From “Deadwood” to “House of Cards,” Molly Parker loves playing characters who are pushed toward transformation. The actress has been fearless in her pursuit of challenging roles from the start, playing a necrophiliac medical student in the independent film “Kissed” in 1996 and an escort in 2001’s “The Center of the World, for which she got an Independent Spirit Award nomination for best female lead.
She found her perfect Hollywood fit in television, with standout roles in various prestige dramas. Playing politician Jacqueline Sharp in the Netflix drama “House of Cards” landed her an Emmy nomination for outstanding guest actress in a drama series.
In headlining the new Fox and Sony Pictures Television medical drama “Doc,” the actress found the perfect role to take on that performing challenge on the biggest stage of her career so far.
“She is a hard-charging, powerful, little bit intimidating, little bit mean boss,” Parker said of Dr. Amy Larsen for TheWrap’s latest digital cover story. “Because of what happens to her in the story, I really get to explore all these different sides of her.”
The series premiere, which airs Tuesday, introduces Amy as the chief of internal medicine at a major hospital in Minneapolis. She exudes confidence, running circles around the other doctors in her department. But her dedication to treating the patients in her care often takes precedence over showing empathy for both them and the people around her. She berates the residents she supervises when they mess up — with one of them even plotting behind closed doors to report her for creating a toxic workplace. There’s a cloud hanging over her relationship to her ex-husband Michael (Omar Metwally) and estranged daughter (played by Charlotte Fountain-Jardim). A personal tragedy having caused irreparable damage to the family ties years before.
Then Amy gets into a serious car accident, which sets off her metamorphosis. The doctor suffers a brain injury that causes her to lose eight years of memories, inadvertently reverting her back to the woman she was in 2016 — still a brilliant doctor, but one with a happy family waiting at home, and without the baggage she picked up from both grief and rising up the hospital ranks.
“I’m always attracted to characters who we meet in the moment when they lose everything. This woman’s life has been defined by two of those moments — extreme situations that many of us hit at some point,” Parker said. “She’s a total mystery to herself… as an actor it’s such rich, beautiful territory to explore.”
The real action in “Doc” unfolds from there, as Amy fights to continue saving lives at work — often involving intricate medical mysteries — while coming to terms with the direction her life took in the years she no longer remembers, in hopes of making things right this time around. The premise was adapted from the hit Italian series ” Doc – Nelle tue mani,” which was itself inspired by a real-life case.
“The potential of the show is that we get to do this deep character work inside the form of the medical procedural genre, which people love,” Parker said.
Parker’s past projects are full of complex characters like Amy. She played Alma Garret in the HBO series “Deadwood,” a woman who is forced to reinvent herself after her husband is killed in the first episode. In Netflix’s “Lost in Space,” she captivated audiences in the role of Maureen Robinson, a mother who has to lead an unexpected rescue mission after her family’s galactic pilgrimage takes a chaotic turn.
Those roles brought their own challenges, but Parker landing at the top of the call sheet in “Doc” is a first in her television career.
“It was the hardest I’ve worked in a long time… every day felt like a marathon, particularly the first two episodes when we’re setting the tone of the show. They’re fairly emotional episodes for Amy,” Parker said.
As the show settles into its procedural format, Parker’s job only gets more complicated. Amy is in virtually every scene, with storylines unfurling across three timelines involving big emotional moments and complicated medical jargon. The present-day storyline claims most of the show’s runtime, but flashbacks help fill in gaps for the audience with key moments from the past she remembers, and from the years she’s lost.
Some flashbacks play like breadcrumbs to a larger mystery, showing Amy treating her patients and medical students with little empathy. She’s made some enemies at the hospital where she works and pushed most of her loved ones away. Parker said that viewers will come to understand what led to Amy’s questionable behavior, praising the show for not being afraid to show the flaws within its main character.
“The best she can do is just throw herself into the work and because of that, she becomes a brilliant doctor. It’s her entire focus and everything else in her life is diminished,” Parker said. “Then she receives this gift after the accident, not to do things over but to see them differently.”
The result is an in-depth look at a “tragically self-sufficient woman,” as Parker describes her, getting a second chance to rebuild her life, tearing down the walls she put up to survive after an unthinkable loss. At the same time, she has to piece together how her life ended up where it did over those eight years — including the circumstances that led to her leaving her family behind.
And she doesn’t have to face it alone. Her longtime friend Gina (“How to Get Away With Murder” alumna Amirah Vann), a therapist at the hospital, walks alongside Amy in this journey of self-rediscovery. She also finds solace in Jake (a perfectly nuanced Jon-Michael Ecker), a young doctor whom she doesn’t remember, but that she had been seeing discreetly for a long time before the accident.
But “it’s not just soap opera… there’s depth here,” she assured.
Since television often produces scenes out of order, Parker said she had a map of the season in her trailer that helped her keep track of which Amy she was playing in each moment. She also researched real-life cases involving brain injuries and amnesia (“You can find YouTube tutorials on brain surgery!”), and relied on the show’s medical consultant, Josh Hehner, to ensure authenticity in medical procedures and terminology.
“Every time I go to the doctor now I’m taking notes,” Parker said.
“Doc” premieres Tuesday, Jan. 7, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox and streams the next day on Hulu.
Credits:
Design Director: Shannon Barrero Watkins and Ian Robinson
Social Director: Carmen Rivera
TV Editor/Interviewer: Jose Alejandro Bastidas
Photographer: Martha Galvan
DP: Steven Wetrich
Photo Assistant: Ethan Conway
Digitech: Tony Minas
Gaffer: Anders Capstone
Stylist: Jordan Grossman
Stylist Assistant: Madeleine Kennedy
Hair: Will Carillo
Makeup: Cathy Highland
The 35 Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2025