The Chi Season 6 Finale Marks Three Big Cast Exits (and Two Major Deaths!) — Hear From One of the Recently Departed
Warning: This post contains spoilers from The Chi‘s Season 6 finale.
The South Side of Chicago just got a little less populated.
More from TVLine
The Chi‘s Season 6 episode saw the exit of three cast members, via two deaths and a long-time-coming departure from the city. (You’ll recall the show’s executive producers teased the development at the midpoint of the season.) By the time the credits rolled, two characters — Curtiss Cook’s Otis “Douda” Perry and Iman Shumpert’s Rob — were dead, and one — Tyla Abercrumbie’s Nina — had said goodbye to friends and family and moved out of town with girlfriend LaPorsha.
The on-screen murders were related. After a season-long battle for power between Douda and Alicia (played by Lynn Whitfield), the former mayor/crime kingpin was taken out instead by Nuck (Cortez Smith), his former henchman. And when Nuck announced to Douda’s staff that he was the new boss in town, Rob refused to fall in line. So Nuck shot him several times as he was walking away, then dumped his body on the steps of his mother’s townhouse for Alicia to find.
Abercrumbie has been with the show since Season 1. Cook joined in Season 2, and Shumpert first appeared in Season 4.
Showrunner Justin Hillian told TVLine that Douda, in particular, had been living on borrowed time. “It just felt like, in a city like this, with as many people as he has crossed, someone was going to get him, and it was time,” he said, chuckling. “You know, it’s The Chi. It’s not Batman.”
That said: “We love Curtiss,” he added. “We miss him already. He is a gentleman of the highest order, nothing but professional everyday. He couldn’t be further from that character. It was just such a joy to work with him every day.”
TVLine also spoke with Cook to get his final thoughts on playing his last scenes as The Chi‘s bad guy. Read on to see what he had to say.
TVLINE | Douda has been down before, but he’s always come back. Do you think surviving everything that’s happened to him gave him a sense of cockiness or a sense that nothing could take him out?
CURTISS COOK | Putting my Douda hat on: No, I don’t think so. Because towards the end of the season, we saw all of that wearing on him, right? He really starts to look at his surrounding… Kadeem Hardison and I had this scene, and we decided that [our characters] had a history together, that we were friends. We both knew what each other did, but we kind of stayed out of each other’s way, had this mutual respect. But at the end of that, even he was like, “You know what? You’re not a good dude. You’re not a good guy.” I hope how I portrayed that was it really stabbed him in the chest, like “Damn, not you, too.”
And so, even when he was trying to get back with Tracy and nobody was returning his calls, I think towards the end he really felt like, “Oh this is all coming to an end like it does for people like me.” I don’t think he was cocky like “nobody’s going to be able to touch me. It’s never going to happen. “I think he knew the end was coming. He didn’t know when, of course, but he wasn’t surprised when he’s standing there with a gun in his face. He wasn’t surprised at all.
TVLINE | There’s a brief scene earlier in the episode where we see him thinking about ending his own life — he can’t do it, but he wants to. Take me inside that moment. I feel like that’s the lowest we’ve ever seen him?
That’s definitely the lowest we’ve ever seen him… Pne thing that Curtiss never wanted to do was glorify gangsters, glorify killing, glorify bringing kids in the drug game and making it seem to all these people that there are no consequences for those types of actions, right? And as we got closer and closer to the latter part of the years, in Season 5, end of 4, 5, and 6, he began — in my opinion — to not be as three-dimensional as he was in the beginning, right? He started to become, like, this “villain.”
With that became, like you said before, this kind of Teflon don thing, that nothing’s going to stick to him and nothing’s going to bother him. So, when this moment happened, when I was presented with, “You know what? I think this is the moment when he’s down in the dumps”, I said, “Hey I also feel that if we were to show the pains and the strife and the cowardliness of him — because I think you’re a coward. If you’re doing all this stuff to people and you end up taking yourself out, there’s something cowardly about you. I wanted to show that he’s not always the man.
…Some of those kids, God forbid if they’re idolizing this dude or thinking he’s this great thing, no, no, no, no, no… Look at him. He’s a coward. He wants to try to take the easy way out. There was a little bit of that inside of my mind, and trying to find the truth in that moment was the hardest thing, right? We did about seven takes, and I don’t remember which one they used for it, but there was one where he totally breaks down. I mean he literally is bawling. He’s crying, and the gun is shaking, and it’s shaking so much where I was hoping that it’s going to accidentally go off. You know what I mean?
TVLINE | So Douda knows he’s dying: What do you think is flashing before his eyes? What’s his biggest regret?
Not having people understand how much he loved the city of Chicago and how much he really wants to help the city of Chicago.
TVLINE | Don’t make me have feelings about the bad guy!
[Laughs] I really think that he wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle it in the way that people would be able to understand it. I think he had a very bad temper. He has a lot of trauma, whatever, and it’s not like he doesn’t think it is what it is. Everything he did was to make something better.
Were you surprised by the finale’s deaths and exit? And what did you think of the episode, and the season, on the whole? Grade them via the polls below, then hit the comments with your predictions for next season!
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. Text MHA to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor from Crisis Text Line.
Best of TVLine
Get more from TVLine.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter