‘Doc’: Amirah Vann Says Gina’s a ‘Little Undone’ After Risking Her Life to Help a Patient

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Doc Season 2 Episode 7 “What I Did for Love.” The following post also contains a discussion of domestic abuse.]

Doc tells an important story — topical and for Gina (Amirah Vann) — in the Tuesday, November 11, episode.

Gina works with Amy (Molly Parker) to help a victim of domestic abuse, to the point that the neuropsychiatrist puts herself in harm’s way to save her from the violent situation. The patient’s husband catches Gina trying to sneak her out of the hospital in the middle of the night, to a group that helps abused women escape their situations. Then, when the patient calls Gina, the doctor goes to her home to try to help her leave, only for the husband to return and attack Gina when she stands up to him. But in the end, the police arrive in time to arrest the husband. Flashbacks also reveal that Gina’s sister was in the same situation, and Gina wasn’t able to help her before she killed her husband in self-defense and served two years for involuntary manslaughter.

Below, Amirah Vann breaks down the episode, discusses why Gina needed it, and more.

This was a heavy episode for you, both physically and emotionally. How was filming it?

Amirah Vann: It was fantastic. It starts with the words, as we all know, and Barbie [Kligman], who’s one of our EPs, worked with Katie Varney on this episode, and so it was already so much on the page. It’s just great that we have two women really being the voice of a topic that we still need [to give] just so much attention. But I felt really safe. I felt safe with the language. I felt safe with the other actors, who did extraordinary. We had an amazing stunt coordinator, Jason Gosbee, and so when you have all those things in order, you can really kind of focus on my focus, which is storytelling, and that made it very easy to do.

Especially because this isn’t a show that really has stunts. So then to see, by the way, you have stunts in this episode…

There’s a really young kid inside of me. And so I was actually thrilled to do it, and I requested that I could do it myself. I really wanted it to look natural. So, for most of it, I did my own stunts, which was really wonderful. And then my stunt double, Kia Warner, she’s amazing. And she kind of came in at the end when they had tossed me around a good amount of time, and then they were like, OK, now we’re going in for closeups, so we won’t even see you. So we would do a pause and then tap Kia in to take the falls at the end — I had to keep filming the season — but I was able to do most of it, and I was only able to do that because Jason, like I said, was just so clear. You need leadership to be clear and to make sure that everyone’s on the same page. And then Ray Carter, who was played by James Gilbert, he was just really fantastic. I mean, he came with all the fury and all the actor’s intention that you needed, but as soon as his hands touched me, I mean, it was so gentle. It is kind of eerie. I was like, ‘How is he doing that? I went to grad school, I took these classes, and it’s not easy.’ Once that momentum’s going, it is very hard to control just the momentum. And he did a great job. So I felt very safe.

John Medland/Fox

I actually really enjoyed doing that part and to make it realistic — you can’t really say enjoyed when you’re dealing with this topic. But what I enjoyed was the ability to tell the story in a way that nothing — I don’t want anything to pull the audience out and be like, “Oh, that’s not Amirah.” Or, “That’s not Dr. Walker. We can see that that’s someone else.” I really wanted everyone to just get lost in this episode so that we could focus on the issues at hand for domestic violence sufferers who are really in such a compromised, awful position.

It makes it grounded, too because this is something that happens in real life every day.

Right. And that’s what I wanted to focus on. The more I was doing the research, I was just like, this is crazy. There’s so many women in prisons trying to defend themselves and the laws don’t really support all the details. And when you think about all the nuances, you think about how many years of mental abuse that goes on in addition to physical abuse, you think about size — It seems like, oh my God, it’s premeditated. But the reality is a lot of women are like, if I do this while he’s awake, I can’t protect myself. They’ve tried it. Physical size difference makes a difference, so they do it when it’s like the husband is sleeping because that’s the only opportunity that they’ll be able to do it and get out of there and survive it on the other side. And they get to the point where it’s like, OK, I know that it’s me or him, next time I’m going to wind up dead, and this is real.

And sadly, I know women who’ve experienced domestic violence. I’ve heard about the traumas, and I’ve heard about the fear of — it is very easy to, I don’t know, just kind of separate yourself and be like, why don’t you just leave? But when you think about the practicalness, and then if you add in children, if they’re in school, and then you have rent, and then you might be the sole provider when you leave and you might’ve been already the sole provider, but now you’re trying to relocate, none of these things are easy. There’s nothing easy about any of that. And then oftentimes if these men have power or they have money, or even if they just have the strong desire to follow you, they find them in the new location.

It happens to men also, but the statistics show that women are the victim much more often. [As seen] in this episode, women are just in a catch-22. There’s no way out and being able to be released, I’m glad that we covered that with the cop and the officer dealing with certain biases there that they just are like, listen, we’re trying, but we need their help. But then if they say something, the guy can get released within a couple of hours and now he’s just even angrier that you reported him. This is something that we really need to figure out across the board also so that people aren’t having to — we don’t want anyone getting murdered either. But how do we protect these women so it doesn’t have to get to that point?

How much was the outcome of this and Gina’s involvement something she needed after last season with Ian and her sister?

Yeah, I think you’re 100% right. I think it’s a total buildup. Isn’t that life? That’s what I love about this show, too. It’s so true to life. She doesn’t feel like she was able to be there for her sister and well, she wasn’t able to be there for her sister, which is kind of the worst when you specialize in something and you fail at it. You’re just like, why don’t I have control of this in my own personal life when professionally I may be a leader in that?

And so I think she feels like a failure there with her sister. And then with Ian, she felt like a failure because that one mistake literally killed so many people in that train accident, and she carries that burden with her. She takes a lot of that. She has a lot of guilt for that. That was her responsibility to help him through that. That was her main responsibility. So how do you forgive yourself through that? The show is so much about second chances and dealing with really awful situations and saying, OK, how are we going to survive this? And I think so many of us just need to have more compassion with ourselves. I know that I struggle with that, as an actor, in my personal life as a human, and just giving myself compassion and a lot of compassion for other people. But sometimes I can be terribly hard on myself. I love that this show really asks that of us. It just introduces all these true-to-life situations where hopefully people can feel seen and say, wow, I have compassion for Gina, and I want her to forgive herself because we see that this is not all her fault and have such clarity when it’s not you. And then maybe we can all flip that and kind of apply it to ourselves.

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Would you say there’s a bit of a weight off of her now?

I think she needs to see that therapist.

I agree.

I think it’s great that this is the best friendship ever [with Amy]. I think they both are really honest with each other and I think as we see in the episode, her bestie is like, girl, you need a therapist, don’t we all? Because yes, she’s breathing a sigh of relief, but once again, these things stick with you, and to put yourself in what Gina does to put herself in the middle and to become a victim, to try to get some kind of justice for her patient, that shouldn’t be how that went down. One shouldn’t become the victim, and so you just go; her strings are coming a little undone. She’s a little undone. And I think she does need to talk to someone, and she does need to find a way to just get back on track. Thank God that Amy is reminding her that, yeah, you’re not an Avenger. Let’s get it together.

How are we going to see this affecting her going forward?

I think the good thing is that this stuff is kind of behind her in the sense of, maybe she can just focus on her friends. There’s going to be a lot more drama still at the hospital, going on with all of our other actors. We have to wait and see. The season’s not done yet, so it’s actually quite exciting to see what happens on that journey. I’m not really sure. And that’s kind of what makes it great because we continue to have these conversations about what the journey is. Even this episode, we had a conversation about what this could be, and we kind of go back and forth with thoughts, and I always love to present questions. And so I feel like there are those questions. What’s going to happen to Gina now? Can she move on peacefully? I think there are going to be moments of levity where she can really be there for Amy because Amy’s clearly still going through it herself. There are going to be moments where she’s going to have to face the fact that she has the tools to get back in there, but she might need a minute for herself.

Speaking of moments of levity, I like Gina’s “Don’t start bonding now” line to her wife and Amy.

I love that line, too. I love that you picked up on that because that was actually one of my favorite lines, too, like, “This is freaking me out, you guys.” It’s just the evolution of their relationship, and you look for those moments of levity, and I think that that’s written in really nicely because Gina has that. Gina is typically that light, and we don’t want the light to go out because we all need that. I need that. The character needs that for herself, and I think the friendship is there and her love, she’s surrounded by love, which is a good thing. She really is. Between her wife and then her bestie, she really is surrounded by love. But there’s still a lot of drama unfolding at the hospital.

Speaking of, I was going to bring up this storyline with Hannah because she’s starting to mess with Amy at work, which also is messing with Gina’s patient in this episode. Is this something that Gina’s going to become privy to, whether through what she sees herself or someone else bringing it to her attention?

That does get revealed. … We’re going to deal with the repercussions and there are going to be lots of them and positive and negative, and it’s going to affect so many different of our beloved characters and have trickling effects.

How’s Gina feeling about Joan (Felicity Huffman)? Because the two are in different departments, but we’ve still heard how they feel about each other, and both are important to Amy.

In that hospital room, when Joan comes in, they have a sweet moment and Gina says, “Thank you.” I really advocated for that “Thank you.” These are those little gems that I sit in my — talk about my prep and for this episode very much [so], I had my little post-it notes on my wall to really navigate how this whole episode would play out, so that every moment was very different and very specific to what was going on. And in that moment, I was like, it’s quite the journey because I’m very skeptical of her in the beginning. then in these moments, I realize that she really does want the best for Amy.

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The truth is that neither one of us know what’s best for Amy except Amy. And then sometimes Amy doesn’t even know what’s best for her. So we’re all on those journeys, but I think Gina in that moment realizes that maybe Joan is not the worst thing to happen to Westside Hospital, that she makes everyone bring their A game, and she’s made sacrifices. And so it is still that question of, I don’t know how we all feel about her. I feel like Gina is the voice of the audience when it comes to Joan of just like, can we trust her? Do we like that she pushes us this hard? We kind of love it because she makes us the best, but we also just want to sit down and have a coffee and make a mistake and not get yelled at by the teacher. [Laughs] The jury’s still out. I still don’t know.

Is there anything else coming up with Gina and her wife? I did like seeing them together in this episode.

There are so many episodes [coming], and so I feel like I would love to go deeper into the relationship with my wife. And so I’m going to actually bring that up because I think that’s a great way also to tackle all the stuff that’s going on because we tackle those things when we go home. At work, we put on the work face. But when you go home, that’s when you have the tough conversations. And I think that would be a great opportunity to really tackle some of these things because I feel like Gina’s wife is — she is a wonderful actress, and I think that we can really have some great scenes that’ll get to, OK, what was that about? And how are we going to not ever put ourselves in that position again? I think we have some great potential scenes there, and it’s just great to see that relationship. It’s great to still normalize two powerful women in love and romantically involved, and I just think that’s another great thing to just be seen on television, just normalizing the humanity of two people loving each other.

Doc, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox

If you or someone you know is the victim of domestic abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.