Josh Charles on ‘Best Medicine,’ ‘The Good Wife’ and embracing comedy

Filming a broadcast tv present can depart even probably the most seasoned actors feeling like they’ve misplaced sense of time. But by afternoon on a latest weekday, Josh Charles really appears to be like like he teleported to the previous as he collapses right into a seat inside his manufacturing trailer in upstate New York.

He’s within the throes of filming Season 2 of “Best Medicine,” the Fox dramedy he headlines that’s set in a small fishing village in Maine, and the rationale he’s shed his character’s ordinary swimsuit and tie for gaitered trousers and a navy coat with pink facings finally reveals itself: Port Wenn, the present’s fictional city, is placing on a Revolutionary War reenactment. And in the event you’re acquainted with Martin Best, the curmudgeonly physician with an virtually completely furrowed forehead portrayed by Charles, the character’s willingness to don such a getup doubtless took some coaxing.

That’s the enjoyable of all of it for Charles.

He’s been a working actor since childhood — making his debut at 15 in John Waters’ cult traditional “Hairspray,” adopted quickly after by his flip as Knox Overstreet in “Dead Poets Society” — and a fixture in TV and movie ever since.

While finest recognized for dramatic roles like high-powered lawyer Will Gardner in “The Good Wife,” Charles simply pivots to comedy — just like the time he memorably performed the triple-collared, snobby camp ringleader in “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.” Now, “Best Medicine” lets Charles leans into the push and pull of the comedy and drama inside his tightly wound alter ego.

Josh Charles as Martin Best in Fox’s “Best Medicine.”

(Francisco Roman / Fox)

Created by Liz Tuccillo (“How to Be Single,” “Sex and the City”), the sequence follows a superb however cranky coronary heart surgeon who, after creating a crippling blood phobia spurred by a traumatic medical case, abandons his thriving profession in Boston to grow to be a common practitioner within the city the place he spent summers as a baby. Martin Best is a doc whose bedside method may use some TLC, however he got here to city hoping he can nonetheless follow medication — that’s, if the townspeople would really do as he says.

“I have been really wanting to do more comedy lately and looking — especially if I was going to call a place home for a particular period of time, like you do in a television show — for something that was a little more lighter air than I had been networking in of late,” says Charles, whose latest credit embody dystopian drama “The Handmaid’s Tale” and spy thriller “The Veil.”

The sequence relies on the beloved British dramedy “Doc Martin,” which starred Martin Clunes as a health care provider with the same storyline, that aired between 2004 and 2022. Tuccillo says Charles introduced an magnificence and depth to the fish-out-of-water dynamic his character navigates within the quirky city.

“He never hits a false note,” she says in a separate video name. “I knew the material would be in great hands in that he would always elevate it just by his artistry and being. I knew he was going to be able to play the gruffness, but any time that you’re doing a show, there is a question mark on so many things. To be honest, we were like, ‘But is he going to be super funny? Is he going to want to do pratfalls? Is he going to be game for the comedy part of it?’ When we started working, it was clear he was game for all the shenanigans … he likes to laugh. So I try to devise things that I think will amuse him.”

A particular advance preview of the Season 2 premiere aired Sunday, however the present will transfer into its common time slot Tuesday. Here are edited excerpts from the dialog with Charles.

Josh Charles poses for images on the “Best Medicine” set in upstate New York. He says he was drawn to the Fox dramedy as a result of it was “a little more lighter air” than the opposite work he had accomplished not too long ago.

(Ebru Yildiz / For The Times)

“Best Medicine” hit Netflix after its first season aired. Building an viewers outdoors the normal linear viewing has grow to be such a key element of tv right now. How do you are feeling about it?

One of my dad’s finest associates instructed me, “I’m watching the show on Netflix!” He’s like, “I just can’t watch shows with commercials anymore” — as persons are programmed now. That is the brand new shift. You go into these platforms for intervals of time, construct your viewers differently and hopefully continue to grow that viewers. [Television] retains evolving and rising in a method that I don’t totally perceive, however I do know that it’s a unique world proper now. Netflix has an excellent attain, and it’s nice that we’re on there and that persons are discovering it. And apparently we did very nicely.

Season 2 opens with Martin on probation and below overview by the medical board. What is Martin in for this season?

When it begins off, he’s actually in it. Eden [Martin’s ex-girlfriend played by Eliza Coupe] is now again within the image. She’s coming from Boston each weekend, and she or he’s rubbed lots of people on the town the incorrect method. And the progress that Martin made, we see him perhaps take just a few steps again in the best way that he interacts with folks. He’s together with her and I believe there’s emotions there, however I believe their relationship feels very — I don’t know, it’s attention-grabbing. It doesn’t have the hearth. But she doesn’t make him really feel dangerous about himself. She respects him, and I believe these issues are necessary. And he’s round on this city the place no one’s listening to him half the time. People are simply all the time mad at him about one thing, and she or he’s not. She places him a little bit bit on a pedestal, and I believe he actually wants that.

All that presents an impediment for the present’s sluggish burn: Martin and Louisa (Abigail Spencer). There’s been some discourse concerning the artwork of the sluggish burn and the way the pacing has modified in an period of quick episode orders and unpredictable renewals. You have expertise on this division with “The Good Wife.”

Liz and I’ve talked about it a little bit bit. You don’t need to schmuck bait it and drag it out for the sake of dragging it out. I believe they’ve accomplished a great job of placing the obstacles in a method that also feels natural and real and never but a attain. In the British present, issues accelerated a lot sooner. They solely made eight [episodes] a yr. We need to even have it really feel prefer it’s believable. It is basically enjoyable to have Eliza Coupe right here. It’s enjoyable to play scenes together with her and [see] the totally different aspect that introduced out in Martin. That is the problem as a result of I don’t assume we’re as focused on doing it fairly that quick [as the British show]. I think about them that we’ll land it in a great way.

Ellen Soraya Nikbakht as a peculiar affected person and Josh Charles as Martin Best within the Season 2 premiere of “Best Medicine.”

(Danielle Mathias / Fox)

You’ve performed in comedy and drama in your profession. It’s enjoyable to look at you straddle each side with this character. How has it been discovering the rhythm or tone with him?

Loads of the comedy I’ve accomplished, I’ve accomplished some stuff that’s extra foolish and sort of excessive. I like taking part in the idiot. What’s actually enjoyable [here], to me, are the circumstances they put Martin in the place issues are blowing up in entrance of him and he’s simply attempting to deal. I’ve loved doing a variety of the bodily comedy on the present.

I [also] discovered it actually attention-grabbing to have a personality who doesn’t need to be round folks, however he really does. He simply doesn’t actually know easy methods to do it, and he’s by no means actually had any sort of follow at it in his life. And he’s gone by means of a variety of trauma in his life. He’s a very particular sort of workaholic. For him to develop up with what he did, and shedding his sister actually younger in his life — I did analysis on that and what that does to folks and the way that may type of body your life. I think about he went to non-public college, perhaps a boarding college, then he goes on the monitor of going to varsity and medical college — we all know how exhausting that’s, the sort of hours they put in; then to be actually profitable at it, you place all the things you will have into your work. There’s this different aspect of his life that’s fully empty. This city sort of simply softens off the perimeters of him a little bit bit and helps him grow to be a little bit extra genuine model of who he was perhaps meant to be. That offers me some place to construct off of and to go together with the character, apart from it feeling sort of simply very one-note.

Matthew Goode, left, as Finn Polmar and Josh Charles as Will Gardner in a scene from Season 5 of “The Good Wife.”

(CBS)

This sequence marks your return to broadcast tv after leaving “The Good Wife” in its fifth season. You’ve accomplished TV since then, in fact. But a giant purpose you left broadcast was due to the grind of a 20-plus episode season. With “Best Medicine,” you’re the lead and the second season may have 14 episodes. Does that really feel just like the candy spot?

If “The Good Wife” was “The Good Fight,” I might have accomplished that till the wheels come off. I might have by no means needed to depart that as a result of I might have had a life. I may have been capable of go do a play, journey with my household, see my youngsters. At the time of “The Good Wife,” I didn’t have youngsters, however we have been about to get married and needed to have youngsters. I used to be solely going to do 18 [episodes] at most with this present, in the event that they needed it. And then I requested them this yr, “Well, we’re just at 14. What was the decision [there]?” And I’m blissful about it. They additionally agree. This simply looks like the place the present desires to reside creatively. You work actually exhausting for 4 or 5 months, and you then get to go discover different tasks and journey and reside your life.

Your departure from “The Good Wife,” along with your character Will Gardner dying, felt like an out–of–physique viewing expertise because it occurred. The indisputable fact that it was saved below wraps —

I can’t imagine we did it, truthfully. There was one journalist who clearly had a supply someplace and did discover out. Part of having the ability to hold that silent till the second was an settlement that they’d come to set and be there so long as it was [kept secret]. I bear in mind like when the episode aired, I used to be within the enhancing bay with the editors in New York [for an episode I directed]. I’m seeing issues are available and I used to be like, “Oh my God!” I assumed it was going to get ruined for folks on the West Coast. These days, you know the way they make one thing, how a lot this price, how they did this scene … we was stunned by issues. To be capable to really shock folks you already know like in an Orson Welles-style “War of the Worlds” method. I felt like in our personal type of community TV method, this was the equal of that. We actually bought to narratively pack a punch. That season was one of many nice treats of my profession. I simply felt the writing on that present that season was at one other degree.