It’s better to free up space on the couch! Joe Minoso has been on Chicago Fire since his 2012 debut until a decade ago, and now he’s predicting where his character, Joe Cruz, will be in 10 years.
“I don’t think any actor thinks like:”Oh yeah, 10 years from now my character is…” I think most of us are like, “Oh my God, we have another year.” But 10 years, I’ll be in my mid-fifties. So I will be as old as Moshedy and Herrmann of the world. I would be perfectly happy being a new module. The guy on the couch who is pushing out random wisdom because he was born into a role. I think Cruz might decide to go to a rank in the advertising world and maybe easier like a main job, like a work job.”
Like Herrmann (David Eigenberg), Cruz is now a dad. He and wife Chloe (Kristen Gutoski) have welcomed a son named after their late friend Otis (Yuri Sardarov), and the couple recently took in an immigrant boy named Javi.
“We’re definitely taking it full-time. We haven’t officially adopted it yet, so I’d like to see it happen. I think it would be a really wonderful moment to get to the experience and pretty cute,” Minoso explained from the new story. “I think Cruz is slowly turning into Herrmann and eventually he’s going to have six kids and he’s going to be Crabby to everyone. It would be so great to grow into this. I don’t know that I could be David though. Herrmann is just unbelievable.”
Now a family of four, Minoso hopes Cruz experiences the ups and downs of fatherhood in future episodes. “Who knows, maybe we’re going for three,” he teased us. “I think it’s going to be a lot of exploring either potential comedic possibilities, slipping Cruise and falling on his father behind or moments of his brilliance. I think it’s a great thing about character, it’s so much learning. I’m doing a comedic thing. I do dramatic things. And writers get into the kind of game in this world in terms of which sides of CRUZ they want to see when. ”
Like Cruz, Minoso has experienced a lot in his personal life since joining the NBC drama, noting that it “catapulted” his “life” over time.
“The whole scope of my life was completely on this show. I met my wife on this show, I bought my first house because of this show. I bought my first car because of this show. I lost my mother throughout this show. I lost my sister. They’re my family. These are the people I spent the best part of my adulthood with,” he told us. “It’s been a wonderful journey and it’s been so incredible just to be with this cast and crew. It doesn’t really get old for me the way I think a lot of this can happen for other actors. He continues to be just a joy to go to work every day and be an idiot with my best friends. And then at some point they shout actions and you say 10 things, or you’re carrying some heavy stuff, or you’re breaking some crazy thing, or you’re getting people, or you’re getting people on an underwater board into Lake Michigan or moving away from a building. What else can a little boy from Brons ask for? It was a dream.
He added, “People are without a doubt the biggest gift the show has to offer.”
