Instantly becoming the Number One new cable show of the year when it debuted this past June, the physician-to-the-wealthy dramedy
Royal Pains is ending its first season run on Thursday, August 27, with a clean bill of health (it was just picked up for a second season). To celebrate the successful first year
Royal Pains has enjoyed and its Must-See! season finale, actor Mark Feuerstein, the series passionate, caring and lovably light-hearted Dr. Hank Lawson, jumped on the phone with key members of the entertainment press for an exclusive conference call to chat and rap about his first year of residency at
Royal Pains.
Having already scored several Best Actor nominations and critical acclaim for his performances in such films as
In Her Shoes and
What Women Want, the stage classic The Last Night Of Ballyhoo and in television/cable series that include
Once and Again,
Sex and the City and
Three Pounds, bringing Dr. Hank Lawson to life on the small screen in
Royal Pains is what has really transformed Feuerstein into an overnight sensation (albeit ten years in the making). “It’s a part that I just couldn’t pass up, because I knew people would fall for Hank the way that I did from the first moment I read the script,” admits the married, father of two (with another on the way). “Hank is the kind of role every actor wishes for, but never really thinks they’ll get...I feel so lucky and honored to be a part of
Royal Pains.
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Jill Flint, Paolo Costanzo, Mark Feuerstein & Reshma Shetty in Royal Pains
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For those who may have missed an episode or two of the classy and clever, sexy and stylish
Royal Pains, the laugh-packed, health care-fueled series chronicles the warm, hilarious and sometimes critical adventures of Dr. Hank Lawson, a former Big Apple healer who is willing to risk it all for his patients. The principles of the esteemed ER doctor are put to the test, early on, when he makes a fateful decision to save the life of a young man in lieu of prolonging the hours of a terminally ill hospital board trustee. Unfortunately, his morally sound but politically-incorrect decision gets Hank fired and he is soon blacklisted by the entire New York medical establishment that used to praise his healing practices. After losing his job and his flaky fiancée, Hank falls headlong into a deep funk that his younger, highly ambitious brother Evan (Paulo Costanzo) is determined to pull him out off. After weeks of nagging and harrassing his big bro, Evan convinces Hank to head out to the Hamptons for a party-filled summer season kick-off weekend. After crashing a party at massive, beachside mansion thrown by Boris (Campbell Scott) one of the richest and most mysterious millionaires in the Hamptons, Hank’s life-saving instincts kick into high gear when an overdosed guest requires medical attention that only he is able to diagnose.
After saving the young woman’s life, Boris (the tight-lipped, ultra-rich German businessman) offers Hank a job as the town’s new concierge doctor — a modern-day, house visiting physician for celebrities, the rich and uber-elite — and an enormous guest house he can call his office and home. Reluctant to take on the high-paying gig at first, Evan (a CPA) immediately forms the Hank-Med corporation, hires on Divya (Reshma Shetty) a nurse practitioner and convinces his out-of-work doctor brother that he would not only be serving the Hampton's privileged but also the town’s working-class residents.
Several wild, outrageous and intense medical procedures later, Hank has fallen in love with Jill (Jill Flint) the town’s lone hospital administrator — a deep emotion that convinces him he should forget the one-time Brooklyn ER he spend his days and nights at and make the Hamptons his permanent home. There’s only one problem, Jill is married, and her complex/confused feelings make Hank a perfect candidate for a jolt from a relationship-repairing defribrillator. As Hampton’s indulgent summer parties begin to wind down and the debut season of
Royal Pains draws to a close, Hank’s romantic feelings are in a chaotic state, to say the least, Boris is beginning to experience the effects of a devastating genetic disorder that doesn’t have a cure, his brother may have been misappropriating Hank-Med funds in order to fit in with the well-to-do locals and Hank-Med might be losing Divya to a husband as part of a customary arranged Indian wedding.
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Mark Feuerstein in Royal Pains
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“Fundamentally, I love that there is a core of good values in the show and in my character, but I also love about my character that he is impetuous, spontaneous, thinks on his feet. I, in my own life, was on the rack to become a lawyer. I was on my way from going to a good private school in New York to a good college to be — going to hopefully a good law school and on to a good law firm and just living the track that so many people who grow up in New York City live.”
So, what happened to change your mind to start acting?“A funny thing happened on the way to football practice my freshman year at college. I wandered into an audition, I got the part in a play called
Orphans, and my whole life changed. I became an actor and I fell in love with the theater and telling stories, making people laugh and cry, and the high of being on stage and performing or on screen now. And similarly with Hank Lawson, the guy was on the track to become the perfect prototype of a New York guy, a doctor in an ER in Brooklyn with the perfect, hot, fiancée. He would have had money and he would've had an attractive wife, and he would've been living the ‘life.’”
The story sounds as complex as Hank’s life.“Well, a funny thing happened to Hank when he tried to save the poor kid in addition to the rich guy on a particular day, and he got black-balled by every hospital in New York and his fiancée showed her true colors. And suddenly there’s Hank Lawson sitting drinking a Heineken watching
Mask, you know, in his doldrums in his apartment. And his brother comes to resuscitate him and take him out to he Hamptons for an adventure and low and behold we have the series of
Royal Pains. And so, you know, I feel very similar to him in this life that I’ve chosen where it’s constantly just improvisation. And that’s exciting.”
Given the things that you’ve picked up from doing the show — the lingo, the way you handle instruments, et cetera — if I was to put you in scrubs and gave you a stethoscope and dropped you off at the hospital, how long do you suppose you could get away with posing as a doctor before you’d be found out as a fraud?“That is the best question. I love it. I think I could go like six minutes, maybe ten. Maybe if they’re really stupid over at that hospital. It’s very hard to say. But — well unless we, you know, maybe I’m thinking too in the box. Like if I were in a surgery room or an or the ER, I’d be screwed, but if you put me like sort of in a tame doctor’s office or maybe in receiving or maybe in a more, you know, low key kind of injury section of the emergency room, I could probably make it like a half hour. Honestly, if you are ever in pain, and I am right near you, skip right over me and go to a doctor, because I will be of no help.”
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Mark Feuerstein & Jill Flint in Royal Pains
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“I can say things like papilledema. In fact, I was so taken with the medical terminology that I have to say on the show to convey the idea that I know what I’m doing, that I decided in our final episode in an exam scene to instead of performing the exam normally, which I do in the episode for fun, to shoot a rap video of me rapping the entire exam.”
You've done a video where you're rapping a medical exam? What does it sound like? “For a little fun in the middle of our little day here on this call, I’d like to give you a little taste of that rap, which I treated some of the viewers at the Wendy Williams Show to, in case you had been watching that. But let’s face it, not that many people who are on this call watch that show. It goes a little something like this. I saunter up to the girl playing my patient, (Alex Holden), and I say (begins rapping), ‘Yeah girl. That’s right, I’m going to examine you. This is (Divya) and this my ophthalmoscope. Oh, no signs of papilledema. No increased intracranial pressure. Say, Aah, stick your tongue out. Ah. No abnormality of the soft palette muscles and the uvula is midline.’ That’s just a little taste for you.”
Thanks! Okay, in real life, are you squeamish in any way around blood and guts?“Well, I’m clearly not shy, because I just rapped for total strangers, but squeamish? No, I’m not squeamish. I have no problem with blood and gore in my own life. And actually in doing research for the show, I asked a friend, who’s a brain surgeon, to allow me to accompany him in the ER, and I literally stood over the circle that was cut out of a man’s skull down into his brain as blood sort of — not so much blood, because it’s a brain surgery…but, you know, as I stood over that cauliflower beating organ in the top of his head, and watched him literally, you know, dive down into the center of who this man was, that he was operating on. And it was very intense but I did not get squeamish.”
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Mark Feuerstein & Campbell Scott in Royal Pains
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“Heck, yeah. I’ve got two kids, I got a third on the way. Would I have a doctor who I could call at any time and pester and bother and say, ‘My daughter has a 101 fever,’ or ‘My son has mucous dripping down his face, what do I do,’ or if, God forbid they should get into an accident of some kind, to have — to be able to skip past the five-hour wait with the triage nurse, who I’m sure is a lovely, sweet, doting person at Cedars-Sinai? You bet your ass I would.”
Aren’t they pretty pricey to hire?“Oh yeah, they’re expensive. Although we at
Royal Pains and Hank-Med treat both the rich and the not-so-rich, concierge medicine is still, more of the time, the province of the more well-to-do. And I have not achieved a level of wealth where that is just something I can afford to do. Although, interestingly, in the New York Times there was an article about how even in this recession, those with money and with concierge doctors, that was the one thing they did not give up ion all of their budgetary restricting. They did not give up their concierge doctors, and I think that’s just a tribute to the importance of private physicians to the people that have them, and to general paranoia about health.”
You’ve done several television series – from Three Pounds, Once and Again to Sex and the City — some successful, some not so. What is different about this show? What’s the appeal?“I have no idea what makes a show successful or not successful, as evidenced by the last five shows I’ve done. (laughs) This one has been the perfect mix/combination/alchemy/synergy of so many different forces, both production-wise, executive-wise, timing-wise, network-wise, and then cosmically. So I can’t answer why a show hits, what it is about this role with me, what it is about this combination of characters in this, you know, world that the show is set in, and this time in American culture. But I’m not knocking it. I’m so happy to be on a show that is well received both critically and ratings-wise.”
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Mark Feuerstein & Paolo Costanzo in Royal Pains
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“That is a very good question — very good plot question reflecting knowledge of our show and reflecting a tendency the writers actually had, because first of all there’s an issue in one episode that I think has already been on the air where Jill could get me a job at the hospital. So it’s not the same life, it’s the life in the Hamptons with a job at a hospital. And I turn it down, because Hank-Med has grown so interesting successful and fun for Hank Lawson that he chooses to stick with it and see it through. So that was, you know, one example where the scenario was similar to what you’re saying. If you’re asking if he could clear the entire slate and there were no more lawsuits being held against him for what he did that day in the ER, I think the answer still would be no, he would not go back. I think he has seen — I think there’s a slightly spiritual element to the events that have transpired and Hank’s belief that he’s on some sort of path and he’s not about to get off it just for the sake of stability and security and living the predictable New York track life. And now that he’s been set down the path less taken, he’s interested in seeing where it will take him.”
So it’s like he’s been to the buffet and he’s not going back?“Exactly. I mean, he saw life is about what happens when it doesn’t go your way and how you react to it. He saw how his fiancée reacted t life not going his way, and he got to see how he bounced back. And in seeing that,, he has a taste of a deeper strength, a deeper resilience, and becoming sort of more in touch with the unpredictability of life. And I think he likes that. I think he realizes he was meant to live the life of a doctor who can improvise rather than just do the same operation over and over again, like so many stayed surgeons and doctors who don’t ever challenge themselves. This new life is filled with medical opportunities as well as, you know, social, financial, and experiential opportunities and he’s into all of them.”
Can we fast forward a little bit to Season 2?“Tell me what happens, man. I’m curious.” (laughs)
What would you like to see Hank do in Season 2? Is there anything that you didn’t get to this past season or something that you would like to do that would be good for him? I know that you’re always singing the praises of the writers, but I’m wondering if there’s something that you would like to see him do?“Yes, there’s one aspect that I’d like to see. And this is not a criticism of the writers. The writers are truly like incorporating so many elements from plot to character to sensibility of our network and of the world in which the show is set. Tonally, I feel like they’ve done such a bang-up job of incorporating so many different elements — this is no way a criticism of anything they’ve done. It’s purely for my own actorly/my own human sensibility and my own pace in some of the TV that I like to watch, that it wouldn’t upset if there was a little more in the chink open in the armor of Hank Lawson and got just a hair more of a taste of his vulnerability and possibly the mess that his life could be, given how and given the already fraught dynamics between him and his brother, him and the women in his life, and him and his father, which is a character that is talked about but hasn’t been seen yet. But I have a very good feeling we’ll be seeing him very soon come second season.”
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Mark Feuerstein in Royal Pains
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