Entertainment

Jon-Michael Ecker on FOX’s Doc: Second Chances, Romance, and Medical Drama Redefined

FOX’s upcoming series Doc brings a fresh twist to the medical drama genre, blending intense hospital cases with deeply personal character arcs.

Based on the popular Italian series Doc – Nelle Tue Mani, the show centers on Dr. Amy Elias, a brilliant but tough physician grappling with the loss of eight years of her memory after a traumatic event.

As she struggles to piece her life back together, her colleagues navigate their own personal and professional challenges, adding layers of complexity and emotional depth.

(FOX)

Among the ensemble cast is Jon-Michael Ecker, a seasoned actor with a diverse portfolio that includes roles in Narcos, Queen of the South, and Chicago Fire. Ecker portrays Dr. Jake Heller, a fourth-year resident whose journey of rediscovery as a single father intertwines with Amy’s story.

Known for bringing authenticity and nuance to his characters, Ecker’s portrayal promises to anchor the show’s exploration of second chances and resilience.

As Doc gears up for its premiere, Ecker shared insights into his role, the unique premise of the series, and what it was like working alongside celebrated co-star Molly Parker.

His reflections provide a glimpse into the compelling dynamics that make Doc a standout addition to FOX’s lineup.

(FOX)

How did you get involved with Doc?

I got involved, you know, my agent called me. I think they had been auditioning for a little bit for the different characters, and I did an audition, and I think I ended up doing a bunch. I think I did a self-tape and then I think I had, you know, a series of callbacks and then chemistry reads with Molly Parker.

They sent me the first script and I kind of knew the history that it was based on a successful Italian series, which is always exciting to know. I did the auditions and booked the job. We’re going to Toronto.

I watched all ten episodes that are available, which I believe is the whole first season. And Dr. Jake Heller is such a wonderful character.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.

(FOX)

How would you describe him as we first meet him at the beginning of the season?

At the beginning of the season, obviously, the first episode kind of starts off with a bang. A lot of this show has to do with second chances and turning your life around in some aspect.

Mainly, that has to do with Molly’s character of Amy and what happens to her. The same with my character because prior to the first season, I’ve gone through a divorce.

So I’m a newly single dad kind of starting that aspect of my life over again. And that is with Amy at the beginning of the season. And then, obviously, the whole hiccup of everything that happens in the first episode.

You know, a single dad, things are going well in my professional career, fourth year resident in the internal medicine department, kind of finding new love. And that’s where we start off, at least.

(FOX)

And how would you describe his arc over the season as the episodes progress?

You know, the main thing is this, the arc of this up-and-down love story with Molly’s character.

I have this relationship, and things are going well, but all of a sudden, the person I’m in love with loses eight years of her memory and has no idea even who I am, much less that we are in a romantic relationship together.

And so throughout much of the season, it’s just kind of standing by and watching the person I love and trying to help them out by being less a part of their life, which is hard, and watching and hoping that something will happen and click.

And so these memories will come back, or they will fall in love again, even without the memory of our history together. And it’s watching that relationship evolve throughout the season.

(FOX/Screenshot)

I had some severe reactions to some of the characters and some of the storylines because people are just so mean. The characters are just not a nice, happy bunch of people when we first meet them.

Yet there’s Jake, who is level-headed and kind and sets this entirely different trajectory for how things can go. It’s almost as if he’s setting a precedent.

But I’m wondering, do you think that that’s something that can be maintained given how the story continues?

You mean, could it be maintained past Episode 10?

(FOX/Screenshot)

I mean, can he continue to be such a good guy and so magnanimous?

Obviously, stuff happens at the end of the season. And, you know, there are some cliffhangers that I think everybody will love will not make Jake not too happy with some people. I think intrinsically he’s a good person, and he is level-headed.

And I think that’s a good personality trait to have as a doctor. So I don’t think he would fly off the handle and do anything irrational. But yes, obviously some stuff happens throughout the season that will definitely rattle him a bit.

But I think, like you said at the beginning, you meet some characters that you don’t like too much and aren’t very nice people.

But at the same time, Barbie and Hank, the writers and showrunners of this, just did a great job — because even some characters that you meet and think, I don’t like this person — throughout the season, you start to see more behind the scenes what’s going on with their family life and stuff that makes you understand why they are the way they are.

So they’re not just intrinsically bad people. They’re all having issues that are affecting them in the workplace environment with their colleagues. But you can relate to it on a human level as a spectator of it.

Even if I were to guess how Jake, should the story were to continue further, would react and become maybe not such a nice guy or something, I think it would be on a very understandable level because they’ve done a great job at rounding out these characters so it’s understandable.

(FOX/Screenshot)

Right, right. And Molly Parker is just a phenomenal actress. What was it like working with her?

It was amazing. She is, like you said, an amazing actress. And she’s an amazing person.

She has just a very calming energy on set, which is great. It makes it great to get to set every day and work with her as well as the rest of the cast.

But I mean, I was definitely a little anxious to start with, because I’ve gotten the chance to work with a lot of great actors. But for the most part, I probably don’t watch as much TV or movies as I should.

So I’ve gotten to work with people, but I haven’t watched a lot of stuff. But I was a big fan of Deadwood, and I was a big fan of Six Feet Under and House of Cards.

So, I think it was probably the actor or actress that I knew I was going to get to set with and work with that I had seen the most as a spectator. And so that definitely led to some anxiety.

But as soon as you meet her, even from chemistry reads that we did over Zoom, she’s just such a level-headed person with a calming presence.

It was just great to work with her.

(FOX)

I’ve never thought about it until you just talked about the anxiety level of working with somebody that you’ve perhaps admired.

Maybe it’s a good thing not to partake of what your industry puts out in that respect.

Yeah, maybe. I think, you know, there’s a good and a bad to not watching probably as much TV and movies as other people do. I could probably get a lot out of watching more.

I don’t do it for any particular reason, besides that I don’t find a lot of time to sit down and do it. I mean, I did when I was younger, but I don’t know. I think it’s kind of probably levels out.

(FOX)

At the beginning of the season, there’s a lot of animosity from the staff towards Amy. How is she viewed in general? And what’s Jake’s working relationship with her compared with the others?

I think Jake has known Amy for a number of years, and she’s been a mentor to him and an authority figure.

Although he witnesses this kind of abrasive personality that she has towards people, Jake probably knows that it’s not the best bedside manner, but it is outweighed by just the fact that she’s such a brilliant doctor.

I think it’s in the first episode where I have a line to a patient where I say something like, “do you want a great doctor or a warm and cuddly one?” Where basically, you know, she’s a doctor, and that’s what matters here, even if she doesn’t have the best bedside manner.

And I think Jake cares a lot about medicine and is just attracted to that quality of her that she’s just so focused and so good at what she does.

(FOX/Screenshot)

With characters that aren’t necessarily all friendly among themselves, what was it like behind the scenes, bringing this story to life?

As far as that goes, it was the complete opposite. I think we all got along great. It was a great cast.

It’s nice on this type of show where, for the most part, there are so many actors on set at a time because you might just be walking by in the background or you’re just stopping at a nurse’s station.

So while there are just one-on-one scenes, a lot of times there’s the whole cast is in the green room together, hanging out and talking. And so that enables you to kind of gel and bond as a cast a lot more than some other shows.

I’ve been on shows where my whole storyline is just with one other actor or actress, and I don’t even meet the other people in the shows besides like a cast dinner or in passing.

So that’s great to get because we shot this in Toronto and none of us are from Toronto. Molly’s from Canada, but all of us live in different parts, mainly of the U.S., so we’re kind of all fish out of water up there. It’s great to have a little family while we’re up there shooting.

(FOX/Screenshot)

And it’s a really strong cast. You’ve got strong female actors and characters and strong male actors and characters. What was it like working alongside Scott Wolf and Omar Metwally?

The same. They’re both just great. Scott has been in a million things, and Omar worked a lot too, just coincidentally stuff that I haven’t seen, but they were great to work with.

They have very different personalities, but they are very professional and fun to work with. We have these scenes where you’re in the background while something else has happened. So you just have to be fake that you’re talking to patients or talking to another doctor.

And I would always laugh because Scott is just so professional. Even if we’re in the background talking to a patient, I’ll just be, you know, shooting the shit about whatever, and he stays in character.

He’s talking in medical jargon – “So we’re going to need to run these tests.” And I’m like, we don’t even have mics on Scott. [laughs] We can talk about the weather! But he just stayed in it, and it would always make me laugh.

(FOX/Screenshot)

That’s funny. It makes it hard to carry on your side of the conversation!

It makes me feel very unprofessional too. I’m like, shoot, I should, I should be able to improv medical jargon?

Well, after ten episodes, surely you can now, right?

It’s gotten a little bit better, but you know, I think Scott’s played a doctor a few times, so he’s got a head-start on me there. [laughs]

[laughs] Are you going to be the guy now in the restaurant when somebody says, do we have a doctor here? And you stand up and say, ‘I play a doctor on TV!’?

[laughs] Exactly. Probably. But you know, speaking of that, when we get the episode, we have to get on YouTube and try to learn everything you have to say.

And thankfully we have a medical consultant on set who’s there day and night to help us make sure we’re saying things right and doing things properly.

But at the same time, doing ten episodes of a medical drama, we’ve definitely become a bit of a hypochondriac because you get all these random scenarios and you’re like, there’s so much that can go wrong with the human body. It’s just a miracle that we’re healthy and happy at any one time.

So I definitely had to turn that part off of my brain. Otherwise, I would just be on WebMD all day saying my toe hurts, and I think I’ve got something wrong with me. [laughs]

(FOX/Screenshot)

That’s funny because I’ve been on a medical drama kick. I mean, even historical, like the whole way back to some 1960s or ‘70s shows I bought on DVD. And it really does happen.

You start thinking to yourself, man, “I’m not taking good enough care of myself at all. When is this going to happen?” And, “I should never do this because maybe I’ll get that.”

It can be a little overwhelming in your daily life.

Yeah. You have to balance it out and watch something different. Watch something to balance that out because, yeah, it’ll make you go crazy.

(FOX/Screenshot)

You said you don’t watch much TV or movies, but have you watched any medical dramas? How would you say, or what have other people said, sets Doc apart from what we’ve already seen?

You know, yeah. I especially hadn’t watched anything besides Doogie Howser. I remember watching Doogie Howser when I was a kid, but besides that, I don’t think I’d really seen too much of any medical dramas.

When I got this job, I was definitely a little bit scared that I got to play a doctor. So I definitely watched some of the classics, and that was helpful to just get in that world and genre of the procedural medical drama world. Some documentaries were very helpful too.

But I think from what I’ve seen, what sets Doc apart is, first of all, the premise that, in the first episode, Amy has this accident, loses eight years of her memory, and is just trying to put her life back together and fill up this huge window and deal with the loss that happened in that eight years, the change that’s happened in her relationships, romantically, professionally, and personally.

I mean, just that premise is very interesting and different from any other show, barring the show that this is based on. I actually haven’t finished the season yet. I move slowly watching TV, but I think we have like three episodes to watch.

(FOX/Screenshot)

What I take away from it is that this is a medical drama, and in every episode, you’re going to get new patients and new situations that pull you in. But really, it’s about the relationships between these doctors and their family outside of the hospital. For me watching it, that’s what I see as the focal point.

And then the patients and the medical drama is just kind of a storytelling way, like a crutch to tell the drama between the doctors. I think it definitely falls heavier on the relationships between the characters.

But obviously, there are a million medical dramas that have a million seasons, and I haven’t seen them all. I think it’s a combination of a little bit of House with a little bit of Grey’s Anatomy and a little bit of ER.

If you like medical dramas, you’re going to like it. But even if you aren’t necessarily a fan of medical dramas, I think that there’s enough of the relationship drama that you’ll still be into it.

People don’t necessarily just want to lose themselves in medical cases. They want to lose themselves in a character-driven story, so that bodes very well.

Exactly. An arc that’s carrying over in multiple episodes and seasons rather than just every episode.

(FOX/Screenshot)

People love the whole ‘shipping culture, and Doc is absolutely ripe for choosing sides and picking characters they want to support and root for from a romantic perspective. That’s always a very good thing.

As FOX knows from The Resident, it’s the interpersonal drama that really makes the difference.

Yeah. Whether they’re team Jake or…

Yeah.

Well, we’ll see. We wrapped in June or the beginning of July. It feels like forever ago. We’re excited and can’t see how people react to it.

Doc premieres TONIGHT, January 7 at 9/8c on FOX!!

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