St. Denis Medical Allison Tolman admitted on Obsessed: The Podcast that she thinks the grass might be greener on TV’s other hit hospital show, The Pitt.
“As a performer, I get jealous,” Tolman, 44, confessed to host Kevin Fallon.
“I’m like, ‘Oh man, they got to get in there with some prosthetics and crack open someone’s chest and really do all this technical stuff, which we just are not doing on St. Denis,’” the Emmy-nominated actress said.
NBC’s St. Denis Medical strikes a vastly different tone than its HBO counterpart. Whereas The Pitt is a gritty drama about the gory realities of a trauma hospital, Tolman’s hospital show is a light-hearted mockumentary, like NBC predecessors Parks & Recreation or The Office.
“First of all, we just don’t have the time,” Tolman noted. “We’ve got 22 minutes to try to tell the story, cram it full of jokes, and make you feel something. And it’s hard.”
Second, Tolman says, the focus is entirely different. “It’s just not that type of show. We’re just not doing blood and guts and all those cool procedures,” Tolman said.
On St. Denis Medical, Tolman plays Alex, the hospital’s head nurse who, the actress admits, “everyone finds a little bit annoying, but who really gets things done.”
And she suspects the actors on The Pitt might feel the same way about her show.
“I’m sure they feel the same way, like, ‘Man, they got to ignore all that and just do a silly bit about a horse pooping in the hospital.’ So the grass is always greener,” she said.
The actress is no stranger to gritty, bloody TV work. Her Emmy-nominated performance in the first season of FX’s Fargo put the actress through blizzards, gunfights, and hospital visits.
Tolman, who won a Critics’ Choice Award for the role of Molly Solverson, said the ensuing decade has been “hectic.”
“I would say there’s been no letdown, but the surprise to me has been that that sort of hustle and that ‘What’s the next gig?’ contract worker mentality is still there. It’s still there even when you’re successful,” Tolman said.
“I’m no longer surprised because it’s been 11, 12 years, but I was surprised to find that there is no arriving. It is all journey. It’s nothing but journey,” she added.
Since leaving Fargo, Tolman has bounced around, landing recurring roles on shows like Good Girls, but not many that ran for more than a couple of seasons.
Largely, she says, the difficulty originates from overly simplistic casting by networks.
“There’s a real failure of imagination a lot of times when it comes to casting,” Tolman stated. “There’s still a million roles that they’re like, ‘No.’ They don’t see a person of color in that role. They don’t see a woman who’s over a size 10 in that role. They just don’t see it.”
With St. Denis Medical, Tolman is grateful to return to the same workplace day after day. But she has her sights set on characters that are more outside her typical wheelhouse.
“I’d like to play a real bimbo. I’d like to play someone really dumb, you know, someone who’s just there as arm candy or whatever. I think that would be super fun,” she said.
The first half of St. Denis Medical‘s second season is now available on Peacock. New episodes begin streaming on March 2. The show has been renewed for a third season.
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