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Scott Wolf clocks onto the Night Shift

From Party of Five to his latest medical series, Scott Wolf is drawn to meaningful drama.

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He sat at the top of pop culture fandom as Party of Five‘s Bailey during the 1990s and more recently played Dr. Scott Clemmens on NBC’s The Night Shift, but Scott Wolf is drawn to meaningful work over fandom.

While he recalls the frenzy of teenage girls and magazine covers his 6 years on the show were much more work-focussed.

“If we were doing that show today our experience would have been radically different because of every aspect of social media and the access people seem to have to everyone else,” he says.

“We sort of felt immune to a lot of it, but we would do a shopping mall appearance and you would get this crazy wave of what it was meaning to young girls. It was pretty intense. I did get tackled at the movie theatre here and there. I don’t necessarily miss that. But I’m glad I had the experience.

“The show was so well done that I always felt so lucky to be a part of it. The writing was really good and it took the characters seriously. We got to work with great material with fleshed out characters. So I was so focussed on that, that all of the ‘stuff’ that came with it I never really had all that hard a time dealing with. It was never the most important part of it.

“But it was really meaningful to me that the show we were making meant something to people.

“I’m still proud of it all this time later.”

Wolf in Australia last week to promote The Night Shift, an adrenalin-fuelled medical series set in the ER of a Texan hospital. Starring Eoin Macken, Jill Flint, Ken Leung and Freddy Rodriguez, it is now in its second season on NBC, and airs in Australia on Universal.

Wolf joined the show halfway through the first season around the time he says it was beginning to find its creative voice.

“Obviously it’s thrilling and on-the-edge of your seat in terms of the traumatic injuries that come flying through this ER in the middle of the night. But there’s an irreverence about it, there’s romance, and a lot of different things it’s trying to accomplish. I think it found the blend that makes this show what it is part-way through the first season, and it’s grown this year,” he says.

“I’ve done other shows that are incredibly well-written and the individual actors that are assembled are remarkably talented, but something about the chemistry of everyone doesn’t click.

“In this there is a great chemistry on and off-camera amongst the people that I think it’s why the audience has gravitated towards it.”

Basing the show around a late night crew also lends the story to erratic characters and energetic storylines, some of which are unique to the time setting and even the odd ‘full moon.’

“Part of it is that the night shift is inherently inhabited by people who live a little bit on the edge. Not only the people who are working the shift but anybody who is up at 4 in the morning and finding ways to hurt themselves traumatically… it’s a unique brand of person and medicine,” he continues.

“There’s one episode where it’s a slow night and they’re having wheelchair races and one of the less-experienced people says, ‘Man it’s a slow night.’ And everyone just looks at each other and thinks ‘You just full-mooned us.’

“Sure enough the doors blast open and away we go.”

Wolf says there are also key differences to its obvious contemporary, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, .

Grey’s Anatomy is a great show and has had an incredible run but the pacing of things is a lot slower. There’s time for doctors to stand around and talk about things. But in this case often there’s a dozen terribly injured people coming in at the same time. So things are zero to sixty all night long.

“With this show everything is at stake all the time. There’s life and death on the line. Playing a character who really devotes himself to doing anything he can to save lives has been a pretty remarkable experience.

“But the personal side is a bit of a shambles. He’s been in a love triangle that hasn’t gone his way, and he’s having to manage working with his ex, and staying committed to his work life. This show keeps all of the characters off balance in a great way.”

Yet one of the biggest challenges he’s faced has been endeavouring to appear proficient with the medical procedures -not just in terms of the language, but in execution too.

“There have been a lot of great medical shows in the history of television and most of the time they are pretty careful about what they show in terms of how graphic things are. In this particular case when we open up a chest and we’re sewing someone together or cutting tissue out, they have cameras aimed directly into the chest or leg.

“The show wants to be a little more graphic and confrontational, but as a result we don’t get to just move our hands around and act ‘as if.’ We have to be technically doing everything our character is doing. So we’re really suturing and cutting the prosthetics we’re using.

“I should float out there that we may or may not be using actual human beings on the show! That would be good for ratings!”

The Night Shift airs 8:30pm Wednesdays on Universal.

2 Responses

  1. Absolutely love The Night Shift but was really bugged by how short season 1 was – it made the gap between seasons seem ridiculously long. If you’re a Scott Wolf fan you can also see him in the last couple of episodes of Perception which are airing atm also on Universal (the finale airs 2 weeks from yesterday).

  2. Might have to check this out, seen ads for it but never checked out, I really like Wolf in V, and has the asian guy from lost/person of interest and the guy from Merlin, I just hope it isn’t too soapy

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