For Max Thieriot, Fire Country isn’t just another firefighter show, it’s personal. The actor, who is also the co-creator, co-writer, executive producer, and occasional director of the show grew up in Northern California in a town that had a fire inmate camp like Three Rock, and he felt like it would make for a great series. Now, the CBS drama has become a smash hit, and people have been really drawn into the story of Bode Donovan and Three Rock. With that said, let’s take a look back at what inspired the series, and how the SEAL Team star drew on his own life experiences to create Fire Country.
Fire Country follows Bode, an inmate played by Thieriot, who is transferred to an inmate fire camp in Edgewater, California. As Season 1 played out, we learned Bode’s family and friends live in this town too, and they’re all firefighters. Each week the series featured a new fire, or issues solved by firefighters, and showed how the inmate camp is integrated into the community to help extinguish problems. For Thieriot, these kinds of stories were something he experienced growing up as he told Variety:
It certainly started from a purely firefighting CalFire standpoint and what that would look like, but the inmate firefighter program was always going to be something that would be involved in the show. Because of growing up in Northern California, it was normal, everyday life for me, seeing conservation camp crews work alongside the highway and on the fire lines driving around. Then I realized folks that aren’t from up there, specifically, didn’t really know this was a thing a few years ago.
This isn’t the first time Thieriot has been candid about Fire Country’s inspiration. Earlier this year, he recalled a story about a wildfire that started in Sonoma County, which is in the area he's from. He explained that he got a call from his family that the fires were in the vicinity of his hometown Occidental. So, he got in his truck and drove upstate to help out. The actor said:
My mom and my sister and my brother live in Occidental, and my mom was calling me in the middle of the night to hop on a truck and come up from LA and help load up horse trailers and move animals and livestock and go around the county and pick up animals.
The showrunner, Tia Napolitano, has also explained how Thieriot’s personal experiences have impacted Fire Country. She said they are “not just inventing the authenticity,” he brought it himself, and that’s why they’re able to take audiences to this small-town world in such a vivid way.
Napolitano also said they are “committed to exploring the reality of this program,” since both CalFire and the inmate fire camps are real.
With Season 2 of Fire Country on the way – even though it might not appear as we expected on the 2023 TV schedule due to the strikes – and the potential for more spinoffs based on this CBS drama, it’s clear that Thieriot’s personal experiences have helped create a real hit. If you are interested in seeing the show that was inspired by Max Thieriot’s personal experiences growing up in Northern California, you can stream Season 1 of Fire Country with a Paramount+ subscription.
