If Elizabeth Reaser were a doctor in real life, not just one on TV, she likes to believe she'd work in an ER or a Doctors Without Borders situation. "I would love to be able to help people," says Reaser, who costars in the TNT paramedic drama Saved. "I don't know that I could really handle it, though."
Reaser -- a.k.a. Alice Alden, M.D., emergency room physician at Portland's Good Samaritan Memorial Hospital -– prepared for her role by observing ER docs in action in Michigan, her home state, and in Los Angeles. "It was an interesting and intense experience," she says. "The doctors are amazing people." But as inspired as she was by them, there are still several roadblocks holding Reaser back from an actual medical career.
Reason No. 1: Her performance-artist brain isn't naturally wired for that kind of work. "In school, I was never good at science or math," she notes. "I always wanted to be an actor, ever since I can remember. I grew up subjecting my family to really bad shows in the living room. It's what I love to do."
Reason No. 2: She's a bit squeamish about needles and blood, even when it's fake needles and fake blood. "There's a really funny outtake where I had to do a procedure on the show," she says. "I was working with a huge, huge needle and suddenly the actress I was working with sort of screamed out and I thought I had really gotten her. It was horrifying. It's not my cup of tea."
And reason No. 3: Her imagination might get the better of her. "I'm potentially a really bad hypochondriac, so I have to be careful. I mean, it's pretty mild. I'm not like a real hypochondriac. But if I thought about something for long enough or if I went on the Internet and read too much about certain symptoms, I could probably start to create some serious issues for myself."
But Reaser was willing to subject herself to needles and psychosomatic illnesses, because she loved the show's premise and characters so much. "I like that everyone is so flawed, especially Wyatt [played by leading man Tom Everett Scott] and Alice. Their struggle is fascinating to me because it's so real."
Wyatt, the paramedic and medical-school dropout, and Alice are on-again, off-again lovers. He's self-destructive, a compulsive gambler, a reckless risk taker. He's clearly wrong for Alice, yet she finds him hard to resist. "I think she definitely responds to something in him," Reaser says. "There's a part of her that wants to be in control and to be normal, yet he makes her feel alive." br>
Asked if she has ever experienced this kind of Mr. Wrong romance before, Reaser giggles uneasily and says simply, "Yes. ... Just yes. ... Check me down for yes. ... I think we can all relate to that."
Reaser hopes that Saved viewers like what they see. "I hope they care about the characters, because I really do," she says. "I hope they see something that moves them." Yet Reaser, who once acted in a play in London with only two people in the audience, really isn't concerning herself with ratings in any way. As she puts it, "I'd like to think that I worked just as hard in that play, even though there were more people on stage than in the audience."
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