‘Doc’s Scott Wolf on Richard’s Westside Return: It Stays ‘Pretty Chilly’ for a While 

“It’s pretty controversial [to have him back]. I think a lot of people were hurt by things that he did last year and the way he did them. I have always seen Richard as, in a way, a tragic character in that he is this otherwise really good person and good doctor who just made a terrible mistake and then didn’t, for various reasons, feel safe admitting to that mistake. And it’s the ol’ cover-up is worse than the crime. And so he’s still a person who’s an incredible physician, who is a father and a husband and wants to have a life, and I think fundamentally believes that one mistake like the mistake he made shouldn’t take a life away from him,” Wolf tells TV Insider.

“It remains to be seen whether anyone else is going to be on board for that. And yeah, I mean, not just Amy, there were other people who got sort of pulled into the situation. And so there are wolves at every door for Richard, and there are a lot of people out for him. Will he be able to survive all of that is pretty fascinating,” he adds.

We spoke to Wolf about Richard’s return, seeing a side of him we didn’t get to see before, his relationship with Amy (Molly Parker), and more. Warning: Spoilers for Doc Season 2 Episode 16 ahead!

The episode is bookended by Richard’s attempts to talk to Amy. He tried reaching out to her after he left, but she never responded to his texts. He also says he hopes she gets all her memories back. But all she’s interested in talking to him about is making him know that if he makes one more mistake, she’ll take him down.

Elsewhere in the episode, Michael (Omar Metwally) is trying to look for a job elsewhere, but given the hostage crisis, cyberattack, and Dixon lawsuit, he’s not exactly a hot commodity. Plus, Sonya (Anya Banerjee) and TJ (Patrick Walker) bring Jake (Jon Ecker) in on their concerns about Joan (Felicity Huffman) operating with things they’ve noticed (including a hand tremor).

Below, Scott Wolf discusses Richard’s first day back, seeing what Amy and Richard’s relationship was in flashbacks and if she’ll warm up to him in the present, and much more.

It feels like we’re seeing the kind of doctor that Richard couldn’t fully let himself be in Season 1 because he was so worried about what he was hiding. Would you agree?

Scott Wolf: I 100% agree. And one of the things I was most excited about was getting a chance to really see who Richard is as a person and as a doctor when he’s not buried under this terrible lie. He did bring that on himself. He was given an opportunity to come clean. He just didn’t trust the environment. He didn’t trust Amy really because of how their relationship had deteriorated. He didn’t feel safe coming clean. But, because we’ve only ever seen him when he is having to live this sort of alternate reality, alternate version of himself where he’s covering this thing that happened and trying not to have anyone know about it. In Season 1, no one ever really got a chance to see who Richard really is and who he is as a man in the world, how he treats people and colleagues, and how he cares for patients.

And so it was really exciting to me that they just really allowed us to jump straight into that with this episode, where you immediately see — I think there’s this great moment in the beginning, where he’s tying his tie and his wife says, “Just be yourself, and they’ll come back to you.” That’s a wonderful little moment where his personal life has obviously suffered a lot because of not just his son’s condition, but everything that’s happened with him, with his work life. And so this great moment where his wife is still there, regardless of what the nature is of how they’re doing, she’s able to sort of just remind him that if he can just be who he’s always been, he’s got a chance. And I think that’s what I loved about the way Richard approaches things now. It’s just, “I’m going to be my full self, and I’m going to take care of patients the way I’ve always known and loved, and I’m going to take care of colleagues the way I’ve always known and loved. And the chips will follow where they do.”

But I think he’s hopeful that that’ll be enough, but obviously, there’s extremely strong feelings about the things he did last year. But again, one of my favorite things about Season 1 was it was never easy with Richard. You can never figure out exactly how to feel about him. And just when you were ready to write him off completely, you learned about his personal life and how those struggles impacted all the decisions he was making. And so I think it’s always kept the audience in this beautiful kind of limbo with him. And I think it’s very indicative of most of us in life. We’re a lot of different things, and we make mistakes, and all of us hope for a chance to be able to overcome those mistakes. Richard’s mistakes were hurtful to people, and it remains to be seen whether they’ll be able to really get over that and accept him back. But I love that what we all get to see is who this person is as a doctor and as a human being when he’s free.

But speaking of someone who’s probably not going to go over anytime soon is Amy, as we see, because the conversations to bookend this episode, he’s trying hard to reach out to her. He says he texted apologizing, and he never heard back. If he had heard back, do you think that would’ve changed anything about the way he went about getting back at Westside?

It’s a great question. I do think that not hearing back from Amy for all those messages sort of confirmed to him that he wasn’t ever really as safe as he needed to be there. And that did open a door when he’s invited to testify, and he starts to look around and go, “Hang on a minute. What happened to me was part of, I think, a culture here that didn’t make it safe for people to admit to mistakes.” And what happened with Brian Clark mirrored a little bit of what happened with Richard. And so I think from Richard’s perspective, he’s not… I think Richard believes that because of who he really is and how he wants to practice medicine, how he wants to stand up for people that he cares about, and honor relationships and things, that ideally he can come back and have a life back and practice medicine again without anybody being hurt by that.

And so then it just becomes more about recovery — what kind of healing can happen between he and Amy, he and Liz, he and Michael, he and anybody in this environment who was hurt by his behavior and the things that he did. But I don’t know if she had replied to him, I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference in how desperate Richard is to have a life back and to practice medicine and take care of his family. So, I don’t think he would have stopped trying to find a way back to life.

Would he have been a little bit more sensitive about how it would affect Amy and how she would feel about it in the moment? Probably, yeah. So, I think if she had somehow acknowledged some of the things he was needing her to understand or hoping she would understand between when he left and now, yeah, it might’ve changed how he managed coming back, but I don’t think it would’ve changed the fact that this is a person who has had his life stripped away from him and really wants it back.

Talk about filming the flashbacks because the game night and then after the patient dies, we really see what Amy and Richard were like as friends. And does he think they can ever get back to that?

So yeah, those flashbacks with Amy and Richard are some of my favorite things to film because their relationship is real and meaningful to both of them. And every time we do it, it casts such a tragic light on their current circumstance. Our writers and producers are really extraordinary, and they find great ways to tell this story and to flesh out these characters. But yeah, those flashbacks, they’re super fun, and they’re just clean, there’s no ulterior motives, there’s just no tension. It’s just people who are really there for each other, enjoying each other’s company. The game night was super fun. And yeah, what I think is great is what I was just saying, which is for the audience to be able to — Their framework is this tension between these two characters and they have been out for each other and Richard has hurt Amy and Amy has these, justifiable, very strong feelings about what Richard did and to inject that with this sort of wave of who they were.

We did it in Episode 8 of last season, and yeah, I think it shows how beautifully complicated life is, these relationships are, and what I hope it does is kind of show everyone how these two people, even though there’s this animosity, there really is such affection underneath it all. It’s buried pretty deep right now. And so the question is, is it buried too deep, and is it gone, or is it somehow recoverable? And all I can say is, I think for Richard’s sake, he learned a lot. I like to think he learned a lot from everything that happened and that he recognizes there’s just no way to really force any kind of healing, any kind of reconciliation. And so I think he’s just going to put his head down, do his work as best he can, be the doctor and the person he’s always been prior to this sort of terrible experience that they went through and hopes that there is light at the end of that tunnel.

It’s just going to take a while, though.

It will. It will.

So if Richard knew what was really going on with Joan, which we see Jake, Sonya, and TJ investigating, how would he feel about her performing surgery on his patients? Because their relationship is also complicated, as we see.

Absolutely. Yes. I don’t think there’s any way he would’ve allowed her to perform those surgeries. What’s great about the surface level of at least because Richard does not know what’s happening with Joan, the way she does step in and really help the life of this guy, Abe, who they’ve come to care about, there’s a lot of admiration, I think, between Richard and Joan, and especially having kind of been let down a little bit by the way the first surgery went, it’s super meaningful that Joan has kind of saved this situation because time is of the essence for this young guy. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that if Richard had any inkling that Joan was compromised medically or physically, that he would’ve allowed her to do those surgeries.

And so I think one of the things that’s important and that our writers do a great job of, is that these characters, they’re excellent physicians, and their integrity is intact. And so you even see, I think TJ and Sonya are an incredibly difficult position because they’re doing everything they can to keep Joan potentially out of the OR while she’s compromised, but they’re so limited in what they can really do and they can’t overreach without really knowing what’s going on. But the second anyone knows, it’s a zero tolerance, it’s an absolute can’t put patients in harm’s way. So it worked out for Richard’s sake and for his patient, Abe, that he didn’t know, and that Joan did jump into that surgery and did a great job, and Abe’s trajectory is better because of it.

What’s going on with Joan is kept under wraps pretty well. And even by Jake, who, now, is gleaning a little bit of what’s happening. It’s so delicate because nobody can really do anything too significant without having a substantial amount of facts to back that up.

What’s coming up for Richard after this episode? Who’s the first person who’s going to start warming up to him at Westside?

Well, we’re a few episodes past that now, and it’s still pretty chilly in there. There’s a couple little moments in [Episode] 16 where you see that Sonya isn’t necessarily warming up, but that she can at least recognize the old Richard there and that there’s value there, whether or not emotionally and psychologically, she’ll ever be able to get past that. It’s really hard to say. Again, I think for Richard, what he wants most is a second chance, and the chance is to practice medicine and be a good person. And he had been a good person and practiced great medicine all the way up to this incident, and now the incident is past us, and now he just wants to do the same thing he’s always done before.

I think at the moment, while nobody has warmed up to him yet, in the very next episode, he and TJ work on a case, and TJ is very, very … He is a protege of Amy’s, and they’re very, very close. And so that brings along some resistance and some tension. But again, I think it’s important that they keep that out of the practice of medicine and that those tensions never get in the way of them saving people. But I think as far as Richard goes, I don’t think he expects anyone to warm up really anytime soon. So I think he’s now on a mission to just do good work, be the good person he’s always been, and trust that in time, things will have a chance to heal and change and morph into something new.

And what about Richard and Amy? Because right now she’s not talking to him other than to warn him that she’s keeping an eye on him, but it seems like they’re going to have to work together on a patient sooner or later.

Yeah, that’s coming, and it’s inevitable in this environment. I think they’re two excellent physicians who are patient-first and can compartmentalize. That’s one of the things I think about these hospital shows when they’re executed well, is you watch people perform at an incredibly high level, even though you know these things that are happening in their personal lives, and they find a way to compartmentalize those things and do their work. And the same is very true of Amy, certainly, and of Richard. And so yeah, I don’t want to spoil anything too much, but that moment has come in the episode we’re shooting right now, and it’s loaded, as you’d expect, emotionally and psychologically. And they’re also two capable doctors with very strong opinions. And in internal medicine, it’s a little bit of a maze that you’re trying to work your way through. And sometimes one person wants to hang a left, and the other person wants to hang a right, and both people can be justified, given what they’re seeing.

The Amy and Richard relationship has just always been … It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever been able to be part of. And it’s so beautifully complicated. And to go from a scene where she’s like, “You make one mistake, I’m taking you out,” to a scene where you watch them just laughing and high-fiving and enjoying each other, you see what they were and what they are, and it’s all in there. None of that goes away, so it’s just what wins the day. And at the moment, all the hardship is winning the day, but I think Richard believes in — Scott believes in love. I think Richard has to, too.

Doc, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox

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