A tangled web we weave! Dick Wolf’s characters on Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D. and Chicago Med are intertwined on a variety of levels, including siblings, marriages and failed romances.
Fans got a taste for the crossover connections early on with Chicago Fire’s Gabby Dawson (Monica Raymund) and Chicago P.D.’s Antonio Dawson (Jon Seda). The fictional sister and brother duo first appeared on screen together during season 1 of Fire, which is the first One Chicago series from Wolf. (The show debuted in October 2012.)
“When they first offered me the role, Dick Wolf said he was the brother to Gabriela Dawson and he is a detective,” Seda recalled during an interview with Starry magazine in October 2017. “So, I think it was pretty much left open for me to bring to it whatever I was going to bring to Antonio. Of course, now, how they write him in the scripts …That’s pretty much it — he’s the brother of Gabby and he’s a detective.”
The LA Brea star, who was part of the original cast of Chicago P.D. when it premiered in January 2014, noted that his chemistry with Raymund happened quickly.
“We didn’t really have time to rehearse and get to know each other,” Seda explained. “She’s just such a pro and such a great person that she makes it so easy for me to walk on set and see her and work with her. She’s just so good and she’s a joy to work with.”
Not long after viewers were introduced to Chicago P.D.’s Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) during the procedural drama’s first season, they learned that he had an equally talented brother, Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss), who later became a lead character on Chicago Med.
Off screen, the actors’ bond goes beyond just being friends — they have experience saving a person’s life together.
“My favorite fan story is actually, like, a real-life rescue encounter,” Soffer told reporters at Comic Con in July 2021, recalling a time when the duo helped rescue a woman who was in a car crash. “I was out to dinner with Nick Gehlfuss, who plays my brother on Chicago Med, and we were walking home from dinner and we heard screeching tires behind us, like, a block away.”
The Mob Doctor alum revealed that the woman’s vehicle had rolled into a ditch after hitting another car.
“Nick and I, we ran, and he was like, ‘What are we doing?’ And I was like, ‘We go, we have to go.’ And we sprang into action,” Soffer continued. “We jumped into the ditch and we pulled this woman out. The car was on its side, we pulled her out of the driver’s side window, basically, and got her up.”
The In Time actor noted that the woman was surprised to see both actors, who play Chicago first responders, on the scene of the accident. “She was like ‘Aaah!’ It was, like, a weird meta experience for her that the Halstead brothers were saving her life,” Soffer added.
Scroll down to see how some of the other One Chicago characters are related — and which crossovers led to romances:
