ABC will premiere its new series, COMBAT HOSPITAL, which premieres, Tuesday, June 21 at 10pm. Its stars, Elias Koteas (Colonel Marks) and Michelle Borth (Dr. Rebecca Gordon), recently took some time to answer a few questions about the show, which follows the lives of the doctors and nurses working at the only military hospital providing advanced surgical care in Southern Afghanistan.
[To Michelle Borth] Do you play a doctor?
Michelle Borth: I do. I play a trauma surgeon, a brilliant young trauma surgeon who’s a newly appointed major in the Canadian forces.
[To Michelle Borth] Did you research and/or train to play a surgeon?
Michelle Borth: I did a ton of more medical research than I would say military. You’d be surprised how much you can learn on youtube.com. I’m not kidding. Any surgery that they have you can see on youtube.com. As far as in the script, all the surgeries that I had to do, I looked them all up and I found them. I found a ton of them. We’re also very lucky that we have a medical military consultant at our disposal at all time. He actually was in Kandahar. So he’s able to sort of help us out with the words, how to do the procedures. He’s the most valuable resource that we have on set, I think.
Elias Koteas: A sweet man, too, after all he’s seen and been through.
What attracted you to do this kind of intense project?
Michelle Borth: I would say, to be honest, what initially drew me was the character of Rebecca. I was really looking for a strong, independent, intelligent woman to play who was also tragically flawed. So that was the main draw. Then I really loved the strong ensemble cast in one hour dramas because it gives you the opportunity to go into so many different storylines and conflicts arise. So those are the main things, and then the content of it. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re going to talk about some heavy stuff. It’s going to be a challenge.’
Elias Koteas: The same thing. Good writing. I don’t really know what I was looking for, just whatever came in front of me at the time and this was the best written thing that was in my life at the time. The fact that you don’t throw it against the wall after you read it is a huge plus, and like Michelle said, the characters are so complicated. Instinctively it felt like the time to take the plunge and see if there’s something to be learned in this.
Can you talk about what’s going to come up in season one, what the audience is going to see?
Michelle Borth: I think first the way that it’s introduced is that it’s already established and so we’re seeing it for the first time through Rebecca’s and Bobby’s eyes, who’s played by Terry Chen. So it’s their point of view at first, how to adjust to life in a war zone and all the struggles and conflicts that arise with being more familiar with westernized medicine and then being thrown in a war zone where there’s rules and regulations. It’s a lot of us learning, learning the hard way, trial by fire. Then there’s the established characters who have been there and are our mentors who teach us. You see that in like [episode] one through four, us trying to find our way and find our footing, and then relationships evolve, whether they’re friendships or romantic it’s a conflict because it’s a military base. It’s a lot of charting the lives of the nurses and the doctors there and how they deal with everyday stresses of being in a war zone.
[To Elias Koteas] Your character seems to be in charge. Is there a difference playing someone who’s in a leadership position?
Elias Koteas: What comes to mind for me is that you can’t really be best friends with your kids. You can’t really hangout and smoke pot with them if that’s what you do. There’s a line of separation that happens. It’s very lonely, I guess. It really demands that you step up and make decisions and be accountable. Whereas if you’re following orders there’s something to hide behind, even though every character is accountable for what their actions are and they have to answer for them. Just being an authority I find, as it’s evolving for me going into the seventh episode, there’s a loneliness that happens. There’s nobody that you can really talk about what’s going on and how you’re handling your stress. Maybe you go into a back room and have a good cry in a pillow or something like that.
Are there any doctors who are adrenaline junkies on the show, maybe going out to the front lines?
Michelle Borth: For Rebecca it’s more the medicine for her than the military. Do we have any crazy adrenaline junkie characters?
Elias Koteas: I think that for a layman who’s not aware it would seem that way, but for somebody who’s passionate about this I don’t know really know if they would consider it. The tougher things get the more calm –
Michelle Borth: The more calm you have to be.
Elias Koteas: The adrenaline rush really comes as actors and that informs some of our performances.
Michelle Borth: The show itself is a fast paced show and high stakes. It feeds naturally into the pace of the show and the adrenaline.
Elias Koteas: The set design, it’s a character in itself. They did a great job and spared no expense on bringing that to life. It’s really helpful to the actors, it helps to let go and do the best you can do, but the environment is right there.
Michelle Borth: They rebuilt it to a T, the whole medical unit itself and the trauma base and ICU units.
Elias Koteas: It’s exciting. Every corner, they’ve got it crammed everywhere you look. They’ve got it loaded with stuff.
Where do you shoot?
Michelle Borth: Tonronto. It’s the largest set ever built. It’s a hundred and eighty five thousand square feet. It’s massive.
Elias Koteas: You walk on that stage and you squint a little bit and you swear that you’re there, and the cinematography is great.
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