I Straight-Up Cheered When I Saw ‘9-1-1’s Kenneth Choi On ‘The Morning Show’

The Morning Show Season 4, Episode 2, “The Revolution Will Be Televised,” gave viewers a deep dive into deepfakes, solved a major Wolf River mystery, and saw Cory Ellison’s (Billy Crudup) highly-anticipated return to New York. But it also featured an unexpected guest star who had me hooting and hollering at my TV screen: the one, the only, Kenneth Choi.

With nearly 90 IMDb credits to his name since kickstarting his on-screen career back in 1998, the 53-year-old actor is no stranger to big and small screens. Choi’s starred in major projects like The Wolf of Wall Street, American Crime Story, Sons of Anarchy, Captain America: The First Avenger, Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Last Man on Earth, and more. But for the past six years, he’s been Howard “Chimney” Han on 9-1-1 to me. So as a diehard fan of Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Tim Minear’s long-running first responder drama, seeing Choi pop up in a massive Apple TV+ series like The Morning Show (and acting opposite THE Jennifer Aniston) filled me with rare levels of joy and excitement.

Full disclosure: 9-1-1 has been on hiatus for the past four months, with Season 9 set to premiere on Thursday, October 9. So in some ways, Choi’s surprise Morning Show appearance felt a bit like water arriving in a drought. But I was also genuinely delighted to see the fan-favorite 9-1-1 star out in the wild, flexing his dramatic chops alongside fellow Hollywood heavy hitters as a UBN lawyer, rather than a 118 firefighter paramedic.

In the September 24 episode, Alex (Aniston) heads to Stella’s (Greta Lee) office to chat with her and Celine (Marion Cotillard) about the Season 5 premiere’s big Olympics incident, which involved Alex spontaneously helping an Iranian athlete and her father escape the building to defect ahead of the games. While Alex was expecting a simple chat with her colleagues, upon entering the office, she clocked Choi’s character leaning against Stella’s desk in a sharp gray suit and rightfully assumed the situation had escalated.

Turns out, Choi was cast as John from legal, a character with dense dialogue who effortlessly goes head-to-head with Alex. John asks The Morning Show‘s leading lady if she colluded with the Nazeris to secure them asylum, and when Alex denies arranging the interview for that purpose, he explains, “We reviewed security footage in anticipation of any questions from the State Department. This is from our CCTV and it picked up the audio.”

The audio he plays presents a conversation that Alex, and anyone who watched the Season 5 premiere, knows didn’t happen. But after reviewing the evidence, John says, “Sounds premeditated. Apparently you had talked to the girl about this before. What else did you promise her?” LOOK AT THAT FACE!

When Alex claims that someone “fucked with the tape” and calls for a deepfake/AI tampering investigation, John pushes back, reminding her that her father also has ties to the region and was “a key consultant on the constitutional referendum in Iraq in 2005.” Alex claims she doesn’t talk to her dad, but John already knows she visited him shortly after the interview, so he continues to press her about her time in Zurich and her Olympics planning.

Finally, a frazzled Alex says the interrogation feels like “a witch hunt,” and Celine and Stella agree to have the tapes reviewed by professionals. Just like that — after a few serious stares and dramatic gum chews — Choi’s thrilling Morning Show debut comes to an end! He came, he shared the screen with three brilliant actresses, he conquered the scene, and he seamlessly fit into the Apple TV+ drama’s world. Simply put: We love this for him!

We’ll have to wait and see if Choi graces our TV screens again this season, but considering UBN is regularly encountering legal issues, we hope The Morning Show continues to enlist John’s assistance in Season 4 and beyond. Until then, we’ll keep counting down the days until Choi returns to ABC as Chimney on 9-1-1. October 9 can’t come soon enough! Did you hear Angela Bassett’s Athena is going to space, just like The Morning Show‘s Bradley Jackson?! These worlds continue to connect.

New episodes of The Morning Show Season 4 premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV+.