'Station 19' Showrunners Reveal How They Found Out the ABC Hit Was Canceled, If They Had Season 8 Storylines Ready & More

Station 19 showrunners Zoanne Clack and Peter Paige are revealing how they found out the show was being canceled by ABC.

Zoanne shared with TV Line, “We were what, two days into shooting the new episodes? And we got the call.”

Peter shared that he was at home when he found out the news, but Zoanne was in a much different setting.

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Zoanne shared, “I was on a panel, in front of, like, 100 people. I kept getting calls, and I finally texted and said, “Is this important? I’m in front of people!” And they were like, “OK, you can wait.” And you know how sometimes after a panel people want to talk to you? [I didn’t do that,] I just got on the phone and then I was told. I called Peter as soon as I heard and was like, “Why did this happen?” as I’m driving to Disney.”

Peter shared, “Basically, we got the news and were like, ‘Get the cast in, get the writers, get the crew assembled… Make sure they’re all going to meet us at lunch!’ Then we raced, raced, raced to tell them before there were any leaks. We wanted to make sure they heard it from us.”

They shared with TV Line that they were able to tell the cast and crew in person before the news broke to the world. When asked if they beat the press, they shared, “By, like, three minutes!”

About if they had season 8 ideas, Peter shared, “We definitely had some story ideas that we had to let go of. Like, there was a really complex arson storyline that we’d never done on the show. We had to say, ‘OK, well, that’s going to be a Season Never story.’”

Zoanne added, “Yeah, there were a lot of things that we were thinking would be leading into Season 8. It was like, ‘OK, either we don’t tell that story or we squish it way down and tell it in two episodes instead of as a season-long arc.’”

Season 7 returns on Thursday, March 14 at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

Find out which ABC TV show received an early renewal this year.