{"id":6563,"date":"2016-08-23T10:35:56","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T14:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/marcia-gay-harden\/"},"modified":"2016-08-30T09:53:48","modified_gmt":"2016-08-30T13:53:48","slug":"marcia-gay-harden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/marcia-gay-harden\/","title":{"rendered":"Code Black’s Marcia Gay Harden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden\u00a0talks to <\/em>TV Drama about her role on <\/em>Code Black as\u00a0Residency Director Dr. Leanne Rorish, who is tasked with keeping the chaos under control in an overburdened system while training first-year residents and saving lives.<\/em><\/p>\n

The feature documentary\u00a0Code Black<\/em>, which offers an eyewitness account of doctors making split-second life-and-death decisions in America\u2019s busiest emergency room in L.A. County Hospital, served as inspiration for the eponymous drama series that airs on CBS. The show features the stories, struggles and ambitions of doctors who, when resources in the E.R. are stretched to the limit by the high volume of patients, have to work under the \u201ccode black\u201d alert.<\/p>\n

\"MarciaTV DRAMA:<\/strong>\u00a0How did you hear about the show and what appealed to you about the concept?
\nHARDEN:<\/strong>\u00a0They brought me the documentary and I was initially slated to play a different character. When I looked at the documentary, I thought it was amazing and so realistic. And truly, what stood out was the compassion of the doctors. In such a short period of time\u2014it\u2019s an emergency room situation\u2014[they show] incredible compassion for the patients that they just briefly got to know. The doctors\u2019 stamina, their camaraderie with each other, their sense of self-importance\u2014but in the right way, they\u2019re saving lives\u2014and yet there\u2019s an incredible humility at the same time. I love that. And when it didn\u2019t work out with the other actor who was [supposed to play] Dr. Leanne Rorish, they offered the part to me. She was a much better fit for me than the character I was doing. I loved Rorish\u2019s command, her vulnerability and her impatience. Mostly, I loved her recklessness. I thought, How interesting to take a woman who has suffered loss and who is in this very important job with life-and-death situations. She\u2019s gotten a little bit reckless in the name of saving lives, and she\u2019s often right. Sometimes you have to take those risks, you have to think that fast. And sometimes, those risks fall short. And what does that do? What does that mean? What is the toll?<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Do you feel the intensity and the stress of the doctor that you\u2019re portraying to the point that it affects you also as an actor?
\nHARDEN:<\/strong>\u00a0Absolutely. And I love that question because I only recently began to do research about stress levels in the body. My mother has Alzheimer\u2019s, and [I\u2019ve looked into] stress and Alzheimer\u2019s, stress and heart disease, stress and weight, and how they\u2019re all related. And I got to thinking, you really go through it if you\u2019re acting. My school of training is to really go through it, whether you\u2019re on stage or in a movie or on television. So what am I doing to the stress levels in my body or my brain? And how does that affect me? My kids say, Mom, you were so much grumpier when you came home at night while you were shooting\u00a0Code Black<\/em>. I was so much more stressed because I had been in that situation all day. And I thought, I\u2019m going to have to really work on demarcating the two [work and my personal life] and leave [the stress] at the office. But it\u2019s hard because it\u2019s in your body. Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey have meditations that I listen to. They\u2019re 20 minutes, and I listen to them to try to allow my brain to separate from the job.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>What different acting muscles does a long-running series stretch compared to working on a feature film?
\nHARDEN:<\/strong>\u00a0The difference between doing a film or a play and doing a long-running series is that [in a TV series] you don\u2019t own your story. When I read a film, I own my story beginning, middle and end. I know what it is. The same [is true] in the theater, I own it beginning, middle and end; it\u2019s defined. In television, you don\u2019t own it at all. So there\u2019s a whole part of your brain that might have to do with structure and control that you have to disallow because you don\u2019t own your story. And who you are one day [can change] the next day because someone can throw you a different circumstance. I experienced it for the first time during\u00a0Damages<\/em>\u00a0[playing the character Claire Maddox]. I thought, Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa! How does that correlate? I would never have thought that my character wanted to be the CEO of a major company. I\u2019ve built a whole idea that my character didn\u2019t want to do that and [then] something [happened to change] that idea. Or in\u00a0Law & Order: SVU<\/em>\u00a0I built a whole character based on honor, honor, honor, honor; my father\u2019s in the Navy, honor, honor, honor. In the last episode I did, they said, Oh, by the way, [your character] killed someone many years ago and has lied about it for years. I\u2019m like, No she didn\u2019t! I can\u2019t correlate that. And they said, Do you want to play it or not? And I said, OK. So I could be thrown something in\u00a0Code Black<\/em>\u00a0that I would never have expected from my character because they\u2019re creating it as they go along. For me, that\u2019s the biggest difference.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:\u00a0<\/strong>Anything you can tease about season two?
\nHARDEN:\u00a0<\/strong>A wonderful new doctor, played by Boris Kodjoe, will be on. A wonderful, new, young doctor, played by Jillian Murray, will be on. [Since this interview,<\/em>\u00a0it has been announced that Rob Lowe will be joining the cast.<\/em>] Raza [Jaffrey] and Bonnie [Somerville]\u00a0<\/strong>have made other career moves. They are fantastic, intelligent, smart and compassionate and we\u2019ll miss them hugely. My character was in [hospital] administration for a while but I think she\u2019s back in the E.R. now, which [I\u2019m happy about] because one of the things that I love about Leanne\u00a0<\/strong>is she\u2019s a great teacher. And you track the story\u2014will the interns make it or will they not make it\u2014through Leanne and senior nurse Jesse Sallander, played by Luis Guzm\u00e1n. So I think it\u2019s good to keep them at the center of these ancillary doctors. But I don’t really know where it\u2019s going yet. This is it. I don\u2019t own the story; I have no idea!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Oscar-winning actress talks about her role on the show as Residency Director Dr. Leanne Rorish, who is tasked with keeping the chaos under control in an overburdened system while training first-year residents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":289,"featured_media":6564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,70],"tags":[1235,1236],"class_list":["post-6563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-code-black","tag-marcia-gay-harden","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nCode Black's Marcia Gay Harden - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Academy Award-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden plays Code Black's Residency Director Dr. Leanne Rorish, who is tasked with keeping the chaos under control in an overburdened system while training first-year residents and saving lives.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/marcia-gay-harden\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Code Black's Marcia Gay Harden - 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