The Resident: Personal Tragedies Drew Matt Czuchry To The Show
For the six seasons of "The Resident," Matt Czuchry played Conrad Hawkins, the chief resident at Chastain Park Memorial Hospital. If you work at a hospital, you're bound to witness various tragedies even when the doctors and nurses work as hard as possible to prevent patient deaths. And on a medical show, the characters are also bound to face personal and professional tragedy. There is no better example of this than Conrad losing his wife Nicolette (Emily VanCamp) when she dies of a traumatic brain injury following a car crash.
As it turns out, Czuchry has also experienced personal tragedy, which proved to be one of the reasons that he was drawn to the role of Conrad. During a November 2019 interview for BUILD, Czuchry said, "When this pilot came to me in 2017, [a friend's mother] passed away from a medical error. I also had a friend in 2015. I was with them on their last day when they passed away ... [I thought] If I've had these experiences, imagine how many other people have had those experiences."
Czuchry liked that Conrad rebels against a broken healthcare system
One theme that "The Resident" takes head-on is the ways in which the healthcare system is flawed and how those flaws fail patients. Matt Czuchry, having experienced personal tragedies, was drawn to this element of the show — especially because his character, Conrad Hawkins, often rebels against the system but with good intentions.
When asked if it seemed like fate that Czuchry was sent this script shortly after those personal tragedies, Czuchry said yes and continued, "It was something that spoke to me on a different level, a personal level ... Having this character who, my character Conrad is one who breaks the rules for the greater good, and he's a little bit Machiavellian in that way." He continued by noting that he connected with his character's rebellious nature against the system.
Further, the actor was drawn to the fact that medical dramas have a universal quality to them, as everyone is affected by the healthcare system. Czuchry said, "Wherever you're from, you want to turn on the television and see the world the way it looks for you, and I feel like our show captures that universal nature."