Willa Fitzgerald: If I had like three days in advance to, like, say like cricothyrotomy, like every time I didn't have something else to say. I would just be in my head going, "cricothyrotomy. Cricothyrotomy. Cricothyrotomy.
[CLIP] Willa Fitzgerald (as Danny): Prep for a cricothyrotomy.
[CLIP] [woman]: On it.
[CLIP] Jessie T. Usher (as Sam Elijah): You're doing a crike?
[TITLE CARD] LIGHTS, CAMERA, MEDiCINE: HOW THE PULSE CAST LEARNED TO BE DOCS
[music playing]
Willa Fitzgerald: Hi, I'm Willa Fitzgerald, here with the ‘Pulse’ cast and we are scrubbing in for a deep dive behind the scenes of Season 1.
Jack Bannon: The research and training we went through for the show— we had a sort of extensive boot camp, but I got off a plane from London and arrived really jet-lagged about midnight, and 8:00 a.m. the next day we were straight on set in this hospital. And some of these guys, I later learned, had done a bit of training beforehand. So I sat there and everything was just going straight over my head. There's so much information.
Justina Machado: You know, I've been on medical shows before. Usually on the other medical shows I would just say, "All right, tell me what to do and just tell me when to do it." But this one, we really did have great advisers and I actually learned things. So it wasn't just them prepping me and then "action" and then me doing it. We had Rosa, who was like, amazing, and we had Josh, and we had all these OR nurses. So I really did learn things. Now, I can't remember what I learned …
[all laughing]
Justina Machado: but I did is what I want to let you know. It's been a while, guys. It's been a minute. [laughs]
Jack Bannon: For us in surgery, a lot of the background artists were actual nurses from the OR, so they'd just be like, "Don't do that. Do it like this."
Colin Woodell: I think for me, really the hardest thing was not feeling like an absolute fraud. Yeah. Because you're just trying to do it convincingly and it's kind of like choreography. Right? You're running around the room and everything's kind of mapped out and you feel it out as you go. But the first couple takes, you're just like kind of flying by the seat of your pants. And then you figure it out and you get into a rhythm with it, but then you have to keep the intensity. And that was just the overall experience. You're depleted and exhausted afterwards. At least I was.
Daniela Nieves: As a med student, I didn't really have to say much.
[all laughing]
Daniela Nieves: So whatever. But watching you guys do everything and then you have to finish this line by the time you do this. Cause then otherwise the timing for that is gonna be wrong. And then the terms, and then it coming out of your mouth like you've said them all the time. Like, that was crazy to watch. I was like, I can't even pronounce that.
[laughing]
Chelsea Muirhead: There was a couple of times I remember showing up, and I practiced whatever word it was a certain way, and they were like, "Oh, that's actually the British way to say it."
Justina Machado: Oh, yes, that happened.
Chelsea Muirhead: "In America, we say it like this." And I'm like, "Excuse me, what?"
Jessie T. Usher: We practice on dummies. But when it comes time to do the scene, you're working with a real person, and they're looking at you like, "Please don't mess this up." You know what I mean? It's a totally different experience. Well, you've done so much research. You would come into the scenes and, like, explain the procedures and have real conversations with the medical professionals. I felt like you kept them on their toes. You would challenge them. You know what I mean? Rosa would be [saying], "Wait, you got to hold in this hand." You're like, "Actually, uh, no." "You know, I watched the video. I seen the thing. I called the people." There was sometimes they would wheel in a cart with medical equipment on it and I'm like, "There's absolutely no way you're using it to crank open a rib cage." They're like, "Yeah, this is how we do it." I was like, "Holy smokes."
Willa Fitzgerald: The craziest thing was there was somebody who had come in, like, profusely bleeding from an artery, and there was, like, blood all over the gurney and the straps and everything. And everyone who was cleaning up with it was just using the little, like, purple top medi wipes to clean fabric. And they're like, "All right. And it's good." And I was like, "Uh…"
Jessy Yates: What did Rosa say?
Willa Fitzgerald: And then Rosa told us how long hepatitis C lives on surfaces.
Jessy Yates: Like, 20 days or something.
Willa Fitzgerald: Yeah. She was like, "Never touch anything before washing your hands and touching anything." So those were my fun facts.
[CLIP] Jack Bannon (as Tom Cole): Thank you, sir.
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