From Dr. Ben Warren’s several career paths, you’d think he enjoys being the new guy around.
But actually, actor Jason George told TheWrap, Warren hates it.
“The funny part is that I don’t know that Ben [Warren] enjoys being a newbie,” George said, despite the surgeon’s three career paths already. “The newbie piece actually always rubs him wrong.”
Warren, the connective tissue between “Grey’s” and its new firefighter spinoff, already had to deal with being an outsider when he decided to make the switch from anesthesiologist to surgeon back at Grey Sloan Memorial, where some of his fellow interns would call him “gramps.” Warren was “older than all the older residents and interns at his level, so that piece I think can hit him in the wrong spot,” George said. Now, he has to re-live being the “new guy” among the firefighters at Seattle’s Station 19.
What Warren does enjoy — and the reason he’s willing to put up with a little hazing and annoying nicknames — is “new challenges,” George said.
You can see from Warren’s actions in “Grey’s” — like cutting open a patient with a clipboard or running into flames to save his friend and fellow resident — that he is constantly looking for the next hurdle to clear. George said it’s a characteristic that drew him to the character.
“I dig that he’s a dude who goes after the things that scare him,” George said. “He kind of woke up and stopped taking the easy route.”
“So I mean the joke was when he was the gas man — you know, just knock people out, collect the money and go home,” he continued. “And he said, ‘no, I want to do something that’s going to challenge me, that’s going to push me.’ And he went after being a surgeon. He literally was deathly afraid of fire, until he had to run into the fire because he was more afraid of his friend dying. And now he’s going after that challenge, full on.”
“Station 19” premieres Thursday on ABC.