Doctor Odyssey actor Sean Teale feels genuine affection for his character Tristan in the ABC medical drama.
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“I’m very defensive of him. I like him a lot,” the British actor tells The Hollywood Reporter. “You have to love the person that you’re playing, in a way. I’ve always found that’s been the helpful thing for me.”
In Doctor Odyssey , Teale’s character Tristan is one third of the medical team on the luxury cruise ship The Odyssey, with Joshua Jackson’s Max and Philippa Soo’s Avery acting as the doctor and nurse practitioner, respectively. Although Tristan can come off as abrasive and is instantly resistant to Max’s arrival, Teale is finding and showing the “golden retriever nature” of his character.
“There’s one very obvious way that he could be portrayed, and then there’s a way that’s more fun,” he says of the character’s evolution after four episodes have aired. “I like the thought of that. I like the challenge.”
Tristan, Avery and Max quickly develop a love triangle of sorts. The trio have all spoken about their positive working relationship with one another. “I think people can tend to say this regardless of whether it’s true or not, but it really was effortless,” Teale explains.
“It felt right very quickly,” he says, adding that he and cast members, including Don Johnson, who plays the ship’s captain, spend all day on set together laughing and working hard.
“I think we all have ideas and beliefs on who we should be playing and how we should be playing them, but it’s always in a way that harmonizes. If there’s a discussion, it’s a discussion. It’s never a one-sided thing,” the actor adds. Teale says he particularly likes his scenes with Jackson as “there’s so much there.”
“There’s an older brother, younger brother. Father, son. There’s rival, there’s equal. There’s compatriot, there’s sort of collaborator. There’s a team member, but there’s also enemy,” Teale says. “There’s just loads of stuff in there, and me and Josh have probably been that to each other loads of times off set.”
Much like his fellow cast members, Murphy, a creator and executive producer of the series, was a big draw to the project for Teale. “He’s so prolific, it’s hard to get your head around it,” Teale says of the producer who launched six series this fall . “The point is that no one knows what’s going on in his head either, which is fascinating.”
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Ever since Doctor Odyssey was first teased , people started speculating if Murphy’s fantastical series — which he said is a tribute to the ABC shows of his youth — was really what it appeared to be. And once the series premiered, questions continued to swirl around if Doctor Odyssey could all be a fever dream, particular after finding out that Jackson’s Max was one of the first people to contract COVID-19 in the U.S. If he never recovered, The Odyssey and everything viewers have been watching could be his limbo state.
This week, however, a similar twist was revealed on another of Murphy’s shows, FX horror Grotesquerie . Murphy spoke to THR all about the shock reveal , where he explained that, at this point in his career, he only wants to a challenge. When asked if that meant the Doctor Odyssey theories could have some weight to them, the creator simply replied, “No comment.”
Teale tells THR that he loves that there is online speculation about the show. “I know it’s meant to be a sort of fun escapist thing, but also any theory is a gift because it means that people are trying to dissect something in a real way.”
The actor reiterates that no one knows what Murphy is planning other than Murphy himself. “I love that those theories exist,” Teale says. “Me and Don [Johnson] were talking yesterday. We’re not surprised that that theory exists. The show seems to be revealing itself to us, the longer we go down, as this fantasy.
“It is a fantastical place, and the way we depict it, and the way that we film it, the gloss that we put on it, it’s understandable that people have these ideas,” he says.
“Perhaps there’s a reason for all of that,” he continues. “I’m not going to divulge anymore.”
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Doctor Odyssey airs new episodes Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC, streaming the next day on Hulu. Read THR ‘s interviews with Jackson and Soo .
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