Note: This article contains spoilers from “Watson” Episode 1.
In the first episode of “Watson,” which premiered Sunday night on CBS, we meet Dr. John Watson (Morris Chestnut), who’s refocusing on his medical career after losing partner Sherlock Holmes. We don’t see who plays Moriarty at first… until the end of the episode when we meet an actor who’s largely known for the sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat” and an FBI agent in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
TheWrap talked to Chestnut about that surprising reveal and why he’s all in favor of the casting, as well as how Watson is struggling with his own perceptions after surviving a traumatic head injury. Can he even trust his own memories of that fateful night when Holmes died?
TheWrap: There’s an ongoing arc with Moriarty, who has survived the accident that killed (or presumably killed) Holmes. I was surprised to see Randall Park playing your arch nemesis.
Morris Chestnut: I love the casting. First of all, Randall is a great guy. I love working with Randall, but I love the casting, because you don’t see it coming. You don’t think of Randall Park as this character, but he’s so good at being a villain, and you’ll see, throughout the course of the season, the nature of his intimidation, of his strategic planning of evildoing against Sherlock and others, is so well played.
How are you describing the series to friends and family?
It’s a modern-day telling of the Sherlock Holmes mythology told from Watson’s perspective. It opens up after Sherlock’s death: He has given Watson a clinic to solve medical mysteries. It has a very strong investigative spine, because we don’t just solve the mysteries inside the hospital, we also go outside as detectives to gather the information to solve the medical mysteries. So we’re doctors inside the hospital and detectives outside the hospital. So we’re doc-tectives.
Watson has assembled a talented team of medical professionals for these cases, but they’re all a little bit leery of each other and perhaps of Watson as well.
Yes. They’re quick to question and try to figure things out, including each other,
Some of them suspect that Watson hired them as part of his own genetic research. The twins (both played by Peter Mark Kendall) worry that they’re part of an experiment.
I think they definitely do. You will see very interesting things about each of them throughout the course of the season that all come into play.
What’s your favorite part of the show so far?
I love working with the cast. I love the character having to figure his life out. Watson is probably the smartest person in any room without Sherlock around and he believes he can figure anything out.
He’s putting his life back together. He’s dealing with the loss of his relationship with his wife, and he’s doing all of that with a traumatic brain injury. It’s affecting his thoughts. It’s affecting how he’s reacting. So things are a real challenge. A man who was confident and sure in who he was and what he’s doing is now having to second-guess things. He’s smart and he knows how to help people save lives, but his personal life is broken and he can’t figure out how to put that back together.
So he himself is sort of his own experiment? He’s trying to figure out the right medication, for example.
Yes, he’s also trying to figure that out and he doesn’t realize what’s happening around him.
He has some memory blanks from the night that Holmes died. So I imagine some bits might come back to him.
Yes, very much. Some things come back to him and some of the things come to him that probably didn’t happen.
Oh, so you’re saying he has false memories.
Possibly. Yes, that’s going to be hard when it’s your own head. You’re not sure if you can trust yourself, exactly. In addition to dealing with a traumatic brain injury, he’s dealing with medications that he should not be taking. And why is he taking them, who’s giving him this medication, and how deeply are they affecting him? You’ll see all of that.
New episodes of “Watson” premiere on CBS in its regular Sunday night time slot beginning on Feb. 16. Episodes also stream the next day on Paramount+.
