The actress opens up to ET about keeping busy with her kids in quarantine and previews Monday's big episode.
Jennifer Love Hewitt is taking it one day at a time. The 9-1-1 star is adjusting to life in quarantine amid the coronavirus pandemic, revealing that she and her husband, actor Brian Hallisay, are going with the flow when it comes to taking care of their two young children, 6-year-old daughter Autumn and 4-year-old son Atticus, during these uncertain times.
"We are doing well. I think we are just giving ourselves some grace, allowing every day to be different and how it's different. Sometimes the kids have the grumps, sometimes we have the grumps. Sometimes we're like, 'What else can we do today?' And then we pull some crazy crafts project out of the box and instantly, we have something new to try," Hewitt, 41, tells ET.
"We've been doing a lot of interesting things with the kids and their schooling. They've been doing a lot of home school and we found this place called Outschool, which is cool for the kids who like taking art classes on there and just trying to make it work," the actress adds. "But honestly, we're enjoying the family time a lot and trying to stay in a positive mindset while the world is a really crazy place. We're doing our best."
While production on the third season of 9-1-1 fully wrapped right before Hollywood shut down, Hewitt has been keeping in touch with 9-1-1 showrunner Tim Minear. "I actually sent Tim a message the other day and I was like, 'Why do I feel like I'm in a 9-1-1 episode? When is this going to end? When are we going to be just filming?' And he was like, 'I know. It's really crazy,'" she recalls.
Speaking of 9-1-1, Monday's episode is a showcase for Hewitt, whose character, 9-1-1 operator Maddie, finds herself at the center of a tense hostage standoff along with her colleagues at the call center. The timing couldn't have been worse for Maddie. The night before, she confessed to Chimney (Kenneth Choi) on their date night that she has difficulty saying "I love you" moments after he declared his love to her.
"When we got the script we were all just like, 'How are we going pull this off?,' because it was so much. We're in the call center a decent amount of time but we've never been in the call center seven out of nine days in a row," Hewitt says of the upcoming hour. "I was actually really excited about it because I truly love the call center crew. Bryan Safi [who plays Josh] and I are really good friends. Debra [Christofferson, who plays Sue,] and I are really good friends. I just love that whole group so much that we knew we were going to have fun. I don't think we knew how intense it was going to be."
Get an exclusive sneak peek from Monday's episode with ET's first look below.
Without giving away too much, Hewitt zeroed in on one scene that left her and her call center cohorts emotionally drained.
"There definitely was a moment on the very last day of filming where we were all sitting on the floor -- I think we had been on the floor for probably 17 hours. We were really hot, really tired, really stinky. We'd been crying for 15 of those 17 hours and we all just looked at each other and we were like, 'Wait a minute, we're we actually thinking this is real? What is happening here? This is supposed to be fake!'" she says. "We all just had really been through it. So, I think people are really going to like it and I can't wait to see it. The call center crew and I are going to try to get together on Zoom and watch part of it together to have that experience. But I'm really excited for people to see it. It's a really different episode."
9-1-1 returns Monday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.
To stay up to date on breaking TV news, sign up for ET's daily newsletter.
RELATED CONTENT:
