Inside the Sisterhood of Fox's 'Hopeful and Bighearted' Medical Drama "Doc" Eric AnderssonSeptember 30, 2025 at 12:00 AM 0 The medical professionals of the Fox series Doc are, once again, racing against the clock—or rather, the stars who play them are.
- - Inside the Sisterhood of Fox's 'Hopeful and Bighearted' Medical Drama "Doc"
Eric AnderssonSeptember 30, 2025 at 12:00 AM
0
The medical professionals of the Fox series Doc are, once again, racing against the clock—or rather, the stars who play them are.
While it's no life-or-death emergency like the ones at their fictional workplace, Westside Hospital, every second counts for Molly Parker, Amirah Vann and new cast member Felicity Huffman on the set of their People shoot at the rooftop restaurant of the Broadview Hotel in Toronto.
It's already 2 p.m., and there are still several more shots to go. The property needs everything wrapped by 3 p.m. so they can open up for happy hour; only the crew has totally rearranged the furniture, and everything needs to go back in its place before then. Hence, the hustle.
Says Vann with a laugh as she's standing in the eye of the storm of stylists, glam teams and cameramen buzzing around: "Don't you love all the drama?" (Editor's note: They wrapped closer to 3:45 p.m., but at least no one flatlined.)
This drama is nothing compared to what's coming up on Doc, which returned for season 2 with a literal bang on Sept. 23, when a gunman held hostages at Westside in order to get his daughter an operation. With that high-stakes situation resolved, the action on the fan-favorite series (Fox's most-watched of the 2024-2025 season, and its fastest-growing in 10 years) returns to the emotional core of the show.
Parker's Dr. Amy Larsen—with the help of her best friend, Dr. Gina Walker (How to Get Away With Murder alum Vann), and former mentor Dr. Joan Ridley (Emmy winner Huffman)—continues to rebuild her life following the season 1 car crash that resulted in a traumatic brain injury, wiping her memory of the previous eight years.
Ari & Louise
On Vann: Vann: Zimmerman top & skirt. Christian Louboutin shoes. Jennifer Fisher earrings. Alexis Bittar bracelet. On Parker: Karen Millen dress. Alexandre Birman shoes. Melinda Maria earrings. On Huffman: Silvia Tcherassi dress.
Among the key events she forgot: her divorce from the hospital's dreamy chief medical officer, Michael Hamda (Omar Metwally), her secret romance with her (also dreamy) coworker Dr. Jake Heller (Jon-Michael Ecker) and the death of her young son Danny (Taj Levey, seen in flashbacks)—a devastating event that drove her and Michael apart and transformed her from warmhearted healer to hard-shelled (and hard-driving) chief of internal medicine.
Another thing that was wiped out: her memory of how brusquely she treated those around her.
Ari & Louise
Halston dress.
"She's very much torn at the beginning of season 2 between the woman who she remembers herself to be eight years ago, the woman that everyone else tells her she became and trying to learn how to integrate those into something authentic," says Parker, who broke out in 2004 on the hit HBO western Deadwood.
Ari & Louise
Halston dress.
The series is based on the Italian series Doc–Nelle tue mani, which was inspired by the true events of Dr. Pierdante Piccioni who lost 12 years of memories after a car crash. "I was a very cold-eyed guy, very bad," Piccioni told People in January, when the Fox show premiered. "Colleagues of mine gave me a nickname: I was the 'prince of bastards.' That doc was another kind of person, and I didn't recognize myself." Says Vann, 45: "To flip that over and then say, 'I'm going to choose to do something differently,' that takes a lot of courage."
Therein lies the appeal of the series, which offers a weekly dose of gripping medical cases as well as an uplifting message for anyone trying to start anew. "This show has a very kind of hopeful and bighearted center to it," says Parker. "I have so much compassion and awe for Amy that she gets up every day and goes to work and strives so hard to be good and excellent at this thing that she loves to do while really understanding groundlessness."
Parker—a Canada native and real-life mom who shares 18-year-old son William with her ex-husband, filmmaker Matthew Bissonnette—notes: "If what you knew to be true about yourself was taken away, it's a terrifying place to be."
As season 2 gets into full swing at the Minneapolis medical center (Toronto, where the series shoots, stands in for the Minnesota metropolis), some of Amy's memories are beginning to return, thanks to neuropsychiatrist Gina, Amy's former medical school classmate, who submerges Amy into a sensory-deprivation tank to help spur memory regeneration.
Amy—who left us in a season 1 cliff-hanger after she shared a tender kiss with her remarried ex Michael and Jake happened to see—"has this feeling of being split between the self that was married and in love with Michael and in a family as a co-parent with him, and this new life where there's this undeniable physical and also just spiritual attraction to Jake," explains Parker. "She wants clarity. So she really thinks, 'If I could just get my memories back, maybe I would know. Maybe I would know what I want. Maybe I would be able to remember the things I don't like about Michael, the things that I really liked about Jake when we first met or vice versa.' "
Ari & Louise
Safiyaa dress. Rodo shoes.
While the sensory-deprivation tank is successful to a degree, and "the lights come on a little bit," Amy suffers some physical side effects, including headaches and nosebleeds. "There's a trade-off to this fixation," says Parker.
Ari & Louise
Safiyaa dress. Rodo shoes.
Another familiar presence helps spur some memories: Huffman's Joan, Amy's onetime medical school professor, and later her peer and friend. With Westside in need of a new chief of internal medicine—Scott Wolf's Dr. Richard Miller, who took over the job from Amy after her crash, was fired in the season 1 finale for trying to cover up a fatal mistake by fudging patient records—Joan slides right in.
She has high standards for herself as well as her underlings and immediately starts making waves. Indeed, she tells the staff after taking charge, "In two months there will be an official evaluation. Some of you will not survive it."
Joan wants Westside "to be the best in the state or the best in the country, or one of the best in the world," explains Huffman. "And in order to do that everybody has to be excellent." It's why she initially disapproves of Gina's methods to help Amy, who had to retake her medical board exams to work as a doctor again. "Some of the treatments that Gina is doing, I think jeopardize, from Joan's point of view, her ability to actually practice medicine, which is what we're here to do," she teases.
For Huffman, 62—who originated the roles of Lynette Scavo on Desperate Housewives and Dana Whitaker on Sports Night—joining the cast of an already established series brought different emotions. "On one hand, you're the new kid in school, and who do you have lunch with? And on the other hand, it's up and going, and it's full of excellent actors and a wonderful crew and a creative team, so you're happy to be put on the field with them," she says.
Season 2 also expands the scope of the show, which will explore more of the home lives of the Westside staff. "The circle's getting wider," notes Parker, whose onscreen daughter Charlotte Fountain-Jardim was upped to a series regular. The upcoming episodes will introduce Gina's wife as well as her sister, and viewers get to meet Jake's ex-wife, father and daughter, according to Parker.
Who from Joan's circle pops up onscreen? "My pet gerbil," quips Huffman, who notes her character's lack of a social or romantic life. "She's dedicated her life to work, and I think that's a cost that women have to pay. I think men dedicate their lives to work, and actually, they have a family to go home to. And women hold up the infrastructure, but when women do it, it costs them, and it has cost Joan."
Though the subject matter of the show is serious, the women share plenty of laughs when the cameras aren't rolling. Particularly when Parker is at a table read and trying to pronounce terms like "pericardial endocarditis."
Ari & Louise
Lapointe dress. Jimmy Choo shoes. Jenny Bird earrings. Talent's own ring.
"It's horrible, it's the worst. The medical jargon for me is the worst. I don't know what I was thinking. I've never played a doctor before, and somehow I thought, 'Well, I'm so interested in the psychology and the amnesia. And then somehow the doctor part of it was just going to arrive,' " Parker says. "It's, for me, the most difficult aspect of the show."
Vann—who studied theater at New York City's Fordham University (with this People reporter as her classmate!)—has some tricks up her lab-coat sleeve to help. "We are working on our tongue twisters," reveals Vann. "'She sat upon the balcony inexplicably mimicking him hiccuping and amicably welcoming him in.'" (Try saying that three times fast.)
Ari & Louise
Lapointe dress. Jimmy Choo shoes. Jenny Bird earrings. Talent's own ring.
"I get the privilege of being a neuropsychiatrist, so I don't have so much jargon," continues Vann. "Mine is all emotions and thoughts and feelings and states of being." So when it comes to pronouncing complicated terms, "I just get to watch and giggle," she adds.
As for co-showrunner Barbie Kligman—a former exec producer on ABC's Private Practice and CBS's Code Black—she gets to write and giggle. Huffman says that at table reads, Kligman chuckles while Parker is "trying to find her way through" the pronunciations. "They do it on purpose!" Huffman says with a smile. "It's horrible!"
Joking aside, all three stars say Doc is a supportive and welcoming place to work. "I didn't know a set could be that sweet," says Huffman, who was pleased to see her colleagues give out awards on a rotating basis. "The person who got the award last week gives it to the next person. So they're like, 'Felicity, I'm going to give it to Amirah because she's just so awesome, and last week she killed it.' I mean, it's the dearest thing you've ever seen."
Adds Parker: "I want the work to be great. I also want to be going to work in a sane and happy place. You know? I try to create that. We all try to create that as a company. We sing 'Happy Birthday' constantly—even when it's not people's birthdays."
Amy's predicament on Doc is a unique one—reliving certain moments and experiencing them as if for the first time. What moments from their own lives would Parker, Huffman and Vann each choose to relive? Their answers are as different as the women themselves.
For Parker, it's performing in her high school production of Our Town. "It was kind of the moment that I fell in love with acting. I remember being onstage and being sort of behind this gauzy curtain," she says. "My grandfather was in the audience. . . . I sort of looked, and I could see him crying, and I was like, 'Ah, that's what you can do.' I think about that a lot. If I could go back, I would just pull it out of a hat and be present for it."
Ari & Louise
On Vann: Vann: Zimmerman top & skirt. Christian Louboutin shoes. Jennifer Fisher earrings. Alexis Bittar bracelet. On Parker: Karen Millen dress. Alexandre Birman shoes. Melinda Maria earrings. On Huffman: Silvia Tcherassi dress.
As for Huffman, who shares daughters Sophia, 25, and Georgia, 23, with husband of 28 years William H. Macy: "I would like to go back to a day when my children were little, and I wasn't freaked out. I remember both my kids were toddlers in the bathtub, and I was giving them a bath, and my husband came to me and went, 'Oh my God, what's wrong?' And I was like, 'Oh my God. Nothing. What do you mean?' " Huffman recalls. "He said, 'You're looking at your kids as if there's a fire.' That's kind of how I mothered. So I would like to go back and experience one day of not doing it that way."
Ari & Louise
Vann, for one, isn't sure she'd like to relive anything. "One of the things that I really pride myself on is that I really do enjoy [life] as it goes. I really do," says the mom to Nyla, 4, and 14-month-old Zoë, whom she shares with husband, business exec Patrick Oyeku. "I'm watching my children grow. Do I long for when I first saw them? It was a wonderful thing, but they're doing wonderful things now. So I really, really enjoy being present in the moment."
"If you look for it, joy is there. If you look for kindness, kindness is there," she continues. "You just have to have eyes to see it." Those are doctor's orders anyone can get behind.
This article was written independently by PEOPLE's editorial team and meets our editorial standards. Fox is a paid advertising partner with PEOPLE.
Credits
Photographer Ari & Louise
Cinematographer Martin Wojtunik
Location Broadview Hotel
Hair (Huffman) Marilisa / Plutino Group
Makeup (Huffman) Julie Harris / Lancome / Tracey Mattingly
Stylist (Huffman) Linda Medvene
On-Set Stylist (Huffman) Cynthia Florek / Plutino Group
Hair (Parker) Angela Mancini / Oribe, The Ordinary, & United
Makeup (Parker) Melodie Fralick
Stylist (Parker) Tracy Shapoff /Forward Artists
On-Set Stylist (Parker) Tricia Hall / Plutino Group
Hair (Vann) Willie Bailey / Olaplex / 21 MGMT
Makeup (Vann) Alexandre Deslauriers / Westmore Beauty / 21 MGMT
Stylist (Vann) Jason Rembert
On-Set Stylist (Vann) Santanae Luzige / Plutino Group
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