Charlie was there in the immediate aftermath of his best friend, Sam, being shot in Central Park on the Fourth of July, but he didn’t see the person who hurt her. He ran off as the cops got closer, but he’s not turning his back on Sam whatsoever. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Wyatt Oleff about Charlie’s journey to find out the truth.
“That is the entire motivation as someone who was lost without her and kind of didn’t have meaning, and now losing her again, he can’t let that happen. He has to know what happened to her,” Wyatt told HollywoodLife during the show’s press junket. “Through these people that he meets, there’s a lot that’s going to unravel. Lots of twists and turns, things he didn’t know about Sam before are going to show, and he’s going to find himself through these people and it’s very exciting. There’s so much.”
In 2003, Charlie is still dealing with his grief over losing his father on 9/11. Sam was shot in the head, but she’s miraculously survived so far. The thought of losing Sam has crossed Charlie’s mind, and that’s why he’s so adamant about saving her.
“That’s the thing he’s most afraid of, and that’s the thing on top of his mind,” Wyatt said. “He could not go living without her. I think that’s entirely related to losing his dad as well, someone who he couldn’t save, he couldn’t do anything for. This is a situation where he can figure out what’s happened to her and trying to figure out what happened to her will kind of result in him feeling like he’s saving her, and that’s all he can do. His journey is so desperate but real.”
The role of Charlie is deep-rooted in his grief and working through past trauma. While Wyatt has tackled heavy roles like this before but “not to this extent.”
To deal with Charlie’s trauma, Wyatt would listen to music. The actor admitted that he became “so invested in Charlie’s story that I was one-to-one feeling like I actually might lose her and that was a very strange experience.” New episodes of City On Fire drop Fridays on Apple TV+.