TV Verdict

You probably know him as Michael Vaughn from Alias, but tonight Michael Vartan dons a lab coat and stethoscope as part of the cast of the new TNT medical drama HawthoRNe.

Jada Pinkett Smith stars as Christina Hawthorne, a compassionate and headstrong Chief Nursing Officer heading up a group of dedicated nurses at Richmond Trinity Hospital. She’s a compassionate and passion nurse who will do anything that is in the best interests of her patients. That includes going up against Vartan’s Dr. Tom Wakefield,who serves as Chief of Surgery for the hospital.

Vartan sat down with reporters last week to talk about the new show.

Q:  What made you want to be a part of HawthoRNe?

Michael:  First and foremost Jada, let’s be honest.  Getting an opportunity to work with her was very exciting.  And also I really liked the concept of the show.  I know there are a lot of medical dramas out there but this one is different in the sense that it tells the story of what goes on the hospital from the nurse’s point of view and that was just interesting and a different take on this world that I had never seen before.

Q:  So what’s it been like, working with Jada?

Michael:  You know, I was surprised at how funny Jada is and what an insanely wacky and fun sense of humor she has.  I’d never met her before so I didn’t know what to expect and a lot of the roles that I’ve seen her in she plays very strong women but very sort of dramatic and you know tough so I didn’t know what to expect.  She really is a goofball.  She loves to laugh.  We have a really, really good time, which is a blessing because I’ve worked on sets where it wasn’t the case.  And you know we’re not curing cancer.  We’re making a TV show so just have fun, be nice, and get on with it and she really lives by those words.  It’s a lot of fun.  We laughed way more than we should.

Q: Any romance between your character and Jada’s?

Michael:  You know, it’s television so honestly,  I’d be surprised if they don’t.  But in the story her husband just passed away about 6 months to a year ago and I was a close friend of his.  So I think we’re going to need a little healing time for the poor girl before Dr. Tom swoops in to try and take her out.

Q:  What has been the most challenging part of playing your role?

Michael Vartan:  The medical mumbo jumbo.  Thrombilising someone inter-arterially and then administering a 28-milli-equivalence of potassium chloride.  It takes a while to learn all of that junk.  And it takes longer to understand what it really means.  And even though we have a crack staff of real life nurses that are on set that help guide us through all of the twist and turns of the medical profession, it’s still really hard to learn.  And you know acting is not the easiest thing in the world for me.  So when I have to think that hard usually it’s a recipe for disaster.

Q: Any great guest stars coming up?

Michael:  Cloris Leachman. She played a zany, zany patient who gives one of our young nurses the hardest time she could ever handle.  I actually didn’t get to work with her, unfortunately.  I just met her briefly.  I wish I had because she’s insanely funny.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner was on.  I got to work with him.  He’s awesome.  He plays someone who gets sick and starts hallucinating and actually thinks that Jada’s character is his wife in real life and there’s this whole weird sort of story line between the two of them.

And in terms of story lines, the show really is about the relationships between the nurses and their patients and the doctors to a certain extent.  Every week is going to be different, there’s going to be a new set of problems.  There’s an episode we finished which was really interesting that touched on healthcare and the economic crunch and how it’s affecting hospitals and people and the healthcare system in general.

Q: But at the same time, the show has a sense of humor.

Michael:  Yes, there’s a lot – I mean we have great writers and they’re really hell bent on keeping this as real as possible.  And one of the things I really like about the show is there’s a lot of humor in it, especially in the last few episodes we shot there’s a lot of funny moments that aren’t funny ha-ha, they just arise out of natural situations and you know these characters work in such a high intensity environment they need to be able to laugh to blow off some steam at some point.  So there’s a lot of that.

Q: HawthoRNe is one of several new medical dramas on the TV horizon. Why do you think that is?

Michael: I think the medical world will always be compelling and always be something that someone is going to tell a story about because you’re dealing with life and death situations. It doesn’t really get any more heightened than that.

Watch the series premiere of HawthoRNe tonight, June 16 at 9:00 on TNT.

Photo Credit: Robert Trachtenberg / Erik Heinila / Eric McCandless