Judy Reyes Opens Up About Dramatic Lifetime Movie ‘Secrets of Mercy Hospital’

Judy Reyes is in familiar surroundings for her role in the upcoming Lifetime movie Secrets of Mercy Hospital. The Scrubs star plays Major Kendra Williams, a battle-hardened Army nurse, who returns back to her hometown she fled as a teenager for her estranged mother’s funeral. Plans for a quick visit were upended when Kendra jumped into action to help deliver a baby during a roadside emergency. 

She found Mercy Hospital’s maternity and neonatal units needed an extra hand. During this time past memories flooded back, forcing her to confront a long-buried secret of the daughter she gave birth to and left behind at 18. Mixed emotions are also felt while working alongside former best friend, now married to Kendra’s first love, Vaughn Maddox (Tahmoh Penikett). 

It’s a dramatic turn for Reyes, who’s also an executive producer on the project. The ALMA winner is known for playing head nurse Carla Espinosa at Sacred Heart Hospital on Scrubs for eight seasons and the current ABC revival. Kendra also shares similar gritty and strong-willed qualities as Reyes’ Lieutenant Selena Soto on the hit High Potential. 

Ahead of the premiere of Secrets of Mercy Hospital on October 24, we sat down with the actress to talk about the project and what made it a different experience. 

Being on two successful shows, you’re a busy woman. Does that make you a little more particular in terms of the parts you take? What drew you to Kendra in Secrets of Mercy Hospital?

Judy Reyes: I look into the opportunity it presented. Sometimes you hit a flow with two different shows. Then this offer came up, and I thought about the fact that it was a lead role, and that I got an opportunity to be an executive producer on it. I just kind of wanted to flex a little bit, if you will,  to see what that’s like. I’ve never done those two things before, definitely not at the same time. I guess I wanted to grow more and learn more and see how I can use it in future projects. 

Do you feel the fact Kendra a nurse was a double-edged sword because people know you so much as Carla? 

I agree with it being a double-edged sword. It definitely made me think twice. I was like, “Am I going to play another nurse?” I think this is the third or the fourth nurse that I have played. I’m also attracted to power. And in truth, in this environment, in a hospital environment, it’s the nurses who are really in charge. I know all the attention, all the glamour is attached to doctors. Just like in politics, you think that the people in Congress are in charge or presidents, but it’s the people in the foundation that really tell the stories and establish the structure. That’s the blessing of having played these four different characters that happen to be nurses and be able to establish how that sense of power affects the way they live their lives. 

I think there are some elements of Lt. Soto, your High Potential character, too. Kendra is also strong on the surface, but there is a vulnerability about her as well. 

I agree. It’s just the sense of caring and trauma that leads you to the place where you are. The opportunity also continues to come where you can be more flawed, you can have more things going on with you that inform where you are. So, there’s dimensions to be applied with every opportunity that I get. 

What do you make of the journey Kendra goes on? Much like other Lifetime movies, this one also shines a light on a struggle other women face in terms of making a difficult decision of giving up a child. 

She gets pregnant as a child. She makes quote-unquote mistakes that all kids do and feels she has to run away because of fearing what people think. She is trying to rebuild something completely on her own, without the traumas or the triggers of the past, only to have to confront it. Eventually, and ultimately, Kendra comes back to her mother’s funeral, missing the end of her mother’s life. Then she is almost forced to stay there, coming across a young woman who was actually experiencing the thing that she ran away from, which is having this child that she can’t keep, or never really wanted. That reconnects her with everything she left behind, and having left her behind. She looks to heal and forgive herself, as well as forgiving everybody around her. I think that’s exactly what a lot of people actually go through. They leave their lives behind because they’re afraid of how they’re going to be detected, or cast aside, or neglected, so they try to get ahead of it. That is what Kendra tried, only to have to confront it eventually. That’s a pain that people are afraid of feeling, or where you’re used to numbing yourself in one way or another, but it catches up with you. 

You’re at a great point in your career right now. You just received a Trailblazer Award at the Critics Choice Association’s 6th Annual Celebración of Cinema & Television. Coming off of Hispanic Heritage Month, what are your thoughts on the state of the game right now in terms of representation? 

I think the industry is changing faster than we can keep up with. I’m absolutely blown away by the opportunity that I have at this very moment to play not only leadership roles, but have multiple jobs at once where most of my colleagues don’t. To be appreciated with the award that I just received, it just feels like a call to leadership, a call to try to tell stories that involve and include and talk about Latinos. Speaking of Hispanic Heritage Month, these projects create an opportunity to tell stories that include that. I have a fundraising event with a show that I created with my partner called  Freestyle: A Love Story on November 6 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. It’s all about Latin hip-hop that was born in the Bronx.

It has meant so much to so many urban people, let alone Latinos. We’re celebrating that, telling that story, because that period just lasted so little time. At the same time, you hear and you feel the impact of that music in all music today, hip-hop, pop, everything. So, I feel it’s relevant to talk about that kind of stuff. So it’s a celebration and a telling of that story. We’re using it to support and fund a women’s football team that’s also very inclusive and supportive and elevating of Latina women. We’re trying to just sustain those things in the smallest way possible. It’s a beginning to start from somewhere, to engage and bring people who want to see themselves, and want to be part of, of something that’s rarely acknowledged. I guess it’s more of an assimilation bias in this business, as opposed to just kind of celebrating your own individual stories. That’s what we want to do. We just want to bring it forth, put it out there, have an opportunity for people to see themselves, celebrate themselves, see our stories, and support positive causes. It’s a place to go forward as this industry continues to change so much. 

What has it been like to revisit Carla on Scrubs later in life as she and Turk (Donald Faison) go through some marital bumps in the road? 

That’s a fun question because we’re all exactly the same people but older. People don’t change others, they change themselves. But I think that what Turk and Carla are confronting is getting older, having children, and their bodies changing. Carla’s going through menopause. They’re going through empty nest syndrome in a lot of ways. It’s about getting older, but also still having your community to support you through that. It’s what everything that [creator] Bill Lawrence, Zach Braff, and others championed and that has continued from the initial conception. It’s furthering this vision with the same people who are still a group of friends, confident professionals, but probably a mess at times, as human beings, like we all are. 

It looks like you’re also still having fun together at this stage. 

We do. We carry on Bill’s legacy where the job is to make somebody laugh. Not tell the joke the way it’s written as much as to make somebody around you laugh. If you make your co-star break, if you make somebody behind the camera break, then you’re doing your job. If that’s not happening, then we’re gonna add a joke or change a joke. That’s what it has always been. That’s the fun part, making it work the best way that we can. The commitment to that is what keeps it really fun. To engage every single person that’s involved, so everyone from makeup to costumes to the technicians to camera operators, they are all completely committed to pulling off that joke, even if it’s only going to last three seconds on camera. That’s part of doing the show.

Secrets of Mercy Hospital premiere, October 24, 8/7c, Lifetime

Scrubs, Wednesdays, 8/7c, ABC

High Potential, Season 3 Premiere, 2027, ABC