When Abigail Spencer showed up to film an episode of CBS’ Ghost Whisperer in 2007, series star Jennifer Love Hewitt already knew exactly who she was.
It’s a moment Spencer tells TVLine she’ll never forget: “I walk on set and she’s like, ‘You’re the girl!’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m getting fired.’ She marches right up to me in her spunky way and goes, ‘You’re the girl everyone tells me I look like.’ I was dying. I was like, ‘No, Jennifer Love Hewitt. Nobody tells you that you look like Abigail Spencer because nobody knows who I am. You are not allowed to say that.’”
Spencer surmises that the comparisons were likely due to similarly styled billboards for Hewitt’s 2002 movie The Tuxedo and Spencer’s 2006 TV show Angela’s Eyes. (Think “long brown hair, flared nostrils, arched eyebrows and suits,” Spencer says.)
Now fast forward nearly 20 years to last week’s 9-1-1 midseason premiere, which welcomed Spencer as Detective Amber Braeburn, who spent the hour helping Maddie (Hewitt) and Athena (Angela Bassett) catch a serial killer. Fun fact: Spencer and Bassett both appeared in the 2012 movie This Means War, but they didn’t share any scenes, making this their first time working together on screen. “What a treat to work with Angela Bassett,” she says. “I hope everyone gets the experience someday.”
Amber’s commitment to the case gave viewers no reason to suspect that she was playing Maddie and Athena the entire time, so when Amber kidnapped Maddie at the end of the episode, the fandom’s jaws dropped to the floor in unison. “I thought it was cool that they trusted me with such an important twist,” Spencer says. “And I’m very grateful that [Jennifer and I] had each other as teammates for that experience.”
This week’s follow-up was considerably more action-packed, as Amber spent the episode pivoting between torturing Maddie and lying to her loved ones. Along with plenty of mental and emotional manipulation, things also got dangerously physical between Amber and Maddie at multiple points. In one particularly shocking moment, Amber even slashed Maddie’s throat with a knife.
“It is shocking, and I’m glad it went there,” Spencer says, dividing the credit between scene partner Hewitt, director Jennifer Lynch and the show’s stunt crew. “You want that audible gasp [from the viewers]. Why do 9-1-1 if we don’t go there?” The episode also clued us into Amber’s painful past as a teen runaway and kidnapping victim, offering some important context to explain her actions. Spencer says she had done quite a bit of research into multiple personality disorder before this role came to her, so she was grateful for the opportunity to explore it more deeply.
Things went even further off the rails when Chimney showed up at Amber’s house looking for Maddie, a heroic move that nearly got him stabbed to death. Fortunately, Athena and Romero busted in at the perfect moment, taking Amber out for good.
Even though Amber’s brains are currently splattered all over the walls of her kitchen, we can’t help but wonder if we’ve really seen the last of her. Considering Spencer and Hewitt first met on the set of Ghost Whisperer, wouldn’t it feel delightfully full-circle for Amber to haunt Maddie in a future episode?
“Did you talk to the crew?” Spencer asks when we suggest this to her. “Seriously, did they call you? When I was leaving, they were like, ‘We’re pitching a spinoff about the ghost of Amber Braeburn.’ I was like, ‘Look, I started in soaps, so I’m down. My first job was on All My Children, and people would die and come back as themselves or as a twin all the time. That sounds bonkers, but this show apparently dabbles in these things, so why not?”
Spencer is definitely not wrong about that. In fact, we’d argue that 9-1-1 does more than dabble in such things. Just ask Brian Hallisay, who has returned as Maddie’s extremely deceased ex-husband Doug on multiple occasions. Or Devin Kelley, who died as Eddie’s ex-wife Shannon only to be reborn as Eddie’s side piece Kim.
Speaking of Eddie’s side pieces, poor Buck officially said goodbye to his best friend this week, helping Eddie pack before shipping him back to Texas. Sure, Buck will miss Eddie, but at least he can look forward to the birth of his new… nephew! (Chimney Jr.? Stove? The possibilities are endless, really.)
What did you think of the conclusion to 9-1-1‘s Amber arc? And what are your hopes for the rest of Season 8? Drop ’em in a comment below.
