“I Was Going To Be the Villain”: Malcolm-Jamal Warner Teases Potential ‘9-1-1’ Return and Explains How His Character Changed

Malcolm-Jamal Warner was cast as Amir in 9-1-1 Season 7 for a four-episode arc that resulted in some healing for his character and Bobby (Peter Krause). Amir was one of the victims in Bobby's apartment fire from years ago, and an accidental run-in with Bobby brought up those feelings. Amir has not been seen after the storyline was completed, but Warner told TV Insider that he would be open to reprising the character. "I would love to go back,” he said, adding with a laugh, “Just not deal with another fire, give me anything else but another fire. Tim [Minear] and I joked about coming back having married an excellent plastic surgeon so I wouldn’t have to sit through two and a half hours of makeup again.”

Warner also revealed that showrunner Minear had a different idea for the character than what eventually happened. Warner told the outlet that Amir was initially conceptualized as Bobby's antagonist. "I was thinking I was coming in, I was going to be the villain,” the actor said, adding, "I get to come in, there’s this evil streak, I get to be like the mad villain." However, that's not what happened. "After we did the first episode, Tim was like, ‘I don’t know if I really want you to burn down the house. I think we established someone with such a great moral compass that it’s kind of hard to believe that he would burn the house down,’" Warner said, revealing that some changes were made to the character to better reflect his morality. He continued:

"And I’m like, ‘Tim, I’ve been doing all of this work to go from the guy with the moral compass to find an organic reason to burn the house down. What are you talking about? I’ve been preparing for this.’ Ultimately, he said, ‘Yeah, but if I want to bring you back next season, I can’t have you dead or rotting in jail. But we will make the audience think that you burned the house down.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, that’s, that’s a good compromise.'”

What Is Malcolm-Jamal Warner Up to Currently?

The actor is back at Fox, where he played Dr Austin on the medical drama The Resident. He now plays Chief Inspector Bill Houston in Alert: Missing Person's Unit, "who steps into an interim role with oversight of the MPU. A former Army Captain, Houston believes in structure and rules and, in the past, had issues with Jason’s cowboy tactics. He begins to come around to the idea that some rules need to be broken once he sees the results the team gets with their unorthodox approach. He becomes the father figure MPU didn’t know they needed." Alert: MPU Season 3 airs on Tuesdays on Fox.

Catch new episodes on the network and stream past episodes of 9-1-1 on Hulu in the US.