Why Dr. Hammer From Chicago Med Looks So Familiar
If you're building a long-running TV juggernaut, then dealing with turnover is part of the gig. The trick is introducing characters different enough to keep the series fresh, but not so different that they upset a successful formula. The seventh season premiere of NBC's "Chicago Med" introduced a pair of new players to the emergency department of Gaffney Chicago Medical Center: former police officer Dr. Dylan Scott (Guy Lockard) and new attending physician Dr. Stevie Hammer, who has already had one secret revealed in the first episode that sets her apart from her colleagues.
As the audience learns at the end of the Season 7 premiere, Dr. Hammer's mother Terri (Bonita Friedericy) is currently living on the streets of Chicago, and actively resists Dr. Hammer's attempts to help her. That's one storyline that's likely to continue throughout the season, as co-showrunner Andrew Schneider told ET that "Dr. Hammer is a young woman who fought hard to overcome a difficult childhood to become the person she is today." As of now, audiences will have to wait to find out what kinds of struggles Hammer may have faced prior to her "Chicago Med" debut. But that doesn't mean there has to be a mystery about who plays Dr. Hammer.
Actress Kristen Hager brings the role to life on "Chicago Med," but she's starred in a number of other notable films and TV shows over the years. Here are just some of the titles you might know her from.
Kristen Hager was neither alien nor predator in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
Kristen Hager's screen career started with a number of films and TV shows you may remember from the mid-to-late 2000s. She had a tiny role as Mona/Polly in Todd Haynes' 2007 Bob Dylan drama "I'm Not There," and a slightly larger one as Wesley's (James McAvoy) cheating girlfriend in 2008's "Wanted." But her biggest role in this era of her career was Jesse Salinger in the 2007 sci-fi horror-thriller, "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem."
Jesse is a pretty girl with an unimpressive boyfriend (David Paetkau), who is pined after by someone more worthy of her affections. In this case, Jesse's would-be suitor just so happens to be Ricky Howard (Johnny Lewis), the brother of the film's human protagonist, Dallas Howard (Steven Pasquale). The film follows those four characters and the rest of their group as they battle for survival in Gunnison, Colorado, where a hybrid Predalien (Tom Woodruff Jr.) wreaks havoc and fights the experienced Predator (Ian Whyte) who has been sent to kill it.
"Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" wasn't exactly a star-making vehicle for Hager or anyone else involved in it, but she still makes a good impression with her turn as Jesse. The film was almost universally panned by critics and holds just a 12% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Time Out wrote that "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" was "even more spasmodic, boring and incoherent" than the original "Alien vs. Predator," which definitely isn't a good thing.
Kristen Hager was more than meets the eye on Being Human
After battling monsters on "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem," Kristen Hager got a chance to become the monster in 2011 when she took on the role of Nora Sergeant on "Being Human," the Syfy channel remake of the supernatural BBC series of the same name.
Nora begins the series as a human nurse at Suffolk County Hospital in Boston. However, over the course of the show's first season, she begins a relationship with the orderly Josh Levison (Sam Huntingdon), who, unbeknownst to her, is a werewolf. Josh does reveal his secret eventually, but he also accidentally scratches her during a transformation, causing her to turn into a werewolf as well. From there, Nora is forced to come to terms with the problems and possibilities presented by her new powers.
"At first being a wolf it was scary [for Nora]," Hager told SciFi Pulse when discussing Nora's journey in the show, "but then right away this newfound, like, sense of power that she felt inside, it's just like it's very comfortable in her skin. And, you know, right away that newfound strength was something that she embraced."
Kristen Hager got fridged on Gotham
Two years after her run playing Nora on "Being Human" ended, Kristen Hager jumped ship to play another Nora on the Fox superhero TV series, "Gotham."
Hager appeared in two episodes of "Gotham" as Nora Fries, the sickly wife of mad cryogenic scientist Victor Fries (Nathan Darrow). During the show's second season, Victor is discovered to be kidnapping people, freezing them, and attempting to restore them in the hopes he'll find a safe way to perform the procedure on Nora. Essentially, it's all just a mad, sad attempt on the part of Victor to keep Nora alive until a cure for her illness has been invented.
Nora's story has evolved and fluctuated a lot in the comics, but "Gotham" is pretty clear about what happens to its version of her. Although Hager's Nora is initially unaware of what her husband is really doing, her first instinct is to protect him when she does find out. However, she comes to feel guilt about the harm he has done to the city in the Season 2 episode "A Dead Man Feels No Cold." This leads her to switch his cryogenic chemicals when he attempts to freeze her, which results in the process killing her instead.
Kristen Hager looked for answers on Condor
In 2018, Kristen Hager played a grieving widow who uses the death of her spouse as motivation to unearth the truth in "Condor."
The espionage thriller series tells the story of CIA analyst Joe Turner (Max Irons), who is the only survivor of an attack that saw his entire office massacred by a team of assassins. Turner goes on the run and begins a quest to try to find out the truth about who was behind the attack, all while facing new battles with dangerous opponents.
That's pretty close to the plot of author James Grady's original novel "Six Days of the Condor" as well as the 1975 Robert Redford-led film adaptation, "Three Days of the Condor." However, the TV series expands on its source material largely through its use of Hager's character, Mae Barber, who investigates the show's ongoing, central mystery after her husband and Joe's friend, Sam Barber (Kristoffer Polaha), is killed early in its first season. Mae eventually comes to discover, much to her dismay, that Sam was involved in the plot.
"I love this role so much because she's such a strong, opinionated woman who won't take anyone's BS," Hager told Tell-Tale TV. The actress went on to reveal that she was drawn to the series not just because of her character, but because of how well all of the show's characters were written. "This first episode script just stood out heads and tails above any other scripts that I've read in years," Hager revealed, before adding, "I read the first seven episodes immediately back to back."