Fire Country’s Billy Burke Explains Why Vince and Sharon’s Romance Is 1 to ‘Root for’ Even in Rocky Times
Bill Burke doesn’t think anyone should give up on Fire Country’s Vince and Sharon Leone — even with their season 2 rough patch.
Warning: Spoilers below for Fire Country season 2, episode 1.
“I think regardless of what happens between Vince and Sharon, I think people will still root for it,” Burke, 57, exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting season 2 of the CBS drama.
Burke, who plays Battalion Chief Vince Leone, called his character’s relationship with his wife, Sharon (Diane Farr), an “idealistic relationship” that will continue to be explored.
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“What we try to do is make it more relatable to people who are in a similar relationship. Who do have undying responsibility to each other and to those around them,” Burke explained. “So I think that's the dynamic that people can invest in.”
He teased, “In terms of what will happen, again, don't know, I just kind of go along for the ride like everybody else does.”
During the season 2 premiere, which aired on Friday, February 16, viewers learned that after Sharon got a clean bill of health following her kidney transplant, she took a sabbatical. That break included time away from Vince and away from their son, Bode (Max Thieriot), who at the start of the episode was six months into another prison stay.
When Sharon returned to Edgewater, she seemed cold toward Vince, who had been holding down the fort and visiting Bode solo in her absence. “I haven’t slept in months,” Vince said in the episode, to which Sharon quipped, “I know exactly how you feel.”
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Elsewhere in the episode, the couple shared a sweet embrace and appeared to be back on the same page about their marriage — but not on Bode’s situation. (Bode lied about bringing drugs into Three Rock, the convict firefighter camp, during the season 1 finale, which resulted in him going back to jail.)
“I don't think that Sharon has really changed her mind about anything,” Burke told Us earlier this month, noting that he thinks she’s “mourning the loss of time” and all that she “invested in her son.”
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Burke explained, “The way that she deals with that and the way that Vince deals with it — sort of just flipped [the situation] on each other’s head. I think he probably mourns the loss of time and now is trying to throw himself back into it.”
Burke told Us that while Sharon was away, Vince chose to do a “soul search” that led to him leaning on the family he had close, which was Bode in prison. He noted that at the same time, Sharon was trying to “find herself” and come to terms with their current problem.
As the season moves forward, Burke teased that Vince is “back to a place where he’s rooting for his son again,” which hopefully Sharon will get on board with as well.
Fire Country airs on CBS Fridays at 9 p.m. ET.