‘Station 19’ star taps into her role via climbing wall

NEW YORK — Jaina Lee Ortiz isn’t typically drawn to high-adrenaline pursuits.

The actress’s favorite hobby is flower arranging.

Her idea of bliss: neatly folded towels.

Her dream job: personal organizer.

And yet, Ortiz recently clambered 40 feet up a rock wall, clutching handholds and scrambling onto footholds at Chelsea Piers Fitness Center.

“It’s fun — it’s really fun,” she called out.

Then she reached the top and dared to look down.

“Oh, wait,” she said. “It’s scary.”

Ortiz, 31, has been scaring herself a lot lately. She plays firefighter Andy Herrera — the series lead — on “Station 19,” a spinoff of “Grey’s Anatomy” and the latest from creative force Shonda Rhimes, who is an executive producer.

Andy risks death in about every episode. Ortiz, a trained salsa dancer and a natural athlete, has usually done her own stunts for other roles. In this show, though, the punishing heat, the 70-pound turnout gear and the bodily risks mean that she mostly leaves the leaping-outof-the-window action to the professionals.

“You go do your thing,” she tells stunt doubles. “I’m going to be over here drinking my water in this airconditioned room.”

Andy goes rockclimbing to relax — which is why Ortiz wanted to try that “stunt.”

After a busy morning of publicity rounds, she arrived at the fitness center in glitzy makeup, a glossy ponytail and black boots with lollipop heels.

Her character moves through the world with confidence and dignity, “like Wonder Woman,” Ortiz said.

The wall resembled a • "Station 19" airs at 9 p.m. Thursdays on ABC, including WSYX-TV (Channel 6).

hunk of moon face topped with sprinkles. Ortiz studied it warily while fitness instructor Matthew Carter used a carabiner to hook her to a rope anchored at the wall’s top. A minute and seven seconds later, she had hit the top.

She was brisk and methodical in moving to each new hold.

“Now I see why my character would do that,” Ortiz said, having bounced back down to earth. “It’s like therapy. It’s like meditation.”

“Moving meditation,” said Carter, pointing out that rock climbing also builds forearm strength.

Strength, on and off the wall, is what Ortiz projects — and what casting agents see.

The actress has played a rookie cop, a detective, a Marine and now a firefighter,

And even though she is a self-described “girlie girl,” she signed up for the firefighter Candidate Physical Abilities Test as soon as she landed the “Station 19” role.

The test involves running up flights of stairs in weighted gear and dragging a 165-pound dummy out of a building. (Perhaps she’s a girlie girl with muscles and guts.)

Ortiz is especially proud to play Andy because, she said, the character is “not a sidekick or the friend or the mistress” but “this strong, independent, passionate woman who will overstep any man just to get to where she wants.”

Andy is thrill-seeking and volatile; her love life “is a hot mess.”

Andy is not Ortiz, who doesn’t smoke, barely drinks and eats sensibly.

Said the actress: “Discipline, discipline, discipline.”