9-1-1's Ryan Guzman on Dancing in His Underwear Like Tom Cruise

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for 9-1-1, Season 8 Episode 6, "Confessions." Read at your own risk!]

Eddie Diaz (Ryan Guzman) is ready to turn over a new leaf.

In Thursday's episode of 9-1-1, the fan-favorite Army-medic-turned-firefighter seemingly had a major personal breakthrough, months after his teen son Christopher (Gavin McHugh), in a fit of rage, moved back to Texas indefinitely to live with his paternal grandparents. For the first time in 23 years, Eddie decides to go to confession and reveals the immense guilt he still carries for traumatizing Christopher after he walked in on Eddie embracing the doppelgänger of Shannon (Devin Kelley), Eddie's late ex-wife and Christopher's mother. (The priest is played by Gavin Stenhouse, whom eagle-eyed viewers may remember as Bobby's clergyman in the first two seasons.)

And while Eddie runs away before he is given any real guidance, the same priest later bumps into him in public and tells him that he needs to stop punishing himself for his past actions. In fact, the priest goes as far as to say that Eddie needs to do something for himself for once, given that he has always lived his life in service of other people. The realization leads Eddie to shave his infamous mustache — sorry, mustache lovers! — and, in an homage to Tom Cruise's famous scene in Risky Business, dance without pants in his living room.

"I went to Chad Lowe, who's directing that episode, and I went to [showrunner] Tim [Minear], and I said, 'I want to go shot-for-shot. I want to do as best as I can to do the same version of Tom Cruise,'" Guzman, who famously played a professional dancer in the Step Up movies, told TV Guide of his approach to that hilarious sequence. "But in that same essence, I don't want it to be perfect. I don't want Eddie to be a choreographed dancer. I don't want him to be a good dancer. I just want him to have fun, and I want to showcase that as much as I possibly can. [I want to see him] living his dream, as if Risky Business was one of his favorite movies."

But just as Eddie comes down from an emotional high, Buck (Oliver Stark) shows up unannounced at his front door with two beers in hand. Buck's boyfriend, Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.), has just broken up with him. After discovering that they had an ex in common (remember Connie Britton's Abby from the first season?), Tommy confessed that he didn't want to hold Buck back from exploring his bisexuality and couldn't bear the thought of having his heart broken one day by Buck. Without giving Eddie's mustache-less face or Buck's sudden arrival a second thought, the two best friends sit down on Eddie's couch and drink together in silence.

Below, Guzman unpacks that wild episode, how that final scene represents the start of a new chapter for Eddie, and how he really feels about the discourse around Eddie's sexuality.

What exactly do you think Eddie has learned about himself — and what have you, in turn, learned about Eddie — during his time away from Christopher?

Ryan Guzman: I would say Eddie has learned the fact that he has not taken care of himself for this long, and that's a shocker to him. He's been taking care of everybody else — his son, his family, his deceased wife before she passed away, even ex-girlfriends. He's tried to take care of them and their feelings, but he hasn't really taken care of himself so much, so it's a shocker at his age in life. And how do you go about that [at] such a later stage in life? That's something that should be just [a] given. You should be able to take care of yourself. So it's very eye-opening to him. What I've learned about Eddie is actually just a similar concept. It's something that I've been living this year of my life. A lot of changes happened in my personal life this last year, so I'm on kind of the similar route, and it was very nice to use Eddie as a kind of therapeutic way to get into that. 

Eddie has spent the first third of this season punishing himself for traumatizing Christopher, and he's gone through a lot of that inner turmoil on his own, with minimal input from his work family. Where do you think Eddie's inclination to self-punish comes from?

Guzman: I think it stems from his mom and his dad. I believe that we've seen their relationship indicate that his mom and his dad had a version of life that they wanted him to be, and he always tried to uphold that version and become that person. I think it was Season 3 when [Eddie] comes back [from the Army] in "Eddie Begins" [Season 3, Episode 15] where his dad is just gloating about him being a Silver Star [recipient], but not realizing that took him losing some of his good friends and having to see some of the most horrific events in his life. And then him not saying anything to his dad, him just shying away and letting his Latin dad believe what he needs to believe. So I do think that the mother-father relationship in Eddie's life has led him down a people-pleasing route [where] he puts other people in front of his own needs. I think that's something he hasn't been aware of up until now.

At the start of this season, showrunner Tim Minear told me that the final scene of Episode 6 is probably his favorite scene that you had ever shot for the show, and we now know that he was referring to your homage to Tom Cruise's Risky Business dance. Fans have been wanting to see Eddie dance on the show for years, so this was a pleasant surprise. How did you approach shooting that sequence? How many times did you shoot it?

Guzman: I just had fun with it. I went to Chad Lowe, who's directing that episode, and I went to Tim, and I said, "I want to go shot-for-shot. I want to do as best as I can to do the same version of Tom Cruise. But in that same essence, I don't want it to be perfect. I don't want Eddie to be a choreographed dancer. I don't want him to be a good dancer. I just want him to have fun, and I want to showcase that as much as I possibly can. [I want to see him] living his dream, as if Risky Business was one of his favorite movies." I believe we did six or seven takes, but each take, I'd get done and I'm going through the whole thing [in my head]. I'm like, "Oh, no, I want to make that little change, that little change." And then Chad would come up, and he's like, "Just smile! Dude, this is incredible. This is awesome." So that made me feel really happy and want to give a little bit more to the scene. 

More recommendations:

• The best TV shows on Hulu right now
• The best shows on Netflix right now
• The best shows on Amazon Prime Video right now
• The best shows on Max right now

Was the homage to Risky Business all Tim's idea, or did you have any input into what Eddie was going to be doing after he shaved his mustache?

Guzman: I think it was a collaboration between Tim and Kenny Choi. So Tim last year had asked me, "Hey, how do you feel about dancing on screen again?" And I go, "Let's do it." But his idea, I think, was originally to use the gimbal — I think it's the biggest gimbal in the world — for the cruise scenes, when they flipped the whole casino. He goes, "What do you think about doing a Bob Fosse kind of thing where you're dancing throughout the entirety as we're flipping it?" And I go, "That's an incredible idea." So I started researching that but it kind of fizzled out, and he still had that idea in his head of Eddie dancing. And luckily, Kenny came with Risky Business.

Shortly after his Risky Business dance, Eddie hears the door bell ring, and he finds Buck standing at his door with two beers. They then proceed to drink those beers in silence. What do you think is going through Eddie's mind when Buck shows up at his door like that, and how would you say that is indicative of the quiet comfort they've been able to find in each other over the years?

Guzman: I think what's going through Eddie's mind is, "I just had a great time. I just had something for myself. I'm on cloud nine. I'm living my dream right now. I didn't know I could be this good in my life. I finally gave something to myself." The fact that Buck comes over, he says not one thing about Eddie shaving his mustache, and just gives him a beer and just hops on the couch, I think, indicates the fact that they're so [connected]. I kind of pull from my own experience. To have someone in your life — a brother, somebody in your community — to just not say one thing, just to be comfortable around and just live in your own space is world-changing. So I think it's so big for that fact that Buck sits down, and he's just living a nightmare. But on the other hand of this, Eddie is living in an extreme dream. Those can be polar opposites and they can obviously create some kind of rift, but in this relationship, it's like nothing needs to be said. Let [Buck] live his life. Let [Eddie] live his life. And they can coexist in parallel. 

Are we going to see Eddie react to what has happened to Buck? Will there be any kind of aftermath?

Guzman: You see reactions, but I don't think you're going to see the reactions you expect because Eddie has spent his whole entire life saving other people and helping other people. For Eddie's growth and the new version of Eddie — which I hope to showcase a little bit more throughout the season and next season, hopefully — it'll be more about giving [something] to himself. It is not selfish at any moment. It's more so like, "I have to give something that I've not been giving to myself." The priest was giving Eddie the idea to do such [a thing]. So Eddie looks at what Buck's going through as, "Man, that sucks. I hope you figure it out. I am here for you to bounce your ideas off. I'll be the ear. I'll be the blank canvas. You can just bounce your ideas off. I won't necessarily give you all the answers. I think that you can figure that out, because I have to use all my energy to try and do this new version of me and try to give myself something that I deserve and I've earned."

To your point, Eddie shaving off his mustache does feel like the end of a new chapter and the start of a new one for him. Where he goes from here remains an open question. Do you think being a father and having a job he loves would really be enough to fulfill Eddie in the long-term? Or does he feel like there's maybe something or somebody else he should have in his life to truly get the full happiness that he feels he deserves?

Guzman: He needs himself — and I pull from my own life in this. You can go throughout your entirety of life giving to others and not giving to yourself, and it leaves this vacant hole. So as much as you feel good about your job or giving to others and being selfless, if you have not learned how to give to yourself, you're always going to feel vacant; you're always going to feel like there's not enough. So it has less to do with him enjoying his job more or him cultivating better relationships with other people — it's more about cultivating a relationship with himself and understanding where he is and what he needs, and then learning and growing slowly.

But surely, anything you start in the beginning is usually something you're going to suck at. So it's not going to be an easy trial and tribulation era for Eddie. It's going to be a new life, and where that leads him, I think, is something wholesome. It's something that allows him to feel really grounded in who he is, and from that moment forward, then relationships can happen [and] I think the next part of his life can happen. Another girl could come into his life and he could be more accepting, or the relationship between him and his son could be a little bit more connected and less trying to be a best friend, more like a father-son kind of relationship. 

If I'm not mistaken, tonight's episode marks the first time that Eddie has explicitly called himself straight, but there are a number of fans who have always seen him differently. You're obviously aware of the fans online who see the romantic potential in Buck and Eddie's relationship. Where do you stand in that conversation? Has that ever been a conscious consideration in your mind?

Guzman: Yeah. Me and Oliver are well-aware of the fandom and where everybody else sees the characters going, and I've seen this as people are going to see what they want to see and they want to believe what they want to believe. I'm not here to say that's right or wrong. I'm very indifferent to it. I love the love, and I've always said that.

For me, I thought it was a beautiful indication, a beautiful opportunity, especially when Buck comes out as bisexual, to showcase to the world a heterosexual man and a bisexual man living or hanging around each other and being best friends, brothers, without anything changing, without any kind of awkwardness or weirdness. Let's showcase to the world how you should treat each other. Your sexuality shouldn't change how you interact with an individual. You should still be able to love them.

And whatever implications other people have on Eddie for why he might be the way they see him, I would say, "Let's revisit that. Let's see that. Let's bring that to the table and talk about it," because I think men should be vulnerable. I think men should be able to be vulnerable, especially with other men, [regardless of] any indication of any sexual preference. So I think Tim and I did have a conversation about this, and I just thought it was an incredible opportunity — especially now, with the state of the world and state of America, it's like: We need this. We need to showcase togetherness and unity and inclusion without it being highlighted so much. It's like, you don't have to go through the spiel of who you are. I already accept you, and I already love you. 

9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu.