Jennifer Love Hewitt Says 'Nothing Is the Same' as 9-1-1 Cast Returns to Set Without Peter Krause: 'He Was Our Hero'

The 9-1-1 cast is still coming to terms with Peter Krause’s departure.

Fans were shocked last season when Captain Bobby Nash, who Krause has played since the show's premiere in 2018, sacrificed himself and died to save Chimney (Kenneth Choi). It was a move that Krause, 59, described as "a bold creative choice on a bold show" and a twist that "honors" the first responders whose lives inspired the series in a statement to Variety at the time.

Now that season 8 has ended, though, and production on season 9 is picking up, the reality of a story without Bobby Nash is a hard pill to swallow for many, Jennifer Love Hewitt said.

The show has changed irrevocably from Krause's character's death.

The whole cast is "sad" without Krause on set, Hewitt, 46, told Entertainment Tonight at the L.A. premiere of I Know What You Did Last Summer on July 14.

"It's not the same," she shared. "Nothing is the same."

"But I do think that, you know, when you're telling a story about first responders, unfortunately, those are the things that happen," she said of the show's true-to-life nature.

"He was the person that mattered to everyone in the cast the most," she continued of Krause. "He was our hero. And he always will be."

Hewitt is still really excited to get back into the swing of things as Maddie.

"I mean, it's my favorite," the actress said of the procedural, on which she plays 9-1-1 dispatcher Maddie Han.

"I miss my people. I oddly miss crying every day, all day long. So I'm excited to go do that again and see what emergencies we have."

The shocking twist left the whole cast reeling, and even by the time the episode aired months later, they were still in shock.

Angela Bassett, who plays Sgt. Athena Grant-Nash on 9-1-1 and wed Krause's character Bobby in season 2, said that the thought of Bobby dying was "inconceivable" to her.

"I didn’t see that coming. None of us saw that coming," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was incredulous to me that it was Bobby, so it was just very surprising. Sometimes, you’re just struck dumb — and that’s one of those moments, because their bond has been so wonderful and so strong these past four or five years."

9-1-1 co-creator Tim Minear told THR that the cast "all thought I was punking them" when he broke the news.

"Peter and I had been talking about it for probably three weeks to a month before I let anyone else know," he recalled. "I had to clear it with the network and the studio. I had to pitch them out the whole story. Everyone was very nervous."