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Last week, Fox cancelled the television show Brooklyn Nine-Nine only to have NBC pick it up a day later. I’ve already spoken about how emotional it was for me, but I’m just a fan who would have gotten over it when a new show caught my attention. But the cast and crew were a different story. Even before the cancellation talk, it was an emotional year for the cast – both Melissa Fumero and Chelsea Peretti had their first babies months apart. In addition, Terry Crews, who plays Terry Jeffords on the show, has been dealing with his sexual assault case and everyone who wants to punish him for speaking up. With everything he’s gone through, losing his “second family” was probably a huge blow. At a Deadpool 2 event, in which Terry plays Bedlam, he spoke about the whirlwind turnaround of it feeling like “a death” to being picked up to “the biggest network” Terry has every been on.

Speaking to PEOPLE at a Deadpool fan event in New York City on Monday, actor Terry Crews opened up about the roller coaster of emotions felt by the cast in the span of just 30 or so hours.

“It was like horror meets comedy meets twisted science fiction,” said Crews, recalling the whirlwind that followed after Fox canceled the Andy Samberg-led series on Thursday. “No one knew what was happening. I was working on another show and I got the email that we were canceled. It’s a surreal experience because every show is like a human being — it has its own personality, and when it’s canceled it’s a death. There is mourning.”

“And Brooklyn — these guys are my second family, we love each other,” he continued. “We all talk in a What’s App group, so we were all talking like, ‘I love you guys,’ ‘If I never see you again…’ There were a lot of tears, I’ll be honest, lots of tears. What can you say? It’s like, my God, this was five years of my life. I spent more time with these guys than I did with my own family. And then you hear, ‘Oh, we might get picked up by Hulu.’ And then it failed, Hulu passed.”

“The internet was freaking out,” he said. “That is what shocked us. If no one said anything, it would have just been like, it’s over. But we were no. 1 trending worldwide. People wanted the show back. And then Mark Hamill went off, Lin-Manuel Miranda went off, Guillermo Del Toro went off. They were like, ‘What are you doing?!’ It made us feel so good that at least if we don’t come back, we have the love of the world.

[From People]

I wondered about the effect of the Twitter outcry would have on the cast. My timeline was full of B99 talk but I assumed it was because I hung out with like-minded folks. It wasn’t until I started reading articles about the B99 fans freaking out that I realized there was that much noise. Good. I thrilled to hear they felt the love. I’m also kind of thrilled at the idea of a B99 What’s App group chat existing. Season seven should just be the cast reading that transcript. The cast attended the NBC Upfront on Monday morning and they all seemed positively giddy. And to make it even better, Seth Meyers, a big fan of the show and good friends with Adam Samberg, hosted the event.

Now I don’t want to be a bitter pill, but I remember devoting much of my day on Twitter to tweeting and retweeting support for B99. I, however, wasn’t allowed to go to the NBC Upfront and take selfies with the cast. But this guy was… whatever.

Also: we got to celebrate with the #Brooklyn99 pic.twitter.com/ALjxd8DDwb

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) May 14, 2018

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