CHICAGO MED Cast Spill About The New Series [Part Two]

With Chicago Med, the third installment of Dick Wolf and co’s Chicago franchise, finally premiering tonight, the cast had a lot to share during roundtable interviews during last week’s #NBCChicagoDay. So much that we had to split them into two posts! Read on to find out what else the cast had to say about the show…

Nick Gehlfuss and Torrey DeVitto

After debuting on Chicago P.D. last season as brother of Detective Jay Halstead, Nick Gehlfuss’s Dr. Will Halstead is now a familiar to fans of the ONE CHICAGO world, but we’re looking forward to seeing this Chief Resident in his element on his own show. Torrey DeVitto has played some not-so-nice characters in the past on shows like One Tree Hill and Pretty Little Liars, so it’s lovely to see that her character Dr. Natalie Manning is one of the nice girls.

What are you excited for fans to see when the show premieres?
T.D: I’m excited for fans to meet our characters. I think they’re so well written and there’s so much detail to the characters, so much back story. There’s so many things to learn about them that I think they’re easy – all of them – are easy to fall in love with, so I’m excited to see the reaction.
N.G: Absolutely. I’m excited because we’re a part of history in the making right now. The fact that all these three worlds colliding and in our first episode you’ll see familiar faces from the other shows, because the crossovers have been working really well. The viewers have said, it’s been proven to be effective and so every episode you’re going to see a familiar face on every episode of every show.

What’s your favourite personality trait for each of your characters?
T.D: I love the strength mixed with compassion that my character has.
N.G: I love that my character, Dr. Will Halstead, believes that the better doctor he can become will make him a better person and his ability to – no matter how crazy something gets – to remain calm and know that he has a job to do, and that is to save a life.

Torrey, now I’m sure this won’t happen, but we’re not going to see any Nanny Carrie moments right?
T.D: No, thankfully. Although you never know, come the end of the show maybe if someone pushes her the wrong way. No, no Nanny Carrie moments.

Have you and Sophia Bush gotten to work together?
T.D: Yes, we finally did on the crossover. I went over to P.D. this week [to film] and that was fun. You know, even though I was on One Tree Hill for two seasons, Sophia and I didn’t really work much there so it’s nice to get to work with her here.

What was your family and friends’ reactions when they heard you got the show?
T.D: They were thrilled. Let me just say, the cutest thing my mom did when I called her to say “hey mom, I got this”, I heard silence and I was like “mom?” and all I heard was “I can’t breathe”. I was like “oh that’s so cute!” and my dad’s excited to be here [today].
N.G: Ecstatic. Beyond ecstatic. I think every parent deep down when they hear their son or daughter wants to go into acting, a little part of them is like “ohhh”. It’s a very hard industry to be a working actor in and the fact that you know, not to get ahead of ourselves, but that we’re at where we’re at in the process right now, it becomes a bragging right I suppose with friends and it’s great.

Did your parents want you to become a doctor?
N.G: Maybe, and I’ve actually thought about becoming, switching – we’ve been shadowing at Cook County hospital here in Chicago; it’s one of the number one trauma centers in the country. The trauma surgeon from there is our medical consultant – all three shows have a consultant for whatever specialty the show is going for – and this guy is our lifesaver and he helps us keep everything authentic. I’ve been there multiple times watching what they do in awe and my appreciation and respect for medicine and doctors has quadrupled since I’ve done all that. But I have often thought maybe I should just be a doctor. Maybe I should just go to medical school right now. But then I wake up.

Do you ever understand anything that your character is saying during scenes?
N.G: Yeah, I make sure of it. Because there’s no other way I can effectively portray and be a part of what it is I’m doing if I don’t. Like I said, the most medical consultant, I go to him first and foremost. If he’s unavailable I’ll do my research wherever I can get it, my medical textbooks or online or whatever. Absolutely, it’s a must.

What’s the grossest thing you’ve had to do for a scene?
N.G: You know, I don’t have an answer for that question because I am finding out that I am not squeamish whatsoever. I don’t know where that comes from, I have nothing in my history that has prepped me for that, but I can’t look close enough when I’m at a hospital. I think it’s the need to want to portray these people authentically and to bring justice to these heroes and these people that devote their lives to better our community…This show is about life and death. You know you can’t get any higher than that. People are extremely vulnerable when they’re brought into a hospital and to see people in those moments is a privilege actually, to go in there and watch all that and learn from it.

There was an episode of Chicago P.D. where your character was talking to Erin Lindsay and Will mentions something about Jay’s past and we weren’t sure what he was hinting. Are we going to learn more about that?
N.G: Most definitely…he has had some military past and there is something that we have not figured out about that yet, which will come to the surface. Maybe our psychiatrist will have to have a sit down with him.

Marlyne Barrett and Brian Tee

You may recognise Marlyne Barrett from shows like The Wire, Damages and Kings, on Chicago Med she plays Maggie Lockwood. Meanwhile film and TV actor Brian Tee (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, Jurassic World, Grimm, Hawaii Five-0) plays Dr. Ethan Choi, a former Navy combat doctor whose specialty in the E.R is infectious diseases.

How excited are you guys that you are finally going to premiere?
M.B: If I was a grape, I would explode.
B.T: I think we’re both really excited. For me, it’s kind of one of those dreams come true because I get to play a doctor on TV and I get to tell my mom “Hey Ma, I made it. Doctor. I am a doctor.”
M.B: And I’m not broke from going to school.

Were you guys fans of Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. before? 
B.T: I was.
M.B: If I had to put them in order, I was P.D. before Fire. Jason [Beghe], my god. God bless that voice. Jason can arrest me anytime. I mean handcuffs out, right? There’s something about Jason, but then you know, I’m not going to complain about Eamonn [Walker] or David [Eigenberg].
B.T: Right. I mean Taylor [Kinney], come on – I’d start fires.
M.B: You see, I’m more of a David person.
B.T: David than Taylor?
M.B: Yes.
B.T: Really?
M.B: I’m not going to argue but I’ve got a husband there… So going back [to the question], plus I get to work with those guys a bit more. I think just learning about these two shows and then coming together, being able to portray the third leg of the family, was just something that you had to be a fan of to complete the story for them. Even when a criminal or anybody gets arrested or anything that happens, the third leg is sometimes they end up in hospital and you want to know what’s going on with them.
B.T: And I think what I love about these shows is the elements of the characters and the relationships they have with one another, the authenticity that they actually portray within their own inner world. It’s what I feel – that authenticity can’t necessarily be fake acting and the thing that Dick Wolf does is try to create this family, this kind of cohesive unit. That’s what he’s done in all these shows…you really see the relationships and you really see them developing and us being the man of the new show, I feel like we’re only bouncing off what they’ve kind of established. I feel like outside of the camera we really enjoy one another and are definitely close friends and you can see that when we’re working together, you can see that on film. I think that’s what makes the first two shows amazing and what will also make our show just as good.

Did you get any advice from the actors on the other two shows?
M.B: They were as shocked as we were as to how much medical lingo, medical training, that we had to receive, so we mainly spent our time at Cook County in the first couple of weeks just finding our feet wet, just sort of understanding what it means to function in that world. I think in that way we a little bit deferred because I think the EMTs are really close to us too. they get a lot of medical training, the lingo, learning how to pronounce and staying true to the urgency but the calmness that comes with the medical care. So there’s an immediacy of needing to get everyone care, because it could be anyone of us. And nobody needs another show where it’s all the doctors and us just smooching. We wanna know what does it really mean to be cared for in a medical institution.
B.T: Yep, absolutely.
M.B: Not that nobody would want to see you with your shirt off. Let’s go back to that – I just want to stay true to the fact that if you get the chance to see this guy with his shirt off, just clap, tweet – do whatever you can that can increase, I mean he’s married and all but god bless everything that you’ve received… And when you do, notice that he has eight packs. Some people have six, but not B. He has EIGHT. Eight packs, I have counted them. He’s allowed me to count them – from a distance.

Chicago Med airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC.

Here are some photos from the roundtable interviews during #NBCChicagoDay. (Photography by Sarah Gillett and Angela Lee):