“9-1-1: Lone Star”'s Jim Parrack on Judd's alcohol battle — and the 'important' scene that was cut

9-1-1: Lone Star actor Jim Parrack knows what makes his character Judd tick.

"It's family," the True Blood alum tells Entertainment Weekly of the "spine" that subconsciously guides everything his firefighter has done on the Fox drama over the past five seasons. "That applied to the original 126 that got wiped out. And then it applied to Grace — she was everything."

But then, during hiatus after season 4, actress Sierra McClain (who played Grace) announced she was not returning for Lone Star's fifth and final season. "When we found out Sierra wasn't coming back, my hope was that they would give Judd the opportunity to kind of demonstrate what it's like when the thing you live for has been removed from your life," says Parrack.

That manifested on screen as a progressive revelation over the first nine episodes of season 5 that Judd was struggling with alcohol. That journey culminated on Monday's episode, "All Who Wander," which saw Judd lying that he was sober; defying orders from his captain, Owen (Rob Lowe), and entering a gun range with ammunition firing off due to a fire; and forsaking his relationship with God, something he'd formerly held as paramount.

Here, Parrack shares with EW what was going through Judd's head as he walked into that firing range, the dark thoughts he had staring at the bottle before getting that pivotal text from Grace, and what's to come as 9-1-1: Lone Star approaches the series finale in two weeks.

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Related: Inside Marjan's surprise 9-1-1: Lone Star wedding — and what actress Natacha Karam fought for

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What were your thoughts when they first told you this was Judd's path this season?

JIM PARRACK: I said, "Well, great. There should be something really consequential about Judd and Grace being split apart like this." Then we started finding ways to foreshadow it a little bit, because alcoholism doesn't happen overnight. And we certainly didn't have a lot of time to work with [with the final season being only 12 episodes]. So we tried to isolate him a little bit, and show him drinking a little bit, and in his cups a little bit. And then, with this 10th episode, we just wanted to show what it was like for Judd when the thing he had been living for wasn't there anymore.

Was there a particular scene that most affected you?

There was actually a whole two- or three-page prayer that I shot on the back porch of the house that got reduced to a little flashback, but that was incredibly cathartic. We shot this whole sequence where Judd downed a whole bottle of alcohol and was kind of angry at God and then begging God to do something and show up, but it only ended up being a little flash. That was maybe to me the most important scene in the episode.

That is mirrored at the end of the episode when Judd finally gets his sign, and Grace texts him as he's staring at the bottle over the sink. How did you choose to play that scene? What was he about to do if he hadn't heard from Grace?

At that point, having been around recovery in a real way, Judd realizes that to drink is to probably die. I made the choice to look at the bottle and go, "If I pick this thing up again, I'm going to die. Do I or don't I?" It was a "One last try: God if you're there..." kind of thing. And that was moving to me, to come at it that way. It was a moving experience. It felt authentic.

Was he also looking for death when he walked into that firing range earlier in the episode?

The way I chose to play it was "Somebody in there needs help, and I don't really care if I live or die anymore, so I'll head in." By that point, [the 126] knew what was going on. It wasn't that we didn't know the place was really dangerous and full of exploding ammunition. I just wanted to come at it like, "Look, my family's falling apart. I'm pretty sure there's no God, which means there's no heaven or hell. Maybe just put an end to all this and go to sleep and get out of here. And if I don't die, fine, I'll save this guy's life. And if I do, no problem — these foundational, meaningful things aren't in my life anymore."

Well I'm sure fans will be glad to see Judd come out the other side. What can you tease for viewers heading into the final two episodes of Lone Star?

The main thing they can expect and deserve to see is how much the 126 mean to each other. And of course, underneath all that is what we meant to each other as a cast and as a team [in real life]. There was this real merging of how we all felt about it being the end and with the 126 facing what seems like could really be the end.

9-1-1: Lone Star airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly