Actress 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 actress 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 being “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 actress, beginning with small roles like “airport stewardess,” “boy’s mom” or “young woman,” then graduating to larger parts in shows like “Rescue Me,” “Conviction” (in which she did play a doctor), “Damages,” “The Wire” and the Wolf-produced series.
But there was an unexplained four-year gap in her work. She explains, “Some events happened in my life I was rethinking about acting. Both my parents got sick at the same time and I became muted in a certain way.”
Her mother and father were suffering from cancer. “I was caring for my parents. They had different diagnostics and it was a combination of caring for them physically and emotionally,” she recalls.
“The day that their cancer was cleared, that day I realized that I’d been muted. I didn’t realize how scared I was. So that moment came to me the most. I had a moment with my father when he said he was OK. And I said (brightly) ‘OK, OK.’ And he said, ‘You haven’t talked for a long time.’” She says she realized she’d been withdrawn and silent during their long battle with the disease.
But Barrett is not silent anymore. Not only is she co-starring on “Chicago Med,” she’s 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.”
In fact, 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-month-old 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.
They’re already on that airline commute as “Chicago Med” returns for its eighth season on Sept. 21.
Disney+ promises 'epic adventures'
Talk about wild and woolly adventures! Disney+ presents “Epic Adventures with Bertie Gregory” which premieres on the streamer Thursday. Gregory is the 29-year-old National Geographic cinematographer who takes viewers along on his hair-raising treks via the new series.
The most frightening one, the tells me, was when he entered his tent one night and found a crocodile in his bed. “We were filming the lion episode in Zambia, and I came back to my room in camp. I had my headtorch on, I walked into my room, and there was a crocodile in my bed,” he recalls.
“And I can't say that's happened to me before. So I went charging out of the room to go and find one of our guides. I'd love to tell you that I was really brave, but I wasn't. I screamed. And I ran out the room and went to get one of our guides and said, ‘Yeah, Adrian, dude, there's a crocodile in my bed. Can you come and sort it out?’
“And during the shoot, we played loads of practical jokes on each other, so I definitely suffered from crying wolf or crying ‘crocodile.’ And it took about 10 minutes for me to convince him that actually, this was an actual problem and could he come help? And he comes reluctantly to my room, and he opens the door.
“The door creaks open and he turns the lights on. And he then comes flying out of my room past me and goes, ‘Bertie, there's a crocodile in your bed!’ I'm like, ‘I know. I came to tell you that.’ And anyway, we then went into the room and at which point, the crocodile started death-rolling which is how they kill their prey. They grab their prey and then they start rolling really violently. And it managed to death-roll itself into the mosquito net that was hanging over my bed, so it was just a hot mess.
“Fortunately, on this series we work with amazing professionals and scientists and specialists, and Adrian's very good at dealing with difficult situations. And he actually managed to get a towel on this crocodile's head. And together, we managed to sort of grab it, and Adrian picked it up and walked it out to the river. And as he was walking out my door, it started going (makes honking noise). And I was like, ‘Oh, Adrian, what does that mean?’ He's like, ‘Oh, this is actually a juvenile. That's the distress call. He's just calling mum.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, great. Brilliant. Mum's gonna come visit my room now.’ So yeah, I went back to sleep and I can't say I slept a huge amount that night.”
Morton crowned 'Queen' in new series
British actress Samantha Morton dons the crown of Catherine de' Medici in Starz’s new series, “The Serpent Queen” premiering Sunday. Morton, who’s starred in such projects as “The Walking Dead,” “Harlots” and Woody Allen’s “Sweet and Lowdown” says, “When I was younger I was told I didn't have a ‘period’ face and I wasn't fit for costume drama. But I was always fascinated by history at school. It was something — it is something that I find very fascinating. And history has been mostly written by men. So there was the aspect of a historical drama that was really exciting to me ... I just think, ‘What a role!’ I mean, it’s Catherine de' Medici, it is the dream role.”
Morton says she understands Catherine, who began with nothing and worked her way up to become queen of France. “In some ways I have to say — and this may sound odd — but (it) connects me to the story somewhat because personally I have a very complex childhood that I have to negotiate with.
“In the U.K. you’d say I was very ‘common.’ I was homeless as a teenager. I’ve had lots of situations that are not that desirable.”
Morton tells me, “My parents couldn’t look after me. I was in about 12 foster families and a few children’s homes. I'm all right. I went to work at 16. I was so lucky, I’ve not stopped working since I was 16. I did a few bit parts before that, and I did a lot of extra work because the guy that ran the workshop where I went he used to get us extra work. It’s a world that I'm very comfortable in. In the late ‘80s early ‘90s you would get what is referred to as an ‘education welfare’ officer and when you're in care you just slip through the cracks. People don’t care really. But I suppose if you’re from a normal family and all of a sudden you're not on the register, they might notice something. But with me, no.”
Documentary reviews America's reaction to the Holocaust
Ken Burns examines America’s reaction to the Holocaust in his latest documentary, ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust,” premiering on PBS Sept. 18.
Those with a nodding knowledge of history realize that man has been oppressing man since the beginning of time. Burns says he thinks that urge to prevail over others is buried in our DNA.
“... The Old Testament, which said, ‘what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again.’ There is nothing new under the sun, which seems to suggest that human nature doesn't change, and that all of the positiveness of human nature, all of the generosity is met by an equal amount of greed,” he says.
“All of the Puritanism is met by an equal amount of prurience. We are slaves to the human nature. And as filmmakers working just in American history and that provincial slot, we constantly come over the echoes and the rhymes of history again and again and again.
“And it becomes our obligation, when faced with information, to see whether you can escape the specific gravity of that which continually pulls not only the human race — it's easy to blame it just on ‘people’ — it pulls us all individually, psychologically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually back all the time.
“And so I think this is the part of art. This is why ... why we make films. We're trying to in some way create circumstances where you could have that spark that might allow you to escape the specific gravity of these things that we have always done and will probably always do.”
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