Medical drama’s star diagnoses U.S. health care
Manish Dayal sees treatment as a universal right, tackling new role as optimistic doctor
In Fox’s The Resident, Manish Dayal stars as an idealistic first-year medical resident who finds himself navigating the big-money cutthroat politics of the American health-care system in a medical drama that leans more toward the dark malice of House of Cards than the soapy, relationship-driven Grey’s Anatomy.
As a result of simply playing a doctor in the show (it debuts Sunday at 10 p.m. on City, with a second episode Monday at 9 p.m.), Dayal finds himself unequivocal about the importance of universal health care.
“My character is very much an optimist. He believes in saving people regardless of cost. But he has this perspective shattered in different ways,” says Dayal ( 90210, The Hundred-Foot Journey). “The politics of health care does play a major role and our show touches on the issues of patients of different economic backgrounds needing medical care. But personally, I also believe in universal health care. I believe it should be a basic right.”
Dayal, who was born in South Carolina, has something of a unique perspective for an American because he also happens to be married to a Canadian.
“She’s always a little shocked by how we do things and that we have this big health-care debate going on,” Dayal says. “Also, the wealthier you are in our system the better care you get. That concept to her is foreign and unfamiliar and it’s something that does shake her up a bit.”
Co-stars include some familiar faces, such as Canadians Bruce Greenwood ( Star Trek) and Emily Van- Camp ( Revenge), and American Matt Czuchry ( The Good Wife). Yet having a South Asian male as its co-lead means The Resident is also breaking relatively new ground for a primetime legacy-network drama.
That’s not lost on Dayal. “I would like to say that it shouldn’t be a bold choice by a major network, but it is,” he says.
“We need to be represented and portrayed onscreen in ways that are relatable and truthful and authentic. To be a South Asian man has been foreign onscreen.”
While Asian women have had bet- ter success in prime time, including ABC’s Quantico with Priyanka Chopra and CBS’s Elementary with Lucy Liu, that hasn’t been true for Asian men. Daniel Dae Kim in Hawaii Five-0 was an exception, but he left (along with Grace Kim) after a producers failed to give them equal pay to their co-stars.
Or as Master of None co-creator Alan Yang said at the Emmy Awards, the legacy of Sixteen Candles caricature Long Duk Dong runs deep.
“Our country has been ill-equipped to deal with how fast our immigrant communities have grown,” Dayal says. “But TV is a great way to begin implementing that change . . . That to me is why I wanted to be a part of the show. My character is not what the stereotypical South Asian male might be. He is showing that he’s part of a very broad community that can represent many different things, just like everyone else.”
With the success of ABC’s The Good Doctor, which airs on CTV, it looks like medical dramas are back in vogue again — if they ever went out of style.
Like the autistic doctor played by Freddie Highmore, Dayal’s Devon Pravesh is an innocent operating in a cynical world.
The hope is that The Resident’s variation will be unique enough to attract viewers.
“It’s a different, very ambiguous take on what it’s like to live in and operate in a modern hospital environment,” Dayal says.
“You don’t have to understand too much about medicine to understand that this is very much a business, and my character is the eyes and ears to the whole experience. It draws back the curtains on what’s happening in the health-care system today.”