‘Doc’ Star Molly Parker Talks About The Challenges Of Playing A “Fractured But Beautiful” Character

By Hope Sloop

Photos: Getty Images ; Illustration: Dillen Phelps

Picture it: You’re a high-powered surgeon at the top of your game. Chief of Internal Medicine at your hospital and sought out as an expert in your field. Your personal life is messy (whose isn’t?) but you are doing pretty good for yourself and your patients. And then in the blink of an eye, everything changes.

In FOX‘s new drama, Doc, Dr. Amy Larsen lives out that scenario and must reconcile losing eight years of memories — including her divorce, the death of her son, and her fearsome fight to win her job — in order to move forward with her life. Molly Parker, the actress who portrays the reinvented physician at the helm, is honored to take on such a complex role.

“I’ve thought about it, there’s sort of a rebirth. I’m always drawn to characters who we meet in the moment when they lose everything, when their lives fall apart. Because essentially at that point you have two choices: you either give up on life or you change,” the actress told Decider in a sit-down interview.

And change she must. After her devastating car accident leaves her with a traumatic brain injury in the Doc pilot, Parker’s character must face painful discoveries and unwanted truths in order to find solid ground again as a woman and a doctor. She has to work with her ex-husband, Dr. Michael Hamda (Omar Metwally), who she still loves deeply, maintain a relationship with the Dr. Richard Miller (Scott Wolf), a former friend who she nearly had fired before her accident, and attempt to rebuild a bond with the daughter she is estranged from.

Given that Larsen is living as two people, in a way, and that the timeline of the show jumps between the past and the present, Parker’s job as an actress has been made more interesting and certainly more challenging. In a good way, that is. She explained that for her, getting to play a character who has a second chance at life, love, and 10 years of decisions — that’s the dream and the goal.

“This woman’s life has been defined by two moments: The moment when she loses her memory, which we see in the first episode, and something that happened to her and her family eight, ten years before. We also get to see that she made both those choices. She made the choice to kind of give up on life, and now she gets to make a different kind of choice,” she said.

FOX

Wolf, whose character in the show has both a reason to help Dr. Larsen and a reason to hope she never regains her forgone memories, told Decider that the concept of playing two characters is what drew him to the show in the first place. It plays out as an internal struggle and a fun scenario that looks different for each character in the show.

“What’s incredible is that it feels like because of Amy’s accident and losing this almost decade of her life, there becomes this sort of fractured but beautiful, powerful thing that’s happening for everyone,” Wolf said, adding that it’s especially difficult for his character.

Therefore, it’s not just a reset button for Parker’s character, but one for everyone around her. Albeit a complicated reset button. Wolf’s character has a secret that could cost him his job and ruin his life while Metwally’s Dr. Hamda has since remarried and is expecting a baby with his new wife.

In fact, One of the final scenes of Episode 1 shows his character struggling to separate his feelings for the woman who believes they’re still married from the woman who is really his ex-wife. Oh and did we mention he’s now her boss as a hospital board member? Messy.

Photo: Fox

Wolf told Decider that the situation creates for an interesting look at any environment, especially a hospital where the professionals often have to put their feelings aside in order to save a patient.

“Everyone is forced to be living at least two lives simultaneously. The life that we lived for the past eight years that she doesn’t remember anymore and the life we’re living now because that time has gone for her. It’s a really fascinating character study,” Wolf said. “And while they’re all reconciling all of this, there are people lying in these beds who need their life-saving work.”

As for how it will look as the season progresses, the actors shared that the story will keep viewers on their toes and excitedly waiting to see who they save next and how Parker’s character moves forward in the face of adversity.

Doc airs Tuesdays on FOX at 9:00 p.m. EST. Episodes release the next day on Hulu.