Aisha Hinds is a firefighter/paramedic on 9-1-1. She’s always part of the often bizarre, sometimes very creative emergencies the Fox series loves to feature.
And she’ll take playing a firefighter or paramedic on TV as opposed to a real-life first responder any day. She calls it a “privilege” to be able to portray these brave folks.
“Any time I dare to have that feeling, a day comes up and I’m like, “Oh, oh, aha, this is high stakes here,” Hinds told AssignmentX in May, 2019.
“But it’s such a privilege that we get to do this thing. And we get to act, whereas the people who actually live this life, they do this day in and day out, and it’s not an act for them.”
Hinds Needed 9-1-1 When She Was a Teen-ager
Hinds, 45, plays Hen Wilson on 9-1-1. And she brings credibility to the role. After all, when she was a teenager, she needed 9-1-1 in real life. She recalled her 9-1-1 true story in horrifying detail during an interview in 2018. She was a youngster in New York City when the incident happened.
“I shared this story before, but I didn’t call 9-1-1, but someone called 9-1-1 on my behalf,” Hinds told reporters. “When I was sixteen years old, I was walking home from school. I was inches from my doorstep, and I heard, like, pop, pop, pop. And I thought that it was someone setting off early fireworks for July Fourth, but something instinctually told me to turn around.
“So I turn around, and I see this really short guy booking down the street behind me. And his head was ducked. And then behind him, I see a group of guys, and I see this big .45 gun pulled out. So I turn around, and I try to run those few feet to my door. And I didn’t make it. The next thing I knew, I hit the ground. And at the time, it didn’t even register that I had been shot.”
Actress Said She Heard Her Mom’s Voice and Knew She Was OK
Her fellow 9-1-1 castmates had no idea that Hinds was portraying her own truth. Hinds conceded that she was very dramatic as it happened.
“It felt kind of like a really sharp, sharp stiletto (shoe) just piercing, and really, really hot,” said the 9-1-1 star. “But I tried to get up, and my legs gave out beneath me. So being the dramatic child that I was, having already gone to La Guardia High School and determining that I wanted to be an actor, I set my whole death up because I wanted the tape to look pretty.
“I didn’t want to be like this,” Hinds said as she described how she fell. “So I literally put my hands down, put my face on my hands. And then I just heard people coming out from everywhere, all the buildings, from my building. And people were screaming, ‘Call 9-1-1! Call 9-1-1!” And then a few minutes later, I heard my mom’s voice, and then I was in the back of a 9-1-1 van. Thankfully, because now here I am.”
Good news for 9-1-1 fans. The show premieres this Monday. And it’ll feature the horrifying emergencies that we love to watch.
