few times through now, and I feel like it’s kind of a timeless show.

I love Six Feet Under. You don’t get to make those all the time. I think that before then, the only meditations on life and death were wartime or hospitals shows, M*A*S*H or ER.

The death industry doesn’t get covered a lot. When the show was on, I was working at a monument company engraving portraits into tombstones. So I found it very relatable.

What a unique job that you had. The first time I found engraved portrait of somebody, not a statue of somebody, I said, When did this start happening? There’s somebody’s face.

It’s been around a while, I think.

I mean, I don’t hang out in cemeteries.

Courtesy of Everett Collection

Well, I have, because of that job.  It was a family business that they brought with them from the Soviet Union. A lot of Russians did it, apparently.

Interesting.

It was a weird job for sure. You’ve gotten to play such a wide variety of jobs in all of your shows. If you had to pick one, for an alternate universe where you couldn’t act, which job would you want to do?

Well, I mean, I guess the fire captain sort of takes the cake there. It’s the most exciting job. Not that I didn’t enjoy portraying a sportscaster or a reluctant funeral director. Firefighters have some very difficult hours, but it is a meaningful job, not that being a funeral director or sports caster isn’t.

Mathieu Young/Fox/Courtesy: Everett Collection

Adam Braverman, of course, the great thing about that role, was that Adam Braverman on Parenthood was an everyday superhero. He wanted to be the best father, the best brother, the best husband. He was the embodiment of a really good guy. And I think that underneath the guilt of accidentally killing his family, such a heavy thing that I started with on 9-1-1, Bobby Nash is very much like Adam. Underneath it all, he carries the weight of his past and, subsequently, his addiction. I think that there’s an Adam Braverman underneath Bobby Nash.

Mitchell Haaseth/NBC/Courtesy: Everett Collection

And you were a lawyer, too, on Dirty Sexy Money. That was a great show as well.

I couldn’t resist getting to play with Donald Sutherland for a little while. People were crazy for that show. When I look at it next to Succession, Dirty Sexy Money was pretty much the same show.

I thought so too!

There’re different angles, but we were PG-13, and had some boundaries that you don’t have on HBO. I’m a Succession fan. I think that’s a terrific cast. They did a really, really nice job at that show. It would’ve been fun to have done Dirty Sexy Money without the limitations and have that cast and Craig writing the show that he really wanted to write.

Vivian Zink / ©Touchstone Television / courtesy Everett Collection

Well, they’re always bringing shows back, so you never know.

Yeah.

Speaking of jobs, did you have any memorable ones prior to acting?

When I was in college, I guess the weirdest job I had was running a puppet wagon for a Parks and Rec department back in Minnesota. I would travel around to parks and do puppet shows. There’s a story that I told years and years ago, in the late ’90s when I was on John Stewart, but I actually crashed the puppet wagon.

Were there any casualties?

Well, that was the joke of the police department when they showed up. They said, you’re going to have to come in and file a report. There were puppets in the road that had been run over, and they jokingly said, “because of all the casualties.”

I hope you got some photos.

I did not. This was the 1990s, prior to iPhones. I did not have a camera on me at the time.

Oh, that’s too bad. That’s how I feel about my tombstone engraving job. We didn’t have iPhones either, and I would’ve had so many more cool pictures.

Well, isn’t that a funny thing? 40 years later, everybody has a camera on all the time.

It’s almost too much though. We don’t need to photograph every second of every day and share it with every person we’ve ever met.

I agree. How do you fully experience a moment as yourself if you’re doing that?

That’s my question all the time. You’re not living the moment if you’re stopping to take a picture. And also no one wants to watch your recording of a live show you saw.

No, we’re inundated. I think we’ve gone over the edge years ago.

Yeah. I kind of want a time machine back to the 1980s. I feel like that’s the time I would really like to be an adult, but I got stuck in this one.

The analog world before everything audio or visual could be digitized and shared over and over and over and over again.

Yes. That’s the world I want to go back to. We’ve got to build a time machine.

That’ll be my next show. Time travel. I’ll do a time travel show.

Season 7 of 9-1-1 begins March 14 on ABC.