The “Doctor Odyssey” crew will be rattled by a shark attack beginning with Thursday’s midseason premiere, entitled, appropriately enough, “Shark Attack!”
The shark storyline begins when First Officer Munroe (Marcus Emanuel Mitchell) is bitten after he goes surfing with Tristan (Sean Teale) and, as Teale told TheWrap about the two-parter storyline, “Shark attacks are brutal and it only gets worse as the episodes go on.”
Teale told TheWrap, “It’s pretty rough. I’m amazed at what we filmed, actually. I’m surprised that national television is going to receive what we filmed. It’s a big event.”
Teale, Joshua Jackson (who plays the ships doctor, Max Bankman) and Don Johnson (who costars as Captain Robert Massey) also talked about the upcoming “Ocean’s 11”-esque crossover that brings Athena Grant (Angela Bassett) from another Ryan Murphy series, “9-1-1,” to the Odyssey.
And, of course, one of the biggest cliffhangers we were left with in the midseason finale: Avery (Phillipa Soo) finds herself pregnant after that three-way with Tristan and Max, does she know who the father is and is she going to keep the baby?
Here’s more from our discussion with the three stars:
TheWrap: What’s going on with Avery’s baby?
Joshua Jackson: What’s going on with Avery’s baby? Why do you describe it as “Avery’s baby?” That feels a little ….
Don Johnson: Unclear on the father?
Jackson: Is it though? Really?
Sean Teale: We know it’s not your baby. That’s what we feel, right? The story only gets more and more complex, and what we can say is that there will be resolution. If you tune in, you will find out exactly what’s going on and exactly whose child it may be.
Jackson: May the best man win.
Teale: I don’t know if that’s even fair. I think it’s just may whoever is the parent win.
Jackson: No, no, no, no, it’s got to be a competition.
About the ongoing romantic entanglements, will there be complications there?
[Joshua Jackson puts his arm around Don Johnson, who puts his hand on Jackson’s knee.]
Johnson: [Grinning] What gave you that idea?
Teale: You saw it here first. [Laughs]
Between this and “9-1-1,” you’re been drawing from different classic disaster movies. Is there one that hasn’t been done that you’d like to see?
Jackson: Well, we’re doing “Jaws,” but we haven’t actually done a “Poseidon Adventure” yet.
Teale: It would be hard to redo “Volcano,” right? With Tommy Lee Jones?
Jackson: “San Andreas.” We could remake that Rock movie. We’ve got to think about this.
So you’re set for disasters. Are there any themed cruise weeks you’d like to see the show do?
Teale: Pippa is adamant we have a Broadway one. She won’t let us forget about it. That would be fun. We lift people up here. We already did Casino Week, that was a really great one.
Jackson: There has to be pirates.
Teale: There will be pirates.
You had pirates already, right? You were both Jack Sparrow for Halloween.
Jackson: Oh no, I mean like actual, real pirates come and take over the ship.
Teale: I’d love it if they’d do that in Season 2 of Halloween Week with me dressed as Jack Sparrow again. That was a really fun day. Thank you for reminding me of that. That was a fun day. Some real silly geese. We were being some very silly, silly men there.
Johnson: Pirates. I like that. I like that idea. Yeah, I think we can get some mileage out of that.
Great. I can’t wait to see it.
Johnson: We will not give you credit. Yeah, just be aware of that up front. [Laughs]
TheWrap: You have a crossover coming up with Athena from “9-1-1,” and we know she’s not a fan of cruise ships after the disastrous honeymoon cruise in Season 7.
Jakcson: Yes, she’s not a huge fan of cruise ships, but I think she had a good time on ours. Maybe not in the beginning, but she gets to step out of her normal “9-1-1” and into some “Doctor Odyssey”-ness, which I think was fun for Miss Angela. It was certainly fun for us having her here, and getting to do kind of an “Ocean’s 11″episode with her. Yeah. I enjoyed it.
Teale: There’s more of a criminal aspect to it, but Don put it beautifully earlier, which is that we brought Angela to the party. It wasn’t just work. It was a bit of play too.
Can we expect more crossovers in the Ryan Murphy ‘verse?
Jackson: Do we do a Menendez episode next?
Johnson: Can we get them out of jail first?
Jackson: Let’s see, “Grotesquerie,” “Menendez,” “9-1-1,” “Glee”…
Teale: We had a piece of “Glee.” We had Chord Overstreet, didn’t we?
Johnson: What about some of those incredible actresses on “Feud”? Wonder if they’d come and do “Doctor Odyssey.”
Jackson: The show feels like it could absorb “Feud” very well. That feels very much in the wheelhouse. And we’re going to do a Broadway musical.
“Doctor Odyssey” airs Thursday nights on ABC at 9 p.m. ET/PT and streams the next day on Hulu.
