Fox’s The Resident is earnestly going where no other medical drama has ever gone before: Beyond the blood and guts of operation, and holding a mirror up to the dirty politics that goes down in the hospital.
Matt Czuchry plays an idealistic young doctor, Dr. Conrad Hawkins, who comes to learn of all the smut that’s going on. Emily VanCamp returns to TV close to three years after ABC’s cult thriller soap Revenge ended playing a whistle-blowing nurse, Nicolette Nevin.
“We’re trying to show the general audience what they don’t know that goes on in hospitals so you can protect yourself,” says co-creator/EP Amy Holden Jones adding that most medical dramas on TV are “pretty rosy”.
“Doctors and cops are who you go to when your life is on the line,” says Jones who believed that subgenre was turned on its head awhile on the small screen with series showing “the ambiguous encounters (that people have) when they have encounters with a cop.”
Jones mentioned that there will be an upcoming episode for the Fox series which debuts on January 21 in which VanCamp’s Nic is a victim of sexual harassment. Jones penned the 1993 $100M+-grossing sexual thriller Indecent Proposal.
“It’s a female empowerment show. I’m a woman. Our staff is half female in the writers room as we’re trying to get as many female directors as we can. My take on the (topic of) sexual harassment was how my career was impacted. While I was never a victim, after four features they wouldn’t allow me to direct,” said Jones.
The pilot script came to VanCamp from her Revenge EP and pilot director Phillip Noyce. She immediately took to the story as it resonated with the complex Trump times where the healthcare system has further ratcheted down.
“I took some time off,” said the actress following Revenge, “I read a couple of pilots and I wasn’t happy with what I was reading. I loved the pilot and thought it was relevant to what’s happening today. I get to be a champion for all nurses who are so undervalued, underpaid and who do most of the work,” said VanCamp. Her character is inspired by a real nurse who blew the whistle on an oncologist who was grossly misdiagnosing cancer patients. “He’s now in jail, but the real woman lost everything in exposing him,” adds the actress.
Despite riveting twists and turns on Revenge, VanCamp found The Resident easy to identity with. “On Revenge, I had to figure out the things she was doing and root for them, with this series it’s easy to root for her because she cares so much about her patients and fighting the ultimate fight.”
In regards to VanCamp reprising Sharon Carter in future Avengers movies or Captain Marvel, that’s still TBD for the actress. “Marvel can call at any minute,” says VanCamp.
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