‘Cupertino’s Ella Stiller Reflects on Her ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Moment in Sunday’s Episode

Sunday’s bonus episode of Cupertino, the sixth in the CBS drama’s inaugural season, centers on the curious case of a stolen liver. In “Harper,” the titular client is the roommate of Christy Palladino (Ella Stiller), who needs a liver transplant.

Christy recruits her bosses, Michael Price (Mike Colter) and Olivia Siffre (Rachel Keller), to represent her in a battle with the insurance company. Though they are successful on that front, things take a grim turn when the AI algorithm demotes Harper from the top of the list, instead granting the organ to Albert Ensler, a wealthy venture capitalist.

From there, it’s a race against the clock of the liver’s viability to determine who really deserves the transplant first, and the episode ends with a big twist: It wasn’t the AI algorithm that worked against Harper; it was someone in the hospital who made the switch.

On Cupertino, there’ve been serious consequences at play in each of the cases, but never more so than this, where a young woman’s life is literally on the line for the lawyers.

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Ella Stiller talked to TV Insider about the seriousness of the situation, saying, “I love filming that episode a lot. It was really that another one for me, a real ‘pinch me’ moment of like, ‘Oh, this is serious. I’m on a drama.’ I identify heavily as a comedic actor — not that I don’t love to do all genres, but I really had this moment, ‘Oh, I’m on a drama, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. And I’m in the hospital and get to live my best Grey’s Anatomy life right now and really like hone in on that.”

She also contended that Episode 6 is a “turning point” for her character and the series. “Maybe this is where you guys start to see that Christy is all about these people that they’re representing, and maybe it is a turning point. I do think that that’s where you’re like, ‘This girl would go to the ends of the Earth to save the people that she cares about,’ and I really relate to that. She’s loyal to the core, and yeah, that episode is huge because the stakes are so high all of a sudden, not just legally, but someone’s life is on the line.'”

Elizabeth Fisher / CBS

Stiller relished the opportunity Episode 6 gave her to be “in the middle of the action” on the grounds of the hospital while the others were stuck in gridlock traffic and had to telecommute from the car. “I get to be the one in the middle of the action and doing the human negotiating and talking and all the stuff that happens out of court. That’s more human-to-human thing,” she said.

The actress also appreciated the twist ending that AI wasn’t the bad guy in this case. “This is the episode where, all of a sudden, there’s this twist that, ‘Oh, the AI didn’t screw us over. It actually was the opposite, and that’s really weird and hard to reckon with…. It’s not usually like that on our show, but I think that twist was big and just shows that this is a very complicated issue… the plot thickens.”

Stay tuned for another new episode of Cupertino ahead as the show resumes it usual Thursday night timeslot.

Cupertino, Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS