Jaime Lee Kirchner, Taylor Schilling, and Michelle Trachtenberg star in Mercy. They recently spoke to the Television Critics Association about their new show Mercy, and characters.
The Characters
“I play Chloe Payne in this [series],” explained Michelle Trachtenberg, “and much like her last name, pain is in her job, but she hopes that it's not a big part of her job. She is the new person in the hospital. She's fresh out of school. Her whole goal in life is to help and save people, and that's how she approaches every patient that she gets. She looks to these two women,” she says while pointing to her costars, “to support her and accept her in a hospital that very much needs as much help as it can get. And that's sort of Chloe in a nutshell.”
Taylor Schilling plays Veronica Callahan who has just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. “I was so attracted to this role,” she said, “because this is a woman who just got back from a really uncontrolled environment where there were no rules, and survival was the priority at sort of at any cost. And I think that made her into a street fighter. She's ready to go, but she's been thrown back into this environment which for her feels almost corporate. To her mind, it's political and bureaucratic and almost a bit contrived. And in that way, it feels like, to me, Veronica is a really well-meaning bull in a china shop, and she really cares, and she really wants to do the right thing. But she keeps running into all these different issues, and some of the most self-protected people I've met in my life are some of the most vulnerable. And I find that to be really true with Veronica.”
Jaime Lee Kirchner’s character is Sonia Jimenez. Kirchner says, “I think she's the most black-and-white character, [the] least emotionally caught up in the hospital world. She's a hard worker. She gets her job done, treats her patients, goes on to the next one. I think her emotional life lies outside of, necessarily, the office, and I guess as an actress, what drew me to the role was – and being a brown girl on TV - it wasn't about the stereotypical stuff. It was about a person outside of her circumstances.”
The Nurses are the Backbones of the Hospitals
“In working on this role, it's become more and more clear to me how nurses are sort of the backbone of our hospital system,” Schilling told the journalists. “I've been spending time in different hospitals around New York, and it's been really, really exciting. And there's this period of time before the doctor comes in and after the doctor leaves where -and that's most of the time a patient is in the hospital - and they're with their nurses. And it's exciting because nurses are kind of the lifeblood.”
Kirchner agreed. “The doctor comes in very briefly, and then the rest of the nurses deal with the freaked-out patient. And I think this show highlights that reality, that when you're freaking out, like, you might be patched, but then who deals with the emotional life after the accident?”
Liz Heldens, an executive producer and creator of the show, said, “For sure, nurses do really pick up the pieces. And when you talk to people -- I mean, everyone's been in the hospital, and most people really remember their nurses.”
Character-Driven, Not Science-Driven
Recently Michelle Trachtenberg was stung by a bee and went to a hospital. She declared, “The very first person to hold my hand was this male nurse, and he was so extraordinary. … He did the I.V. and made sure I was OK and handed me my ice pack … And that human connection, I think that's what [drew me to] Mercy, is that it's real people. We're not sugarcoating things. We're not glossing over the lives of these people. People will die. We will make mistakes.”
Jaime Lee Kirchner is happy with the way the series is going to show the nurses. “With House, it's all about the procedure and less about the interaction with the patient and the caretaker, and that's a very specific dynamic that I don't think I haven't really seen ever on TV, that angle. I think that's what makes [Mercy] cool.”
“This show is a way to do a hospital show that is more character-driven and less science-driven,” Liz Heldens added.
Mercy airs Wednesdays at 8 PM ET/PT on NBC.
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