Trained nurse Barrett flips old joke with role on ‘Chicago Med’
Actor Marlyne Barrett, who plays the charge nurse on “Chicago Med,” violates the old joke about not being a doctor but playing one on TV.
Barrett is actually a nurse who plays nurse Maggie Lockwood on the show. But that fact had nothing to do with her being cast.
“I never told them I was a nurse,” she says. In fact, Barrett had previously co-starred in two series produced by Dick Wolf who heads up the three “Chicago” shows — “Chicago Med,” “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago P.D.” — on NBC.
“I had worked for the Wolf-pack before,” she says. “I did ‘Law & Order’ three times and ‘Law & Order: SVU’ twice. So they called me, and I didn’t have to audition.”
Arriving at such a propitious state as an actor wasn’t easy for Barrett. Though she finished her nurse training, she never practiced and, in fact, had no intention of ever taking blood pressures and disinfecting wounds. It was a deal she’d made with her parents, she says.
Her mother and father were immigrants from Haiti and had struggled to forge a new life in America. They spoke French and Creole and learned English by watching television, she says. Her dad’s favorite show was “All in the Family.”
“When I told them I wanted to be an actress, they said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They said, ‘We came all the way from Haiti to work hard and provide better for our family.’ They didn’t consider acting one of those jobs to make a living,” she recalls.
“Academically I had really top grades, especially
in science and math. And they wanted me to be a doctor. The only thing dodgy was that both my sisters were in pre-med, so I was able to say, ‘Can I get a nursing degree and figure out whether I want to get a medical degree?’ ”
They approved of that idea. “And I was never going to do that. So I did get my nursing degree, and I never practiced,” she says.
Barrett gradually worked her way up as an actor, beginning with small roles like “airport stewardess,” “boy’s mom” or “young woman,” then graduating to larger parts in shows such as “Rescue Me,” “Conviction” (in which she did play a doctor), “Damages,” “The Wire” and the Wolfproduced series.
Barrett is married to Gavin William Barrett, whom she calls “the greatest gift that God could possibly give someone.” Gavin Barrett is a life coach, businessman and “does some pastoring,” she says.
In fact, they met at church. “There was this
man who kept staring at me from the back. I turned around. They said, ‘Hey, turn around and say hello to someone you’ve never met before.’ There was this guy behind me with a buzz cut who looked like he did 3,000 squats a day. He just looked at me and never smiled but lo and behold, he would later say that when he saw me, he determined that I was the one he was going to marry.”
He asked her to marry him on their first date. “I said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m not ready for this.’ But I told my mom about it, and mom said, ‘We should get together and try on dresses the following week.’ ”
They were married seven months later. Now the parents of 9-monthold twins, a boy and a girl, they manage parenting and hefty work schedules by functioning as a team, says Barrett. “Right now they’re finally old enough to fly so they can come with us back and forth to filming in Chicago,” says Barrett, who lives in Los Angeles.
“Chicago Med” returns for its eighth season
Sept. 21 on NBC.