Jennifer Morrison serves as a director and executive producer for episodes 1-4 of Dr. Death’s second season. She directed for the first season as well and all episodes are currently streaming exclusively on Peacock.

Season 2 of Dr. Death follows “Miracle Man” Paolo Macchiarini, a charming surgeon renowned for his innovative operations. When investigative journalist Benita Alexander approaches him for a story, the line between personal and professional begins to blur, changing her life forever. As she learns how far Paolo will go to protect his secrets, a group of doctors halfway across the world make shocking discoveries of their own that call everything about Paolo into question.

I had the chance to speak with Morrison about how the show continues to reach a new audience, her weird connection to Paolo Macchiarini, ensuring that there is continuity in addition to each season having its own heartbeat, why the role of executive producer was important to her, and more. Keep reading to find out everything she told me!

The first thing I want to ask you about is that the series is based on a true crime podcast that’s started some important conversations about the healthcare system and the safety of patients. Why do you think it’s so beneficial to bring audiences these stories in this new way and what conversations do you hope it inspires for those who were not familiar with these cases? I feel like a new medium does give it a fresh audience.
Jennifer Morrison: 100% and I think that was part of my draw to the project in the first place, even in the first season, is just realizing that when you put things on a television screen with actors in a world that you make visually compelling, it reaches a different audience than just a conversation or podcast, which is great. Those things are already great, but you just want to reach as many people as possible when you’re trying to help stop this from ever happening again. And so, when you put it on the screen in this way, and you get people talking about the show itself and it starts conversations about what people have gone through medically or what they need to do to protect themselves medically, and much of it is advocating for yourself and so much of its doing the research, getting the right references to things, and making sure that everything has been vetted, I think — and I have said something like this before — but we all really want to think that doctors are infallible and as much as most doctors are wonderful and they’re trying their best and, of course, they’re trying not to make mistakes, there are those ones out there that are the Paolos and are the Duntschs and they are these dangerous doctors that you have to make sure that we’re vetting our choices.

You can’t just go, “Oh, well I’m sure that he’s good because he works here,” you know? So anyway, I think it’s important to make sure that people have that awareness to protect themselves, but I also think it’s helpful to keep institutions more accountable. Doctors like this are out there and [as] this conversation gets bigger and bigger, and more and more people are aware of it and talking about it, my hope is that you when an institution is tempted to sort of sweep something under the rug because they don’t want to deal with a lawsuit or being sued that maybe they’ll think twice about it because it’s much worse to have the whole world watching a true crime show where they realized that they should have been accountable.

So true, it really does make you think and I kind of want to go off that next. Did this season leave you thinking of anything in a new way or questioning certain things that you feel like maybe would not have gotten your attention otherwise? I mean, you were obviously a part of season one as well but I feel like each story kind of wakes you up in a new way, if that makes sense.
Yeah, and it’s wild because I was already thinking that way from being on House, from all my years of being around medical stories, doing all the research to be a part of that show, and being around the writers who did all the research to write that show in such an incredible way. I was very aware all the way back then that you really have to look out for yourself. So, I’ve had that awareness but it’s incredible how close this actually was to my life because my husband had a friend who was nearly operated on by Paolo. He had been talking with him, been emailing with him, and going back and forth on WhatsApp. The only reason it didn’t happen was because of timing and it was when Paolo was being outed as like this Miracle Man doctor, who was saving people’s lives who supposedly couldn’t be saved by anybody else. So it was in that swirl of that propaganda about him and this guy, who is a very close friend of my husband, was convinced by it. I mean, who wouldn’t be convinced by it? I feel like that’s a lot of what the show shows. And so, it was really a miracle that he didn’t end up having the surgery because I don’t think he would be alive today. But you realize like, this stuff seems like it’s so far away until you realize it’s not. I guess [I was] just one degree of separation from someone who was in contact with Paolo, talking about having a surgery with him.

Oh my gosh, that is absolutely insane. There’s no other word for it.
Isn’t that weird? And here’s where it gets even weirder. So then, Edgar comes to work one day and he’s like, “Oh my gosh, I got put on the phone with someone who knew Paolo and almost operated on him,” and he’s just telling me who he is and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s my husband’s friend.” It’s so weird how all of it was pulling together.

Isn’t it weird how life connects? The world is so big, but sometimes stuff falls into your lap for a reason. It’s so crazy. That must have made everything so much more real.
[Especially since] I was with the project before, you know, when it was the Dr. Duntsch story. It wasn’t like I came on this season either, so it’s one of those things where you go, “Alright, there’s something bigger going on in the universe.” Again, kind of going back to your first question, it makes me hope that there is some sort of meaningfulness out of putting a show like this in the world in terms of people being more aware, of being more careful, and an institution being held more accountable.

You directed for both seasons, and I’m curious, did you notice any differences when it came to directing season one versus season two?
The seasons have a slight bit of continuity because I wanted tonally to kind of pull certain things through just to make sure that the anthology had its own clear heartbeat. I also wanted to delineate the second season with its own visuals, as well. So it’s like there’s a through line, but it’s its own thing. It was super helpful to have been a part of the first season just because I understood the ecosystem and the language of all of it, and I was there to experience it. The biggest difference really was that because the episodes I directed of the first season dealt with the empathy flashback, I was really given carte blanche to do like something kind of visually abstract because they wanted it to feel abstract. So it got to be its own thing within the first season, so we even had a separate cinematographer. So [in] those two episodes, it was me shooting as a director and Zack Galler as a cinematographer, and the rest of the season was shot by the directors and one cinematographer.

It was like we had our own little movie within last season, so it was weird, because there were, of course, things that the language of what Maggie Kiley established in the pilot last season, but there was a lot of stuff that was its own thing, just because it was that separate section of the storytelling. This season was a different balance but in an exciting way just because I was setting the table for the rest of the season and establishing what the rest of the season was going to feel like, and the biggest thing that I was really looking at was delineating the two timelines that I was juggling in the first episodes and making sure that the world with Benita and Paolo was very warm. It was shot on anamorphic lenses and the world was a little bit more dreamy and romantic. Then the world in Karolinska was stiffer and we were on spherical lenses where all the lines are very crisp and clean, and the world was a little bit more sterile and cooler colored lights and things like that. So yeah, we purposely delineated those things and it was exciting to have a familiarity in order to keep it in the same heartbeat but also establish some new things with it as well.

You are also an executive producer this season, what did that role mean to you? Why was it important for you to take that on as well as directing?
Yeah, it’s one of those things where, especially in television, it just helps to be in a position where you’re part of the decision-making for a while and that is just a nice feeling when you’re gonna be directing that many episodes of something to feel like you’re part of big picture conversations and continuing big picture conversations because sometimes as a television director, you come in, you figure out your couple of episodes, and you leave and you have no idea what happens to the episodes you direct. So, it’s nice to be a part of a team of people that continue to be in the conversation as the network or studio is giving notes, the scene continues to evolve, and as things continue to change in the edit. That’s why that position is important to me. It’s important to try to stay a part of that team as long as possible.

Lastly, are there any cases that you would like to see the series tackle in the future?
I can only handle it when I’m directing it. Literally I’m like, how I have to direct it, I’m staying away because I would stay hurt and upset all the time. When I listened to Wondery’s podcast of Dr. Duntsch and Paolo Macchiarini, I’m screaming and crying in my car. I get a little too emotional, I think, to be digging these stories up separately. I just want to keep waiting for Patrick Macmanus to decide what stories are gonna continue and then I will dive headfirst, and I will tackle dead rats, tracheas, and whatever else.

That is so fair. How can you not get emotional with these cases?
There’s this phase where you get wrapped up enough in the logistics to keep yourself going but you come home and you just feel so disheartened. It’s real, this isn’t made up. This is based on something that really happened and a lot of the things that seem implausible are the things that are real. You’re like, if someone just wrote this, they wouldn’t believe it, they’d be like, absolutely not, this could never happen and that’s the stuff that’s true. So yeah, life is crazier than fiction for sure with these kind of stories.