‘Doc’: Emma Pfitzer Price Teases How Hannah Will React After Shocking Cliffhanger

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Doc Season 2 Episode 11 “Family Matters.”]

In Doc Season 2, the antagonist for Amy (Molly Parker) is the person right next to her, Hannah (Emma Pfitzer Price), who, under other circumstances would clearly be her mentee. But instead, she and her brother Charlie (Daniel Gravelle ) are seeking revenge for the role they feel that Amy played in their father’s death by suicide. The Tuesday, January 13, episode does a deep dive on Hannah’s past and present.

Still reeling from the fact that it was their — really, Charlie’s — hack that ultimately led to a patient’s death, Hannah’s understandably distracted all day, trying to reach her brother and eventually coming home to find him unconscious, having seemingly overdosed. Meanwhile, flashbacks going back three years show Hannah and Charlie finding their father dead and how that affected Hannah (including a voluntary stay at a psychiatric institution).

Below, Emma Pfitzer Price breaks down the major Hannah episode and teases what’s ahead.

Talk about filming this episode because it’s heavy, it’s emotional. It’s the aftermath of the patient dying, what we see in the flashbacks, then that ending. So what was that experience like for you?

Emma Pfitzer Price: The interesting thing was some of the scenes in Episode 11, we were filming in tandem with Episode 10. Part of what’s going on with Hannah in Episode 11 is this really, really fresh trauma of losing a patient for the first time. So it was wild filming those scenes where she’s having the flashbacks of 24 hours before while we’re filming those scenes. So it definitely kept the wound really, really fresh.

Fox

We also got the flashbacks to the three years ago for Hannah too. So you also had to get into that headspace for her.

Yes. And I’m so glad that people get to see where she’s coming from because on the surface, all of these antagonizing actions against Amy feel a bit senseless. And so to get to see what Hannah is struggling with mentally, literally mentally, it just gives a great insight on how we got here. I mean, you see Hannah walking out of the psychiatric institution, and hopefully, people are yelling at their televisions, “No! Stay and get the help you need!” But we’re unleashing a really, really unstable Hannah on an unsuspecting world.

Also, I feel like it’s really important that we see the scene where she and Charlie find their father because that really helps to explain why she’s doing what she is.

Exactly. And all of that, I mean, it’s interesting in 11, Hannah is dealing with the present trauma of losing Chris, but then there’s this PTSD trauma of losing her father. So to get to see both of those things happening in real time in Episode 11, and then how, as a healthcare worker, you have to mask all of that, try your best to mask all of that to get the job done.

And especially because the one who is trying to help her right now is Amy, who is the one that she does not like.

Right.

But Amy’s the one who’s there for her dealing with this loss of this patient.

And it just breaks your heart because you see Amy and Hannah side by side in the frame and you’re almost tearing your hair out. Amy could be such a profound mentor for a doctor like Hannah, but instead Hannah made a decision and it was a decision to polarize herself from her because she didn’t understand what happened between her dad and Amy.

Has Hannah been finding herself liking Amy though, the more that she is spending time with her, and not liking that part of herself?

Yes. I mean, the interesting thing is Hannah doesn’t learn the information about —It’s important to remind the audience that Hannah came in with the genuine desire to be the best doctor and most importantly, to follow through with her dad’s legacy. That’s why she wanted to work at Westside specifically, but she came in with no malicious intent. She met Amy, they had a very fleeting interaction, but she’s under the impression that her dad quit the hospital because of COVID burnout. So when she hears from HR that it had something to do with Amy, she finds that out about three episodes in as she’s been establishing this trust and this mentorship and really, really taking most of her cases with Amy. So we sort of had to build that trust between the two of them so that it’s more frustrating for Hannah because she just spent the last three episodes trusting and really creating this friendship with Amy.

Fox

But then we got to the ending of this episode. So first of all, confirming that Charlie is not dead?

He is not dead.

So now there’s Hannah the doctor but also Hannah the worried sister…

We see this in a lot of characters on Doc. These people are brilliant caretakers and they’re so good at helping other people, but they can be really bad at taking care of themselves. And I mean, we see that in Amy, we see that in Sonya [Anya Banerjee], we see it in Hannah. And so yeah, there’s probably also because she’s leaning so much on her brother, this is really the only person she has left in her life. And after her father’s death, they were sort of estranged for a long time. They didn’t really speak. And this mission of figuring out what happened with our dad really brings the siblings back together. And it gives Charlie, who has been unwell and kind of drifting, this motivation finally and a sense of purpose in life. And you sort of get addicted to that feeling of, let me take this further. Let me take this further. I’m doing something good. I’m helping my sister. So because I need him so much, I think I’m willing to overlook. You see me get upset with him for taking it too far, but I’m willing to overlook or not believe that he’s going to do something catastrophic or push me somewhere catastrophic.

So what can you preview about the next episode?

You see Episode 10, it’s a really intense episode. You think, surely, we’re going to get a break in Episode 11, and it’s also a really heavy episode. So I think audiences can anticipate this is just going to keep building and building. It has to come to a head at some point. And yeah, we’ll see that as the episodes unfold.

How is Hannah dealing with balancing her personal and professional lives colliding?

What happens after she loses her dad is all of that grief and that anger and that confusion, she suppresses so, so deep. And Hannah’s a scientist. It’s important to remember, she’s really smart. And I think in a moment of grief, your first question is, why? How could something like this happen? How can my brilliant father who I look up to and I love and adore, how could he do something like this? And how can my family disband from this? So a scientist wants an answer. You want something really logical, really rational, and Hannah is not getting that. And that’s clear early into her and Charlie’s mission that she’s not going to get that. And I think Hannah’s sort of doing the same suppression with — when you see a lot of these scenes in [Episode] 11, she’s dealing really actively with, she’s on a verge and she has a full-on panic attack, but then you have to lock back in. You almost see her in the next scene, hair’s back together, she’s got it together, she’s back with the patient because in order to care for her patient, she can’t show any of that. And I know healthcare workers go through training to control all of those emotions and that vulnerability.

But how is she going to be doing with her brother, the patient?

Oof. I think there’s a lot you see. I can speak for what you see in 11, and I know you see a lot of anger. I needed you. None of this would’ve been possible without the help of her brother. And if she were to lose her father and lose her brother, I mean, that’s it. That’s everything for her. So I think you’ll see the full range of emotional response to that.

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But meanwhile, unbeknownst to Hannah, Amy has realized that she’s been seeing Hannah’s father in the memory flashes because we also get that scene at the end of Episode 11. But I mean, there’s so much going on for Hannah right now that I feel like she’s not even thinking about if Amy realizes anything at this point.

Oh, yeah.

What can you say about what that means for Hannah and Amy’s interactions going forward? There was this other layer from Hannah’s side, but now I feel like there’s another layer from Amy’s side of who knows what, who doesn’t know what?

Yes. And that’ll all play out in the episodes to follow. But yeah, I mean, Hannah thinks that the metadata hack — when we wipe the metadata, the intention is not to mess with any patients. The intention is to erase the history of what Charlie has done in the hospital system because I’ve reached my cap, I’m done. But then the consequences of that hack are what caused us to lose the patient. So this was a surprise for me. I sort of thought, we can wipe the metadata and my hands are clean, but then this huge consequence of losing Chris is at stake. So yeah, my hands aren’t clean. It’s impossible. It’s sort of gone past the point of resolution.

How much has Hannah been planning for the day that Amy does find out?

Obviously, she’s a very anxious person. She’s not sleeping. I think she’s terrified that losing the patient is somehow going to lead to her being found out and to go from thinking — I mean, when we wipe the metadata, you see Hannah smirk. Because she truly thinks, OK, this is done. I can just pretend as if this never happened and we can all be hunky-dory. And maybe then Hannah thinks — maybe at any point in [Episode] 11, if Hannah wasn’t so traumatized, she could have a confrontation with Amy and confess before it’s too late. And it might not be too late for that. But yeah, I think she’s terrified of the consequences if this information falls into the wrong hands. And you see in 11, that great scene where the police are coming to confront the family, but Hannah’s like, “This is the moment they’re coming for me. They found out.” And yeah, she knows there’s been an internal investigation, but I think the FBI being in the building as opposed to just a cyber technician, the threat of law enforcement and the FBI get-up is terrifying for Hannah.

Yeah, speaking of the anxiety, Hannah’s reaction when she sees the police show up because she knew why they were coming, for that patient’s storyline, but she was still worried.

And she sees Amy being a really good detective. “I’m like a dog with a bone in med school.” Hannah’s sort of seeing what is happening with her play out in real time as Amy is investigating the mystery behind our patients. And it’s scary because you see Hannah really appreciate on one hand, wow, you are an amazing doctor and you’re a great forensic scientist and a great detective, but oh no, the consequences for me of your capability are really, really scary.

What else is coming up for Hannah? With whom does she have the most significant conversation after Episode 11?

It is interesting because Hannah’s sort of on her own in a sense. She’s in the hospital, but we see a lot of Hannah — all of Hannah’s motivations are her family and her loyalty. She’s trying to piece back her family together. And interestingly enough, she has that in common with Amy as she’s trying to piece this semblance of her family together and her loss. So I think you can anticipate … The question is, are these two women going to use that similarity to connect or are they going to be able to see past Hannah’s actions?

Yeah, especially because Charlie had gone further and Hannah had said it was enough…

Yeah, I did not approve. I mean, in Episode 8, that’s the first time you see Hannah having some reservation because she hears about Amy’s loss. She didn’t know Amy lost a child. So Hannah sort of meekly approaches her brother and she’s like, “I’m having some doubts about this because … ” And her brother is the one like, “So, what? We lost our father.” Yeah, really reminding Hannah what happened, “Stay loyal, stay loyal, this is about our family.”

Doc, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox