When The Blacklist Season 9, Episode 19 aired on NBC on May 6, 2022, it ended without a scene. Instead, viewers got a black screen and a single line of white text: “In memory of Kurt Perez, 1972–2022.”
Twitter moved fast. “Can someone remind me who Kurt Perez was character-wise?” one viewer posted. Others assumed they had missed an episode earlier in the season. Someone guessed he might be a producer.
He was a Grip. And that title card was the first time his name had ever appeared on the show he helped build.
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Kurt Perez Was Not an Actor on The Blacklist
This is where most people’s confusion starts, and the answer is direct: Kurt Perez was never on screen. He was not a character, not a recurring face, not part of the cast in any capacity.
Perez worked as a professional Grip in the Camera and Electrical department — the crew role responsible for managing camera rigs, supporting lighting setups, and physically executing the shots that directors and cinematographers plan. It is demanding, precise work that runs on long hours, and on a production like The Blacklist, which films across New York City, that means eight to nine months on set per year.
He was born in 1972, lived in New Rochelle, New York, and was a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the union representing technical workers across film and television in the United States and Canada. His IMDB page (nm14003890) places him in the Camera and Electrical department.
His listed credits span three productions:
| Production | Platform | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Set It Up | Netflix | 2018 |
| Daredevil | Marvel / Netflix | 2015 |
| Red Oaks | Amazon | 2014 |
The Blacklist is not among his formal IMDB credits — a point covered further below. His connection to the show was confirmed through a post from someone identifying as his daughter on social media, and through the public reaction of the cast and crew following his death. CarterMatt, which reported on the tribute the night it aired, described Perez as “an unsung hero for a lot of what you see on-screen” who was “very much beloved” by those working on the NBC series.
How Kurt Perez Died
Kurt Perez died on March 27, 2022, in Yorktown, New York. He was 50 years old.
According to state police reports and local coverage from News12 Bronx, Perez was driving his 2018 Ford Explorer on the southbound lanes of the Taconic State Parkway when the vehicle lost control. Troopers determined that wet road conditions were a contributing factor. His SUV struck a tree. Police arrived at the scene at approximately 12:30 a.m. and pronounced him dead.
It was a single-vehicle collision. No other cars were involved.
The Taconic State Parkway runs through Westchester County, connecting the Hudson Valley to New York City. In wet or icy conditions, the road has a documented history of serious accidents. That night, the pavement was wet enough that Perez lost control of the vehicle completely.
The Tribute Episode: Season 9, Episode 19, “The Bear Mask”
The episode carrying the tribute was titled “The Bear Mask.” It aired on May 6, 2022 — roughly six weeks after Perez’s death.
The episode itself is a character-focused hour, centred on Aram Mojtabai (Amir Arison) working through personal trauma. Then the final scene fades, the screen goes dark, and the tribute card appears:
“In memory of Kurt Perez, 1972–2022.”
No context. No explanation. Just a name and a set of years.
For viewers with no prior knowledge of who Perez was, the immediate reaction was confusion followed by genuine curiosity — and a lot of searching. The card read like a personal loss the production had decided to share, which is exactly what it was.
There Were Actually Two Tributes That Day
The NBC title card was the second tribute to Kurt Perez on May 6, 2022 — not the first.
Hours before the episode aired, The Blacklist makeup artist Dena Olivieri posted a video on Instagram of the cast and crew marking the end of Season 9 filming. It was a behind-the-scenes wrap party clip. At the very end of that video, the same words appeared on screen: “In memory of Kurt Perez.”
The hair and makeup department put his name forward before the episode reached a single viewer. By the time NBC aired the closing title card that evening, the crew had already said goodbye once.
His Name Had Never Appeared on the Show Before That Night
This detail reshapes how the tribute reads.
As Cheatsheet noted when covering the episode, Kurt Perez does not appear as a credited crew member on The Blacklist‘s IMDB page. Through every season he worked on the production, his name was not in the standard credit roll.
This is not unusual for Grips on long-running series. Crew roles rotate between seasons. On a production at The Blacklist‘s scale, a large number of the people who build each episode are never credited for it.
For Perez specifically, that means he worked on the show without his name ever appearing on it. Season 9, Episode 19 was the only time it did — and only because he was no longer there to see it.
The Blacklist Has Honoured Its Own Before
The tribute to Kurt Perez follows a pattern the show has maintained consistently when it loses someone connected to the production.
Clark Middleton, who played DMV employee Glen Carter across 13 episodes, died in October 2020 at 63 after battling West Nile Virus. Season 8, Episode 6 (February 2021) was dedicated to him. Series creator Jon Bokenkamp told The Wrap that Middleton had a rare ability to make an inherently irritating character someone audiences genuinely liked — because he brought real humanity to the role.
Brian Dennehy, who played Dominic Wilkinson across nine episodes from Season 3 through Season 7, died on April 15, 2020, at 81. NBC honoured him with a dedicated episode the same year.
Both Middleton and Dennehy had on-screen presences. Audiences could point to specific scenes, specific moments. Kurt Perez had none of that. The show dedicated an episode to him anyway.
Season 9 of The Blacklist ran for 22 episodes, closing on May 20, 2022 — just two weeks after the tribute aired. It was the first season without series creator Jon Bokenkamp as showrunner and the first without Megan Boone as Elizabeth Keen. The show’s tenth and final season premiered on February 26, 2023.
The name that a significant number of viewers still search for years later, when they come across that closing title card on a streaming re-watch, belongs to none of the show’s characters. It belongs to Kurt Perez — a Grip from New Rochelle, New York, who spent years helping put The Blacklist on screen and whose name appeared on it exactly once.
Sources: IMDB (nm14003890), PopCulture.com, Cheatsheet.com, CarterMatt.com, International Business Times, News12 Bronx, MetaPress.com
