LONDON (AP) — Timing is everything.
After nine years as Dr. Daniel Charles on NBC’s “Chicago Med,” Oliver Platt decided to flex his acting muscles, and asked his agent if there was anyone else he could play for a while.
The first offer that came in? Uncle Jimmy in “The Bear.”
This was before FX’s restaurant melodrama was on the air and no one knew Christopher Storer’s show would become an award-winning smash hit.
“I felt like a guest for five minutes on ‘The Bear,’” Platt says. “Maybe that just makes me lucky or it just makes me good at insinuating myself into a situation, I don’t know.”
And if anyone knows how to be a scene-stealing guest star, it’s Platt.
He has been in the running for an Emmy Award three times after making a guest appearance on a television series, notably “The West Wing” and “Nip/Tuck.”
Platt’s most recent guest star nomination was for playing the mysterious uncle on “The Bear,” and he returned for seasons two and three as a fan.
“I didn’t get to work in the kitchen the first season, I was so excited to meet everyone,” he says, noting that in 2022 his only scenes were with Jeremy White and Eban Moss-Bachrach (Carmy and Cousin, respectively).
“My first day back on set in season two was actually in the restaurant, in the kitchen. And I was literally speechless. “That is a wonderful setting.”
Uncle Jimmy returns once again, June 27, for the third season of “The Bear.”
On the set, Platt is called “Unc” (Uncle) and in New York, where he lives, the actor is called “Yes chef” when walking.
He says spending more time with the money man, also known as Cicero, in the new episodes might reveal a little more about who he is.
“The character is very funny the way he is written. It’s like you never know what you’re going to get, the kind but slightly twisted father figure or the damn neighborhood guy who wants his money back,” she noted. “What you see is not necessarily what you get.”
Both “The Bear” and “Chicago Med” are set and filmed in Chicago, so Platt was able to work on them on the same day, walking the 200 yards (180 meters) between his two film trailers.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he says of the double job. “It adds flavor to the day,” and he called both programs “gifts” in his life.
There was only one mistake when Platt was rehearsing dialogue as Dr. Charles, but accidentally channeled Uncle Jimmy’s troubled Chicago accent.
“The director said to me: ‘Oliver, what is that? ‘What’s that accent?’”
“It was very easy for me to become Dr. Charles. I’ve been doing it for eight years, but Uncle Jimmy is relatively new and I think he was subconsciously preparing me for the afternoon.”
Another guest acting appearance for Platt that received a nomination was as White House counsel Oliver Babish on “The West Wing,” where his character provides legal advice during seasons two, three and seven.
Speaking to writer and executive producer Aaron Sorkin before he arrived on set, he was told to make the role his own and took it as permission to be a little loose and spontaneous with the script, only to quickly discover that wasn’t the case. .
“I’m not always that good word for word, even when those are the rules. So… there was a little hazing on ‘The West Wing.’ I knew a lot of the cast members, and they would come over and make fun of me saying, ‘Don’t worry, buddy, we’ve all been there.'”
Platt is excited to begin filming season 10 of “Chicago Med” in July again as fan-favorite psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Charles, whom he says he “loves” playing.
Her mother was a psychiatric nurse and she remembers saying to wake her up if some patients called after hours.
“Many mental health problems are treatable. The main thing is to get people to ask for help,” Platt says.
“I love the fact that we tell stories that take the stigma away from mental health issues that, in a good week, 10 million people will see those stories, so that’s a great thing.”
Starring in a medical drama means working with a lot of visiting actors and they are less likely to be recurring roles.
“The dirty little secret of a long-running series, right?, is that it’s the guest stars who come in and have, like, the big emotions,” he says.
“We know that either they are going to leave feet first or they are going to get out of there. What is going to happen?”
