Scott Wolf Plays Doctor when The Night Shift Checks In for Its Third Season

The Night Shift checks in for its third season tonight with an action-packed episode, where the team becomes immersed in a life-and-death rescue of a woman gravely injured in a car accident, and doctors TC Callahan (Eoin Macken), Scott Clemmens (Scott Wolf) and Topher Zia (Ken Leung) deal with the situation at San Antonio Memorial Hospital.

“There have been so many hospital shows in the history of television, but many of them, I feel, try and protect the audience from the harsh realities of what’s going on in these ER’s and these ORs,” says Wolf, who previously played a homeopathic doctor on Everwood, and a surgeon on the short-lived The Nine. 

“[Our producers] really wanted to confront the audience and show them a little bit of what things really look like. So when we make an incision, where other shows might cut to one of our pretty faces, this show puts a camera right in the open chest cavity and shows the surgical procedure we’re doing.  So the commitment to the honesty of the medicine that we’re practicing is pretty cool dramatically.”

Parade.com attended the press day for the medical drama and caught up with Wolf to get the 411 on what’s ahead for this season for his character and how he would feel about a Party of Five reunion. Check it out.

What’s in store for Dr. Scott Clemmens when we return?

A lot really, which has been fun. At the end of last season, Scott went through a pretty harrowing experience with this car accident that he was involved in that was his fault, and it brought up a lot of old issues of his. We learned that he was a sober person in his life, but that was all called into question after the accident as to whether or not that was part of what happened.

There was some question as to whether he was inebriated, which it turned out he wasn’t, but he caused an accident that paralyzed a young kid and that, obviously, threw him into a tailspin. As the season ended, we find out he wound up giving all of his money, all of his possessions, to this kid and his family, in a way just hitting the reset button on his life and on his work.

When we pick up season three, we find a guy who in many ways is starting over as a person who’s recommitted to his sobriety, recommitted to practicing medicine and being the person that he set out to be, and realizing that he maybe got a little carried away with himself.

It feels like he’s moved on. There’s this connection between Scott and Jordan (Jill Flint), but it feels for the moment that he has accepted [their breakup] and moved on. This year explores him trying to look around and see what other opportunities there might be for him in his personal life.

Scott and TC go head to head a lot. Are those some of your favorite scenes, or do you like the quieter moments?

I suppose I like the quieter moments just because those moments seem to allow for more subtlety and surprise when you’re not railing out, trying to get your point of view across. It feels like a little bit more of an exchange, and those are always really fun scenes to act.

It’s fun to get into a third season of a show and have real history that we’ve all played and that the audience has been a part of, rather than just having to conjure things up. It feels like we get to work from things that we’ve actually done. The audience gets to see a story that’s filled with bits and pieces of life and relationships that they’ve been a part of.

Scott has had issues with TC in the past. Is he going to let TC do surgery this season?

What I love is my role in the show is a non-military person, who comes up against these military-trained guys. I’ve been trained conventionally and I know the way that things are supposed to happen in the hospital. One of the things they began in season one was I was basically at my wits end practicing the medicine that I’ve studied and TC had something that he had done on the battlefield that was basically my patients only chance. I asked him to step in, he did and he saved her.

So, here’s this great tension between these two characters, but there’s a real respect underneath it as much as they clang heads. There are more things this season with TC’s brand of medicine and style and willingness to do anything by any means necessary. The very thing I screamed at him in season one about — his kamikaze medicine — is something I’ve grown to embrace.

Is this your favorite doctor role so far?

I feel like when I joined the show, what was clear early on was the chemistry amongst this cast. And not just chemistry off camera, where everybody digs each other and has a good time, but it carries to in front of the camera. The chemistry between these characters is real and it’s powerful, and it’s something that, I think, has a large part in why this show is on for a third season. It’s that the audience can feel that whether they can put their finger on exactly what it is or not, things ring true when there’s that kind of chemistry among the people.

Going into the third season how do you keep it fresh? 

Obviously, everybody’s professional, everybody’s committed to trying to make the best show we can and, thankfully, the writers keep letting things evolve, so all these characters in the third season find themselves in brand new places. The love triangle that drove a lot of season one, especially for my character, has kind of dissolved, and now we see this guy committed to doing this work, being in this place, and connecting with all these people, but having to sort out what his personal life is going to look like.

And as for the medicine, thankfully, there’s sort of an infinite number of ways people can get hurt. So the medicine always feels fresh. We’ve got great writers and medical technical advisors, who always come up with unique things that we haven’t done 100 times. So that’s huge.

Did you shadow doctors to prepare for this role?

I, in preparation to play a surgeon, shadowed a cardiothoracic surgeon and watched him do open‑heart surgery on an 8‑year‑old and a 2‑week‑old and learned a little bit about him and a little bit about myself at the same time. Thankfully, I learned that I’m not too squeamish when it comes to looking into an open human chest, which we kind of do every week.

So that’s a good thing that they don’t have to revive me after I’ve passed out. I think it was important to understand the intensity and the gravity of the work that these people are doing and how remarkable it is, the focus that they have, the breadth of knowledge that they have to have, and the fact there’s a human life in their hands.

That’s what we’re portraying week in and week out, that these mass casualties happen. These crazy things happen in the middle of the night. Patients pour through these doors, and their lives are in our hands. To explore that is really fascinating, but to have it rooted in a real connection and understanding of — as much as you could get from watching something firsthand — what it’s like to be in that position was important.

Have you had an interesting experience in the ER?

The birth of my second child turned into an emergent surgery. We were there. Everything was going normally, and the baby flipped around, and suddenly I was one of these victims that come through our hospital every week. My wife was rushed into the OR, and everyone is scrubbing in.  So, yeah, that was as scared as I’ve ever been and as connected to the victim side of these stories that we tell as I’ve ever been.

Reboots are big right now. Would you ever do a reboot of Party of Five?

I’ve got nothing but rainbows and unicorns in my mind when I think about that show. So I would support anything that had anything to do with Party of Five. I don’t think any of the original cast would [be up for it]. It would be fun to know what Bailey’s up to in 2016, but I think most of the cast feels good where our version left off.

The Night Shift premieres its third season tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.