Inside Marjan’s surprise wedding on ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’

As the 9-1-1: Lone Star team prepared for the Fox drama’s end, actress Natacha Karam had one request.

“We haven’t really seen much of Marjan’s personal life in the five seasons. Very infrequently do we ever see her outside of work or without the 126, so it was something that was sort of overdue,” the star tells Entertainment Weekly of her firefighter character on the Fox drama.

Karam says co-showrunner Rashad Raisani was eager to “leave the audience with a satisfying ending for these characters that they’ve journeyed with for five years” and for Marjan, that meant evolving her relationship with Joe (Karam’s real-life boyfriend John Clarence Stewart), whom she met as her physical therapist while she recovered from being shot in the stomach in season 4. And on Monday’s episode, “All Who Wander,” that resulted in a quick jump from off-screen courtship to a rapidly planned wedding at the 126 firehouse.

From helping design the wedding dress to that touching, intimate post-wedding scene, Karam takes EW inside Marjan and Joe’s romance.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What made you most excited about Marjan getting married?

NATACHA KARAM: I really wanted to see a different side of her, where she’s less confident and a bit more vulnerable — and the easiest and most honest way into that was through this relationship that we’d established toward the end of last season. Obviously in an ideal world, we would’ve had more episodes and more time to develop it, but it was important for us to do as much as we could within this episode and cover as much ground as we could so that the audience felt like as sure as Marjan does that that is the right path for her.

What do you think makes Joe such a good match for Marjan?

Well, there’s always the things that make people fall in love: the chemistry, the banter, the similar interests. And it obviously all starts with a crush. But the question is “What makes it sustainable?” You get into more practical elements of “Do we have a similar vision for life?” “Do we have similar morals?” And obviously being the man of faith was a non-negotiable for her. And over time during their very traditional courtship, the more they spent time talking, getting to know each other, I think every time they had a conversation it sort of lined up that actually they want the same things out of life. She truly believes this is the right person for her. And that is what gets turned on its head when you have them meet her parents. Marjan and Joe seem so aligned and so at ease on so many things, and then all of a sudden she becomes anxious, and he’s watching so much of it unravel and not line up with conversations that they had before — just because of her anxiety.

How did you settle on your wedding outfit?

In my discussions with the writers, the one thing I wanted to make sure was that [since it was all happening in one episode,] it didn’t feel like Mahjong had been shortchanged in any way out of a ceremony or a wedding that would match her generally extravagant nature. I think there was a version where it was almost a same-day wedding, and I was like, “Just give her a day. Give her a day or a couple of days to get the dress together. This is not a woman to have some kind of modest affair.” We had so many meetings where I sort of discussed what I wanted for the character, what felt authentic — down to the wedding outfit. I put a lot of effort into creating that look, and so did the costume department. It wasn’t something we bought, it was something we made out of separate pieces.

I had this crazy idea that I wanted to wear a jumpsuit and a tulle overskirt. We ended up having to make the overskirt and alter the jumpsuit from an initial version that I had found to make sure it was modest and not sheer or exposing any flesh. And then we wanted the veil to be really, really dramatic. The costume department sourced this amazing decadent fabric, but it was so heavy. So then the question was like, “Do we make it a bit shorter, knowing that the fabric’s very dramatic?” But we were all in on this vision, so they just did some structural engineering and found a way to keep that fabric up and have the weight and length of it. Everyone’s commitment to the cause resulted in a really cool outcome that all of us were really happy with.

It seems like everyone had a really good time filming the reception.

Yeah! I mean, those are all my friends and family now. We’ve all worked together for five years. It was like having a big party at work together. And the character who plays Joe is my boyfriend in real life, so it felt really meta because all the cast members know him. I know him. That’s sort of what my wedding may look like in some way in an alternate universe. So that day was really, really fun.

Then the episode ends with that intimate scene between Marjan and Joe…

One of the most important scenes for me was that intimate honeymoon suite. There were a lot of meetings about making sure that the tone was right and that it felt really tender and delicate and safe. And I think [director Brad Buecker] did a beautiful job with the way that was shot and edited together to feel like a traditional, innocent love story. I’m proud of how that came together. It was really beautiful to see that kind of tenderness and intimacy without it being sexual or sexualized in any way.

With only two episodes left, what can you tease for the end of Lone Star?

I don’t think the audience will feel shortchanged in any way by the scope of the disasters that we’re going to encounter. We make sure we go out with a bang after taking our audience on a journey for five years where we have these larger-than-life moments and rescues. We will continue to do that, but we will leave the audience in a place where hopefully they feel satisfied with the evolution of characters and the next chapters that those characters are all entering in their own lives.

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