The strangest things always happen in real life: 'Dr Death' star Joshua Jackson

Based on Wondery's hit podcast, the eight-part crime drama follows Duntsch nicknamed 'Dr Death', played by Jackson, who became infamous for permanently disabling his patients, killing two of them. 

What attracted Jackson to the story was how Duntsch was convinced that ''he was the hero of his own story''. 

''He's quite the opposite of a hero,'' the 43-year-old actor, best known for shows like ''Little Fires Everywhere'', ''The Affair'', ''Dawson's Creek'' and ''The Mighty Ducks'' film series, told PTI in a Zoom interview from Los Angeles. 

''... I think he thought he was the hero which is interesting because where he ends up is clearly quite bad but in his own mind, which is what made him so scary and dangerous, he was the hero of his own story,'' he added. 

The Canadian-American actor said the miniseries, which will stream on Lionsgate Play on Friday, is a worthy addition to the ''broader array of stories'', a welcome change that has happened in Hollywood. 

''One of the things that's interesting to me about this is that it is a true story... There are some outlandish characters in this, not just Dr Duntsch, and I think it once again tells us that humans are much more diverse, both in their capacity for good and bad, than we sometimes give them credit for. The strangest things always happen in real life,'' he said. 

The challenge of playing a real person, Jackson said, is that one has to honour the fact that not only this man existed but the people he affected also exist. 

''The impact that he had on their lives was very real,'' he said, adding that the team ensured that they honoured the lives of the people Dunstch affected. 

In the 2010s, Duntsch started out as a rising star in the Dallas medical community. Young, charismatic, and ostensibly brilliant, he was building a flourishing neurosurgery practice when everything suddenly changed. 

Patients entered his operating room for complex but routine spinal surgeries and were left permanently maimed or dead. As victims piled up, two fellow physicians, neurosurgeon Robert Henderson (Alec Baldwin) and vascular surgeon Randall Kirby (Christian Slater), as well as Dallas prosecutor Michelle Shughart (AnnaSophia Robb), set out to stop him. 

Jackson said he had somehow missed the story when it was unfolding and it wasn't until he started talking with showrunner Patrick Macmanus that he became aware of it. Macmanus, who also executive produces ''Dr Death'' via his Littleton Road Productions banner, then asked the actor to listen to the Wondery podcast to get a feel of the source material. 

Jackson recalled driving and listening to the podcast and not believing this was a true story. 

''I could not believe that this man was able to not only do this but do this over and over again, get shifted around from hospital to hospital. 

''It seems so outrageous that my brain wanted to reject it. That frankly was also the moment when I realised that I wanted to play this character because it's so over the top, impossible and it shouldn't be able to happen but it did happen,'' he said. 

Duntsch was accused of injuring 33 out of 38 patients in less than two years before his license was revoked by the Texas Medical Board. In 2017, he was convicted of maiming one of his patients and sentenced to life imprisonment. 

The actor credited Macmanus for adapting the popular podcast, already ''an amazing piece of storytelling'', for the small screen. 

''To Patrick, all the writers' great credit, they did an unbelievable amount of research work learning about and fleshing out these characters in a way that's just not possible inside the framework of that podcast.'' As the team had the benefit of moving images, it was much easier to tell a broad story in eight full hours. 

''He (Macmanus) does a great job of filling in the world around this story to give you a more complete or full picture of what was happening and how Chris Duntsch was able to do the things that he ended up doing,'' he said. 

The cast and crew were barely days into shooting when the COVID-19 pandemic-induced shutdown happened, which delayed the production by an additional seven months. 

But once they resumed work on the medical drama, Jackson said, the health crisis somehow ''actually made things better'' as they spent most of their time on set in personal protective equipment (PPE). 

''For us (it was) probably the safest show possible because we spent a good portion of our time in medical theatres (wearing) PPE, masks, gloves. So that was very helpful but we had a couple of COVID cases on set, we had our daily protocols so everybody was getting swabbed every other day and it just became a part of the experience of making the show. It certainly was unique and in many ways, I think it helped in the storytelling...'' Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch and Taylor Latham also executive produce the miniseries via Escape Artists, as well as Hernan Lopez and Marshall Lewy of Wondery. 

''Dr Death'' features an all-female directing team including Maggie Kiley, Jennifer Morrison, and So Yong Kim.