‘Best Medicine’: Josh Charles & Boss Talk Martin’s Blood Phobia, Opening up to Louisa & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Best Medicine series premiere “Docked.”]

The last place you want to be might be the exact place you need to be. That’s pretty much the lesson that Dr. Martin Best (Josh Charles) is going to learn in Fox’s new medical dramedy, Best Medicine, based on the U.K.’s Doc Martin.

“It’s really fun,” Charles tells TV Insider of taking on the comedic role. “I’ve been wanting to do more of it for a while. It’s a blast.”

Martin comes to Port Wenn, where he spent his childhood and where his aunt Sarah (Annie Potts) still lives, from a job in Boston; to say he doesn’t have an easy time adjusting to the small town and its residents is an understatement. He meets his love interest, Louisa (Abigail Spencer), who’s fresh off breaking up with her best friend and fiancé, Sheriff Mark (Josh Segarra), and they don’t exactly get off on the best foot, of course.

Martin’s ready to give up on Port Wenn relatively quickly since he doesn’t like people and can’t even save lives anymore by cutting them open. He froze in the OR when facing a little girl who’d been in a car accident, which Sarah says is understandable, given what happened to Rosemary. But in the end, and after revealing his blood phobia to his assistant Elaine (Cree) and Mark commenting that they need a doctor and he needs patients, he decides to stay.

Below, in separate interviews, Josh Charles and showrunner and executive producer Liz Tuccillo break down the series premiere.

When Louisa asks Martin if he’s ever been in love, he doesn’t answer. Why? Is the answer he hasn’t, or is it that he’s not ready to open up to her just yet?

Josh Charles: Martin has this real desire to want to connect to people, but he has a real inability to do that because it’s not something he’s ever really worked on. It’s not something that he’s had to do. As for why he doesn’t answer her, I think it’s both. I think he’s not ready to open up, but I also think he doesn’t know how to open up. Not yet.

Speaking of opening up, because when he talks to his aunt Sarah about why he came to Port Wenn, she warns him that this place won’t let him hide. Why did he come to this town? Did he really think he could hide in a small town?

Charles: No, I don’t think that he thought he could hide. I don’t think he thought the whole thing through enough. [Laughs] Because it was some part also necessity. I think his idea was that he would come to Port Wenn, he’s had these issues, and he’s not really performing surgeries right now, and it’s sort of taking an extended sabbatical. At least I think that’s how he views it at the start. And this job comes up, and he heard about it because he has the connections to the town. So I don’t think he was thinking about those things, honestly. I think he was just thinking about a way that he could go somewhere, be left alone, and go on this extended sabbatical while he figures out why this is happening to him, the stuff that’s made it so that he can’t work right now.

Liz Tuccillo: I think, frankly, he didn’t think it through. And for somebody who I think is probably very thorough in his thinking, I think he was in the middle of a crisis, and he saw his career ending and didn’t know what to do. And this job came up, and he grabbed at it, not really understanding all of the ramifications except that he knew that he liked the place as a child, and his aunt Sarah was there, who he had fond feelings for and had lost touch with. So, I think he just didn’t think about what the downside of it all would be.

Francisco Roman/Fox

How does Martin feel about having his hand forced and having to tell Elaine about his blood phobia? 

Tuccillo: I think he hates it, which is what’s so great. It’s like the last person he’d want to have to trust with a secret.
Charles: Yeah, I don’t think he has any choice there. She just runs in to save him, but it’s the beginning of — what may start off as a sort of quid pro quo develops into a very pivotal, important relationship in the show, the two of them.

By the end of the premiere, he’s accepted he’s staying. How is he feeling about that decision and how much did that great conversation with Mark factor into? Martin and Mark? I think one of my favorite dynamics on the show.

Charles: I love it. I know. Josh and I get along so well. It’s really such a treat working with him. I love him. I don’t really think he has a lot of other options, to be honest with you. I mean, he has some, but I do think — Martin had a lot of trauma early in his life, and he’s sort of gone on this track of becoming this very successful heart surgeon, and he’s a bit of a medical savant type guy. He just really cares and knows a lot about medicine. But his ultimate sort of goal — and it makes sense when you start to understand and the pieces, the layers of the onion start to get unraveled and you understand more about his history — is his real desire to save people. He likes wanting to help people, and that becomes more profound the more we learned about what happened to him in his life.

But I think for me, there was this opening here that he could kind of figure out — I don’t think he consciously knows exactly what this journey is going to do for him. And I think that happens a lot in life. I think, in a way, he needs this experience. And I don’t even know if, by the end of [Episode] 1, he figured it out. I think he’s just sort of begrudgingly staying because he doesn’t really like people. But again, I think underneath all of it is a real desire to want to learn how to connect, to try to be a more authentic version of himself.

I think in a way it’s like when you asked, to go back to Louisa’s question — I think in some ways the journey for Martin in this show is that it’s OK to fall in love. It’s OK to be open enough for that. But again, I just don’t think he knows how. He doesn’t have the skills. He doesn’t have the people skills, the social skills. He suffers a lot of social anxiety. And so I think these things don’t come easy for him. And so that’s the part I mean [when I say] I don’t think he thought it through, that you’re not really able to hide in small towns, particularly this small town. Everyone’s in your business. It’s very insular. They do things their way. You mess with someone, everybody else finds out about it, and then they turn their backs on you. They’re all kind of together.

And in some ways, I think from a comedic point of view, I say this, to be clear, I think from Martin’s point of view, he’s in a freaking horror movie. It’s like he can’t get out. And I always think about that to myself. It’s like that’s kind of his point of view. It’s like, “Oh my God, this is insane. These people will not leave me alone. This is — why did I come here?” And that’s the thing. I don’t think he thought it through, but I think in a way when he was there growing up as a kid and going through what he went through as a kid and what he faced… it was a time when he went there, something landed in him in those times and those memories, through all his grief and everything, I think there was something there that I think is buried, but I think some part of him knew that maybe this was a place to go, but again, not consciously. So I think in a weird way, it’s like this town is meant to smooth off the rough edges of this guy. And it’s not a linear journey. It’s very much a journey that’s going to have its ups and downs and bumps and one step up and three steps back. And that’s, I think, where a lot of the comedy and the romance and everything comes from, from that dynamic.

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Tuccillo: Yeah, I think he’s saying, “I’m going to really give this a chance. I’m really going to try.” But obviously two steps forward, one step back. And it is, obviously, challenges ahead. But I think he’s sort of saying, “You know what? I’m going to really try.”

But while he may not have wanted to stay in Port Wenn, was he ready to go back to Boston? Where would he have gone? Had he even thought about that yet?

Tuccillo: Exactly. I think that’s the thing, that’s the fun, is that there really was nowhere else for him to go. What would his options be? So, he was also sort of like, “Well, they need a doctor, and he kind of doesn’t have anywhere else to go.” So there was also sort of like, “Well, maybe this is fate, and maybe this is where I’m meant to be.”

Louisa and Mark are both dealing with their breakup in their own ways, as we see in the premiere. What does that mean for what we’ll see between them going forward? Because they were, as she points out, best friends. They had a strong friendship before their relationship fell apart.

Tuccillo: Yes. I think you’re going to see just them both struggling with this breakup. We’re not going to let it go as opposed to this thing we started at the beginning and we don’t follow through with. I think they’re going to be both struggling in different ways with how much they love each other and how much their friendship or their relationship meant to them and to the town. So they’re going to be connected throughout the season in different ways.

Sarah brings up what happened to Rosemary and near the end of the episode, Martin looks at that photo of the two kids, but there are no details yet about what happened, about who exactly Rosemary is. We don’t know exactly who is in that photo necessarily. So what can you say about that at the end of the premiere?

Tuccillo: Well, I guess I just wanted … It was a big discussion about how much we give the audience all upfront. And we were just really hoping that we didn’t have to spell it all out in the pilot episode. So, that’s what we did. We decided to give the information just like you would do in life, the information gets parceled out in pieces. So we learn something about Rosemary. We see this picture of two children, and then he does pretty much spell it out for the most part in Episode 2. So, we’re hoping people are intrigued enough to watch Episode 2 and get sort of a full explanation.

How long is it going to take him to warm up to the dog?

Charles: [Laughs] That’s funny. I don’t know. It does happen begrudgingly. It happens, but it takes a little while. It comes in incrementally. It’s never fully, but there are some moments towards the end of these first 13 where you do sort of see them develop something.

Best Medicine, Tuesdays, 8/7c, Fox