Chicago P.D. Showrunner on the Season 11 Premiere and Upton's Difficult Headspace

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for Chicago P.D.'s Season 11 premiere, Episode 1, "Unpacking." Read at your own risk!]

The Intelligence Unit is back on the case in the new season of Chicago P.D. Following an extended hiatus due to the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in Hollywood, the NBC police procedural drama, much like its counterparts Chicago Fire and Chicago Med, has jumped ahead six months in time, leaving fans to slowly piece together what has happened in the interim to the first responders in the Windy City.

The Season 11 premiere of P.D. shines a light on the inner turmoil of Det. Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos), who takes the heartbreaking step of dissolving her marriage to Det. Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer). Following Soffer's decision to leave the series after 10 years, the writers decided to relocate the newly resigned Halstead to Bolivia, where he has been working with the U.S. Army to track down drug cartels. In the process, Halstead neglected to tell his wife that he was extending his trip indefinitely. (Spiridakos, who first recurred in Season 4 before being upgraded to series regular in Season 5, is also planning to depart at the end of this 13-episode season.)

Tasked with shadowing a crisis prevention unit in the premiere, Upton finds her approach to policing at odds with the team's mental health clinician, Dr. Julian Mitchell (Jason Bowen). The crisis team arrives on the scene of a residential building, where a distraught man named Cam was attempting to break through the front door. After finding two battered and bloodied bodies in one of the apartments, Upton immediately suspects that Cam had motive to hurt at least one of the victims — only to discover that it was actually Cam's older brother, Derek, who was responsible for beating both victims in a misguided attempt to avenge Cam for being bullied. The realization that her anger has clouded her ability to do her job is a harsh wake-up call for Upton, who has still not fully recovered from losing her connection with Halstead.

"Hailey, we all miss things," Sgt. Hank Voight (John Beghe) tells Upton during a late-night visit to her apartment, where she is still "unpacking" — literally and metaphorically — the life she once shared with Halstead, at the end of the episode.

"I don't. Not like that," Upton says. "I wasn't calm with Cam. It was all right there in front of me. He was telling me in the interview room and I missed it. … And lately, I don't know if I'm not shutting down. I'm angry, and I don't know why."

TV Guide caught up with Chicago P.D. showrunner and executive producer Gwen Sigan to discuss why she decided to break up "Upstead," the new challenges that lie ahead for Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) and Burgess (Marina Squerciati), and why fans should be excited (and maybe a little scared) for what is to come for Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) and Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar) this season.

More on One Chicago:

• Chicago P.D. Season 11: Everything We Know
• Chicago Med Bosses Say Don't Expect a Crossover in Season 9, but Expect Plenty of New Beginnings
• Chicago Fire Season 12: Severide's Return Is Going to Send Shockwaves Through Firehouse 51

Let's get the most important question out of the way: Are we supposed to believe or infer that the only direct contact Upton has had with Halstead for the last year has been through signing these divorce papers?

Gwen Sigan: In my mind, they've had contact back and forth — calls, texts, probably signing these papers, letters, that sort of thing. But they haven't seen each other since he left.

OK. Given that you had to write within your circumstances, which consisted of Jesse's desire to leave the show on short notice, what was your thought process behind Halstead not calling or contacting Upton at all last season and having him offscreen for that chunk of time? And what would you say to fans who think the Halstead they have watched for 10 seasons would not have done such a thing to the love of his life?

Sigan: It's always hard to write a character off the show and to do it quickly, and hopefully in somewhat of a satisfying way. I think for us, it makes sense with how they got married and what was built into that relationship. They love each other; they're kindred spirits. In my mind, they have this thing that they always understood each other, and they always trusted each other, which for both of them is a pretty rare thing, especially Upton.

But a big part of that relationship was also [built around] things that they had done that they regretted, things they hid from each other. There was a lot of trauma involved in that relationship. Them getting married was a response to a really brutal case and something that Upton couldn't forgive herself for, and she was reaching out to him because he was this light, and he could make her feel better and make her feel whole. Twisted up in that relationship was a lot of trauma, a lot of dysfunction, and a lot of things that couldn't be solved from [marrying] someone else, so I think that it was bound to have cracks in it. And we just had to accelerate some of those cracks.

Upton tells Voight that she is angry and doesn't know why, but she insists that she is not mad at Halstead. Where is Upton mentally by the end of this premiere? How will Halstead — or just his looming shadow — factor into her departure this season?

Sigan: I think Halstead almost was a trigger for a lot of things with her mentally. Obviously, six months have passed and she's finding herself in a situation where I think she, as a character, doesn't even know exactly what she's feeling, which is an interesting place to be. I think we're there a lot more of the time [in real life] than we'd like to admit, where sometimes our emotions are not the easiest things to grapple with and to piece out. And especially if you're someone like her who likes to be in control and denies a lot of what she feels and just shoves it down and says "I'm okay" and keeps going, [Upton] is struggling with that now. She can't keep going. It's coming out, whether she wants it to come out or not.

We will see this season her piecing that out and understanding what it is that's going on and what she needs to do to get out of it and how to deal with some of that anger. It's internal anger — it's anger at yourself — and it's coming out externally. I think she's angry at herself for a lot of things. So we'll see that — and Halstead is just a piece of it. It's really more about Upton as we go through the season and her dealing with what she really wants and what might make her happy.

Voight seems to feel a sense of responsibility to be there for Upton more than ever before, even though he doesn't have the answers to her questions about how to make things better. What did you want to convey in that final scene between them, and how will that relationship continue to evolve this season?

Sigan: I've always loved their relationship. I think it's almost this relationship of peers, in a nice way. He's not that introspective. [Laughs.] This man is really not! So, he's not necessarily the person that's going to have the answers for you on that. But I think he can understand, to some degree, that what she needs right now is just somebody to sit there with her. And she wants the answers, but nobody can really give them to her but herself at this point.

That last scene, in my mind, is him trying to care for her and not knowing how to necessarily, but sitting there and trying. We will see that through the rest of the season. We will kind of see Voight in a different place. He's always cared for his unit; I think he's always tried to keep it together. But he really has always been an island; he's always been this lone wolf. And what would happen if he didn't want to be anymore? What would happen without him knowing that he sort of becomes different?

We learn that Voight is also hesitant to name a temporary replacement for Ruzek. Ruzek survived being shot in the Season 10 finale, but he's still not in the same physical shape six months later. What can we expect for Ruzek and Burgess both individually and as a couple this season? Will we see them talk about — either in the present day or in flashbacks — what they went through in the last six months?

Sigan: Yeah. We can expect a lot of growth from them. I think it's so interesting that they've, in some ways, been together this whole ride of this show, but just in different forms. Now, they've made this commitment that they are going to be a family and a unit, and what does that mean when you get tested? How do you get through challenges now that you're two people together and you need to be open and vulnerable, and you need to give a lot more and try to understand where the other person's coming from?

Obviously, Burgess has been through a very similar struggle of having been shot on the job. But how she responded was completely different than how Ruzek responds, since they are such different people [and] their minds work very differently. So to see them now get through that and her support him in that way, it's a nice ride. It gives you a lot of growth and a lot of seeing them bond and become even closer than they already are.

Let's talk about the other characters as well. Atwater offers to spend time with Upton, who insists that she will be fine but probably could have used some support. We briefly see Platt (Amy Morton) try to force the issue with Voight about naming a temporary replacement for Ruzek, and we hear Torres is out on furlough helping his mother right now. What is in store for each of them this season?

Sigan: Torres will be back in Episode 4 of this season, and he'll be back with a bang. He's coming back and he's got a really great undercover story with some really fun new characters and new big bads, and we are going to explore a new side of Torres. He's always been this character — and we explored it last season a bit — [who] has such a sweetness to him. He's got such an "I just want to be here and help" [mentality] — that is really what motivates him. But he's also someone that has been through a lot in his life and has had parts of himself that he hates almost groomed and sort of used by other people. So, there's this dichotomy of two different people inside of him, and we're exploring dropping him into a kind of wild world and seeing what happens!

With LaRoyce, I am pumped for his storyline this year. Last season, Atwater had so much growth with his family, with his father, and they got to such a wonderful place. Atwater really is someone that has so much responsibility in his hands and has so many different facets of him trying to be everything to everyone all at once, so we're gonna shake him up a little bit this year. So, get ready! It's really exciting. It's a fun story. He's gonna kill it.

Platt will continue to be good old Platt. She is supporting everybody in the unit. I think she and Voight have a lot of really interesting scenes. They are kind of [each other's] last confidant. We've got a really young group now surrounding Voight, so she represents so much of that old-school trust that he has and the peer that he needs to go to [for advice or guidance]. So, we'll see that this season and see her growing with the unit and being there just to support all of them as they get in their dilemmas, as they always do. [Laughs.]

Chicago P.D. airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on NBC. Episodes stream the next day on Peacock.