Brilliant but down-to-earth, Jessy Schram has just come back to Chicago Med after a brief hiatus that allowed her character to recover from a heroin addiction. And now comes the good stuff.
We at Survived The Shows had the great pleasure of discussing Dr. Hannah Asher ‘s journey on Chicago Med with actress Jessy Schram, who teased us a great challenge is coming for the character to prove herself to other people after being in recovery for some time.
How is it like to came back on the show? Did you feel like family right away?
JESSY SCHRAM: It’s been awesome coming back. You know I was there in season 5 for about 7/10 episodes and it was something where we didn’t know where my character was going to go. But I mainly acted with Nick Gehlfuss, who plays Will, and so coming back literally two years later to the date was… I was accepted with open arms like it was as if I had never left, even though I was like ‘Guys, I haven’t been here for two years.
I don’t know what’s happened in between on set or what’s going on behind the scenes, but I was I was invited back so warmly and this crew and this cast is such a pleasure to work with. So it really did feel like I was coming back to a home that never got to officially be my home and now it is.
Can you tease us something about Doctor Asher’s future on the show? Will she be back on Chicago Med for season 8?
JS: Yes, well, Hannah Asher will definitely be back for season eight – unless, you know, some crazy creative shift happens that I haven’t known about. But yes, Doctor Hannah Asher is slated to come back in season eight, and I think we’re going to be exploring a lot of what we have been.
You know, when we first saw her, she was actively addicted to heroin and she was still the top of her game as an OB GYN and now coming back while being in recovery, I think there’s so much that she has to prove to other people, so she doesn’t get to just come back and do a badass job at what she’s doing.
She really needs to prove herself and her stability while still working through all of her own personal demons and issues. So, I think that I think we’re hopefully going to see her find her footing. But definitely, people still don’t agree with her presence there, so I think we’ll still be seeing some of that.
And talking about the storyline – what can we expect about the future between Dr Asher and Dr Halstead?
JS: Well, I mean I’m just in the dark as you guys about what our future holds, but you know, for now we’re we’re definitely dealing with Hannah having changed so much into the person that she is now, coming back into a scenario and I think both Will and Hannah don’t trust that the other person has grown enough to be able to be in the scenario that they’re in.
So, I know that we are still playing and dealing with there’s history here. But damn it, this is a new me, you know. So right now, I think that they’re just feeling each other out to see what kind of relationship, friendship, romantic. If any that they’ll get to have, so I’m just as in the dark to know where our friendship, non-friendship or romantic relationship goes.
Doctor Asher and Doctor Archer cluster Leon. What can you tease about the future of their “relationship”?
JS: Ohh yeah. So, Doctor Archer and Asher, which gets very confusing on set, people call us Archer and Asher switched around all the time. But so far, we’ve seen, you know, clearly Doctor Archer is projecting onto Doctor Asher and in the last scene that we’ve seen them together he pulls out a photo after she’s like, ‘Hey, clean your deal up. Whatever you’ve got to going on, it has nothing to do with me’
You see him pull out this photograph with him and a young boy, and clearly there’s history there that we don’t know about, and that he hasn’t healed from, so I don’t know how they’re going to play anything out, but what my forethought as Jesse would be is that hopefully Hannah can be a point of healing for him or a point of forgiveness that he needs to find within himself or with that boy from the photo.
So, I think that Doctor Archer will be working through his stuff and doctor Asher being there forces him to do so. Yeah, hopefully a mutual respect happens, but at this point in time you know the respect is leave me alone and will be good
Among all the characters on Chicago Med, which one would you like to portray, I f you could and why?
JS: Well, I love miss Hannah Asher but I would say, I mean, all the characters in certain ways I love elements of all of them, but I would say I’d probably be most interested in Doctor Charles. I love mental health and psychology and it’s something that I try to work on it as a daily basis and I feel like the cases that he gets to be involved in and the way that he really gets to connect with the characters instead of just being so medical all the time is really fun for me to get to watch.
And I mean, Oliver plays him with the most soothing voice I’ve ever heard, so if I could emulate anyone, I feel like emulating Oliver Platt would be something I wanted to do.
What kind of advice would you give to your fans and our readers, who would like to pursue an acting career?
Ooh, that’s a good question. I feel like it’s multi layered. Ohh. OK, let’s see if you wanted to pursue an acting career is 1 go for it. Go for it. I think that acting and acting career are two different things. I think that you know there’s you get to act, but the business can be really – The highs are high, and the lows are really low. So, knowing that, the highest can be 10 second and the lowest can be an entire year, so it’s like you know you…
But sticking with it, I feel like persistence and hard work will always pay off and it might not look the way that you think it was.
I’ve had a lot of disappointments in castings or my career that have always turned out for the better in the long run or a different opportunity comes. It might not be my planning or my time or what I imagined, but it always works out for the better, if you don’t force things.
When I started when I was ten in commercials. So one of the things that my mom told me because she would drive me to auditions and one of the things that helped me so much because people ask all the time ‘How does it feel being rejected on a daily basis?’.
I would say in the last couple of years I’ve dealt with that, like the word rejection as more of a thing, but for so much of my career I had what my mom told me when I was younger, explaining to a 10 year old about rejection. She had just said, you know, you’re going into a room. And the director and the producers are looking to put wallpaper on their wall and you just might not be their wallpaper. So that’s something that helped me so that anytime I was on an audition, the other girls weren’t competition to me. It was just they’re looking for something particular.
Sometimes you might be able to change their mind, but it’s not personal.
They’re looking for something specific, and that’s just might not be the room that you’re meant to decorate. So that’s something that truly, like, has stayed with me my entire career. And I feel like it’s something that I share with people when they ask me about rejection. Persistence. Work hard. Get grounded. Know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Because otherwise this business can be really hard. But if you want to get into acting, I say go for it.
There’s nothing holding you back, but yourself. But just know it’s going to be a lot of hard work if you’re wanting to make a career out of it. And to stay with it because there’s been years, days, different times where I’ve quit many times, and then the door just opens up the next day. So it’s like, you just got to stick with it and something will come along, It just might not be what you think it is.
So I guess my advice is to stay open and and to be persistent. If this is what you want to do. Good, that was a lot of random things that I just shoved into one answer.
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Desirée
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