A Word From The Editor: The Exciting World of DOC!

Welcome to the Second Official DOC/Sue Thomas FBEye Newsletter!!! I just feel so priviledged to be able to write for this newsletter and put it together. Both of these shows are just great shows. I'm sure there are many well written and well performed television shows on TV. What seperates these shows from all of the others though is that a message of hope and forgiveness is in them. Whenever I've watched either DOC or Sue Thomas FBEye, I feel like I've been encouraged.

This is a very exciting newsletter. It has a lot of information in it, including a great article by Gary Johnson on how each of the actors of DOC was discovered and cast for their role on DOC. Judy Stark shares quite a few pictures with us right from her visit to the set of DOC and Sue Thomas FBEye. We also have a suprise appearance by one of the actors of DOC, where you probably wouldn't expect him.

I hope you all enjoy this newsletter.

Kees

From the Desk of Gary Johnson: Casting DOC.

Thought I'd share with you all a little (hopefully interesting) info on how the characters in "Doc" -- and the actors who played them -- came to be.

"Doc" Clint Cassidy -- People ask us all the time if we wrote "Doc" for Billy Ray Cyrus. The short answer is "no, not at all." We were holding casting sessions at PAX headquarters here in Los Angeles. A lot of guys had auditioned for the part of Clint and no one had knocked us out, when our casting director asked if we'd consider Billy Ray Cyrus. He'd apparently read the script and loved it and called and offered to fly himself from his home outside Nashville to California to audition. We were imagining the Billy from the Achy Breaky days with the long pony tail and the tennis shoes. That's not who we had pictured when we wrote the part. But, hey, if he wanted to fly out to meet us, no problem. But he should know he wasn't really what we had in mind. When Billy walked into the casting room, we were pleasantly surprised to see that he looked a lot different than we'd remembered -- and now he actually did look like he could be the guy we'd created. Billy, my brother Dave and I exchanged small talk for a while and hit it off right away. Without anyone actually saying it, it became evident we were all Christians and we all felt like this was "a God appointment" that was meant to be. At that point I think we all three knew this was going to be a successful venture. Even though Billy hadn't had a lot of acting experience, we could tell he'd be fine in the role, because there were just things about him that really were the character we'd imagined when we created him, and if Billy just played a guy like himself, that would work for the character. Another huge plus with Billy was that we knew he would give us something no show on PAX had ever had -- the ability to create a media buzz and get lots of press for the show. It all worked just as we knew it would. The "Doc" pilot 2-hour movie became the highest rated program in the history of the network and we were off and running. It was a huge success from day one and continued to be so until it ended. Of course, today I can't imagine anyone else in the part. Billy is Doc.

Dr. Derek -- Derek McGrath had been a friend of ours for several years, going back to a very critically accliaimed show we did on NBC in 1993 called "Against the Grain" -- a show about a football coach in Texas. The coach's son -- a star football player -- was played by a young Ben Affleck (the other star football player on the team was played by Rick Peters, who you all know as Special Agent Bobby Manning on Sue Thomas). Derek McGrath played the assistant coach. And we've put Derek in almost everything we've done since then. So when we created Doc, we wrote the part of Dr. Derek specifically for Derek McGrath -- thus the name Dr. Derek. (Our way of letting PAX know this is who we wanted for the part of Dr. Derek.)

Dr. Crane -- After Derek McGrath read the Doc pilot script, he asked if we had anyone in mind for Dr. Crane. We told him we didn't. He said a guy that lived in his apartment complex might be right for the part. Derek and Ron Lea had met in the apartment complex laundry room -- Derek had left his clothes in the dryer and came back to get them to find that Ron had taken them out and folded them for him. They discovered they were both Canadians who had admired each other's work over the years and a friendship developed. When Ron Lea came into read for the part of Dr. Crane, we immediately loved him and decided he was the guy we wanted. But apparently word didn't get back to Ron right away -- or to the PAX casting director. For some reason, the casting director called him into read 2 or 3 more times. Each time we said, "Yeah, he's the guy. We already decided that. Why are we seeing him again?" Finally we told the casting director to just book him and, thanks to Ron's superb acting, the character of Dr. Crane took on greater dimensions than we even could have imagined.

Nurse Nancy -- Andrea Robinson came in to read for the part of Samantha, Clint's girlfriend in the pilot, who he follows to New York, and who eventually dumps him. Andrea didn't feel "high society, upper East Side New York socialite" enough for that part, but we really liked her. The part of Nancy was originally described as "a crusty, cynical 50-year old who doesn't take any guff from anybody." We hadn't found anyone we loved for that part yet. So my brother, Dave, said, "Why don't we re-write the part of Nancy and cast Andrea? She'd be perfect." It turned out to be magic in a bottle. As you know, she and Clint had a 5 year courtship that ended with both of them knowing they were absolutely meant for each other. It's hard to imagine now the different direction the show would have taken if we hadn't rewritten the part of Nancy for Andrea.

Nate Jackson -- We had it narrowed down to 2 actors that we really liked for Nate: Richard Leacock and a guy by the name of Marc Gomes. That's right, Richard got the part, but we really liked Marc Gomes, too. So 2 years later when we created Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye, we hired Marc to play the part of FBI Special Agent Dimitrius Gans.

Raul -- We couldn't find anyone we liked for the character of Raul in either Toronto or New York. Then a friend of ours in LA called and gave us a heads up that his son had read for the part of Raul for PAX and that PAX had put it on tape for us to see. We were surprised, because we didn't think we were even going to look for an actor for that part in LA. Obviously, when we saw Tyler Posey, we liked him for Raul. And our friend, his dad, John Posey, went on to write 2 episodes of Doc and also did a magnificent job of playing the part of Donny, the savant, in several episodes.

Tippy -- Paula Boudreau had one scene in the pilot where she played the part of a scatter-brained socialite. She was so funny in the part she had the entire crew in stitches on every single take. She'd hit it out of the park. She knew it and so did we. Then we found out later that day that the lab had damaged the film of that scene and we were going to have to reshoot the whole thing the next day. When Paula came back she was kind of a cross between shell-shocked and petrified. She knew how well she'd done the day before and now she had to try to do it again. What if she couldn't be that funny again? She didn't need to worry. She hit it out of the park again. And we loved her portrayel of the character so much, a few episodes later, we brought Tippy back and made her a regular.

Donna DeWitt and Beverly Jackson (Nate's wife). These two excellent actresses auditioned for us in Toronto. Ruth Marshall was perfect for the part of the clinic administrator, Donna DeWitt. And even though some of the other actesses who auditioned for Beverly were a little more experienced than Tracy Shreve, there was something about Tracy we really liked. The fact she's drop dead gorgeous didn't hurt either. Tracy really stepped up to the challenge and has become an excellent actress.

Junior and Jelly Bean -- again, two guys (Billy Otis and Kenny Robinson) who had one scene as street hustlers in the pilot and did it so well, they parlayed it into a 5-year recurring part and became part of the Westbury family.

Justin -- Dimitrius Joyette was little more than a background actor the first episode he was in. But one of the other kid actors was having trouble with a line, so we gave it to Dimitrius and he cracked everyone up. He also had a great look as a little trouble-maker to compliment Raul. Not only were they great together in the show, but they became good friends in real life.

"Doc" Harley Johanson -- Neil Dainard was an actor we found in Toronto and knew the minute we saw him he was what we were looking for. The character of Doc Johanson was actually named after our family doctor and our veterinarian from when we were growing up in Iowa. Dr. Harley Feldick was our doctor and Dr. L.V. Johanson -- who we always knew as just "Doc Johnanson" -- was our vet, and was also one of my dad's best friends.

Initially, one of the things that concerned us about doing the show in Toronto was the depth of the actor talent pool because we knew we were going to need to cast a lot of guest actors. We needn't have worried. I don't know how many actors we hired throughout the 88 episodes of Doc we shot, but I'm sure it's in the hundreds. And we found that the talent pool was indeed very deep and diverse. You also may have noticed that many of the actors we used on Doc also wound up on Sue Thomas at one time or another.

That's it for now. But who knows? Maybe next time, I'll share with you how all the F.B.Eye regulars came to get their roles -- Gary

Judy Stark's Pictures

These are some great pictures, that Judy Stark took during her visit of the sets of DOC and Sue Thomas FBEye. Just click on the pictures to see the full picture.

A commerical featuring John Posey

Recently, I did an interview with John and Tyler Posey. John Posey is probably best known to you as the actor, who played Donny on the DOC show. His son Tyler played the character of Raul, the young boy, who "Clint" befriended and ended up being adopted by Nate and Beverly Jackson. Tyler also played a part in one of the Sue Thomas FBEye shows as Danny, the son of a terrorist, who attempted to get the whole FBI group blown up by sending them into a rigged building. John Posey has also written several of the episodes of DOC.

Not only can John be seen in DOC and some of his writing for the show, recently he has made an appearance during DOC and Sue Thomas FBEye on one of the most unlikely places you'd ever think of. He can be seen doing one of the commercials for Pacificare. Click on the link to watch the commercial. (The file is almost 5.3 MB, thus it might take a while to download it, if you are on a dial-up connection.)

John Posey's Commercial

Watch for an interview with both John and Tyler Posey in a future issue of the Official DOC/Sue Thomas FBEye Newsletter!