Oliver Platt Dishes on the Life-and-Death Chicago Med 100th Episode

Chicago Med marks its 100th episode tonight and it’s a juicy one for original cast member Oliver Platt, who plays psychiatrist Dr. Charles in the NBC medical drama.

First, we learn more about his personal life when his 13-year-old daughter Anna (Hannah Alligood) makes a visit to dear old dad.

“It's a wonderful surprise,” Platt exclusively tells Parade.com. “Well, I hope it’ll be a wonderful surprise for the audience anyway. Dr. Charles has been married a couple times, turns out, so she's younger and, all of a sudden, you have a teenager in Dr. Charles' life who he maybe hasn't been paying as much attention to as he should have because of what's been going on in his personal life.”

That, of course, is in reference to his losing his wife Caroline (Paula Newsome) to her battle with cancer. But there is more going on for Dr. Charles in the 100th as he and Dr Manning (Torrey DeVito) assist in a complicated case, helping a 4-year-old who they quickly learn is no stranger to the ED.

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“I always love working with Torrey because our characters come from such different perspectives,” Platt continues. “Both of the characters are compassionate, but in different ways, because we have different disciplines and we're different people. Typically, I always think it's one of the reasons why I love the stories that involve Dr. Charles and Dr. Manning.”

Also, on tonight’s episode, Dr. Marcel (Dominic Rains) and Dr. Choi (Brian Tee) tend to a police officer with a mysterious gunshot wound to the abdomen. Then put on your wedding finery, because Maggie (Marlyne Barrett) looks to be getting hitched!

Congrats on reaching 100 episodes, not an easy task today with so many great shows on the air. What do you think it is about Med that keeps people coming back?

I want to think it's got something to do with the storytelling. One of the brilliant things about the conception of these shows is that we are telling stories about first responders, who are actually the unsung day-to-day heroes of public life if you think about it. I was about to say American life, but really all over the world. For us, one of the things that really keeps us on our toes is that it is both an honor, and also a real responsibility to try to do this as accurately as we can. In the context of an hour drama, we need to turn up the volume a little bit every now and then.

It's the life-and-death aspect of it as well, right?

No question. My usual answer to that is 70 years ago, whenever TV began, there's this box, everybody wants to watch it. We’ve got to figure out programming, somebody was like, “Hospital,” which is so genius, right? Because in through the doors everyday come these life-and-death stories.

One of the things I can guarantee you is when people come in through our doors every episode, something very good or very bad is going to happen very soon. There’s not too much in between and that's like life, you know? That's like life, but it's just automatic drama.

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The show in the five seasons has gone through several cast changes. Does that keep it fresh with new actors coming in? For example, Dr. Rhodes (Colin Donnell) left, but now we have Dr. Marcel, who’s a totally different personality to work with.

There's two sides to that. On one hand, I think it does, just by definition freshen up the show, but it's also really difficult for us to say goodbye to our cast members and we never see that coming. It’s like a double-edged sword, but I think it is probably safe to say that it keeps the show fresh.

Let's look back at Dr. Charles' journey as we reach this milestone. In season one, we mainly saw him in the ED, but then we learned he suffers from depression. Then he took Sarah Reese (Rachel DiPillo) under his wing and she melts down after he's shot. We meet his daughter, Robin Charles (Mekia Cox), who goes through her own medical crisis, then he re-marries Caroline (Paula Newsome), his ex, and she died from cancer. It's a lot. What do you appreciate about it?

Wow. That was like, “This Is Your Life, Dr. Charles.” From my perspective, and I hope every character feels this way, but from my perspective I just get to do all this really cool stuff. First of all, we tell mental health stories, which is so important, and I’ve got to give Dick Wolf a huge amount of credit.

When he called me up to tell me about the show, he said, “We're doing this hospital show, a somewhat traditional hospital show spinning-off of the other first responder shows, and there's a role for a psychiatrist in it. There's never been a psychiatrist in a traditional hospital show before and there's a reason for that, but I think the world is ready.

Dick was absolutely right. What he was saying is that he thinks that the world is ready to talk about mental health. It's so important that we do and when we do, we get an incredible reaction from our wonderfully loyal fan base, who are really grateful that we're doing it.

So, there's that and I also get to have these wonderful situations, wonderful for an actor, right, where every character at some point has a more intimate relationship, whether it's intimate professionally, and by that I just mean intimate in terms of personal. For a long time, it was Sarah, my marvelous protege played by the great Rachel DiPillo, and then my real daughter, Robin, came along. The writers are very good at contrasting, using what's going on in the character's personal life to amp up or create counterpoint to what's going on in their professional life.

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What is the key to Dr. Charles for you? Is it compassion, is it his understanding of the human condition, or the fact that he's a flawed person himself? How do you find him?

When I was researching the role, I suppose I just hung out with a lot of psychiatrists and when I asked, “What do you think is the most important thing in terms of the transactional relationship between a mental health worker and their patient? What is the thing that is the most important to making it work?” They actually all said compassion.

Being a mental health worker can, in a hospital, be brutal. A lot of these stories are tough and you need to protect yourself, and sometimes people do at the cost of optimal therapy, if you will. Whether it's somebody coming into a hospital for the first time, who doesn't even know that they're having a mental health crisis, to frequent flyers, who come in because there's big holes in our mental health system, and it's the only place that they know they can go.

And so, compassion is the most important thing, and, I think, that Dr. Charles does have a serious, pretty evolved emotional intelligence, certainly, when it comes to his work. Now, when it comes to his own personal life? Who knows? That’s what’s interesting about the character.

Chicago Med airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.