FOX/Guy D’Alema(NEW YORK) — Fox’s medical drama The Resident found an interesting way to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Its recent season premiere showed both the danger and the toll the pandemic is still taking on the medical front line workers and their families as the country continues to grapple with the disease, but did so in flashbacks. In the first episode, series regular Denitra Isler’s Nurse Hundley nearly dies from the coronavirus, while Manish Dayal’s Dr. Pravesh loses his father to the disease.
But the show then jumped forward a year, imagining the virus threat has passed both us and the staff of the show’s Chastain Memorial Hospital, though they still grapple with its aftermath.
The producers’ choice to make The Resident post-pandemic was an interesting one, star Malcolm-Jamal Warner tells ABC Audio. He explains that, even as the show’s cast and crew has to deal with strict on-set COVID-19 safety protocols, it would be difficult to do a TV show where every storyline followed the disease.
“I mean, do we deal with, you know, how it really is and everybody has a mask?” asks Warner, who plays star surgeon A.J. Austin. “But then it’s like, well, no one’s going to want to watch a TV show when everybody has masks on in every single scene.”
Warner also said making the action post-pandemic provides some much-needed escape for the show’s viewers. “So I think that was a big consideration that they did think about,” he says of the show’s creative team.
The Resident airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
By Stephen Iervolino
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