Unsurprisingly, Asian Americans make up one-fifth of all U.S. physicians, medical academics, students, and trainees. They also make up 8.9% of registered nurses, half of whom are of Filipino descent. Yet, television series about the medical world tend to forget that Asians exist in medicine.

It took several seasons before Grey’s Anatomy had more than one Asian lead on the medical staff. If we’re looking at medical comedies, the popular TV series Scrubs never had an Asian as a main cast member, the closest being guest and recurring stars: Bonnie Chang (Lela Lee), Franklin (Masi Osaki), and Sonja Dey (Sonah Shah).

In NBC’s newest mockumentary, St. Denis Medical, based in a small (and mostly white) town, the medical team includes two main cast members of Asian descent: ER nurse Serena (Kahyun Kim) and Val (Kaliko Kauahi). The series will also have several Asians as guests and recurring roles in upcoming episodes. 

Creators and showrunners Eric Ledgin and Justin Spitzer say they did not do this on purpose but are glad it does reflect how many hospitals look. 

“First of all, we will be capping it at two,” Ledgin jokes. “I’m joking. I can’t say it was, to my memory, overtly discussed. But hospitals are diverse places, and I think it would be crazy for the show not to reflect that.”

Spitzer says that he observed many doctors and nurses of Asian descent at hospitals, particularly Filipinos, but he never thought about it until his colleagues brought it up. He reveals, “I would never even mention it because that’s an awkward thing, but so many of my Asian and Filipino friends [asked me], ‘Do you know how many Filipino people are nurses?’ It was interesting to me.”

It’s another reason the writers dedicated an episode to Filipino nurses called “Salamat!” (meaning “Thank you” in Tagalog, one of the Filipino languages). The episode focuses on Filipino nurses, aka “the Filipino Mafia.” Ledgin says it was pitched by one of their Asian American writers, reflecting the abundance of Filipino nurses in the medical care industry. 

“It’s definitely a nod to that,” says Ledgin. 

Spitzer appreciates his staff for bringing up these stories because he knows the limits of what he can do or say. “That’s actually the joy of the episode – having a white character saying we can’t say those words. It’s a fun dynamic.”

Nico Santos, a regular fixture on Spitzer’s comedy Superstore, guest stars in that episode as Renee, a stuck-up registered nurse “who is bound to cause some trouble at the hospital.” Spitzer says to expect more actors from his previous series, like Superstore and American Auto, to guest on St. Denis Medical. 

“We have these actors we love [to bring back],” Spitzer explains. “Even if they’re not playing the same characters, it’s so much fun to bring back [these actors]. There’s a joy in these fans seeing them in a show together.”

The series also offers the other characters to add a few anecdotes of their backgrounds, including Serena’s Korean American culture and Matt’s (Mekki Leeper) religious upbringing. 

“Oh, 100% that she has an OnlyFans,” Kim jokes. “That in every improv I can do. I’m like, she has an OnlyFans.”

Leeper quickly clarified that the character Serena doesn’t officially have an OnlyFans, but that Kim is trying to force it into the script. Kim shares, “None of the writers want that.”

But they include her South Korean roots by making them part of her daily life: her lunch, words she’ll say, or references made. She shares, “As the season goes on, [we] will discover more. I try to sneak in as much as I can, like small things. In one of the first episodes we filmed, they asked what I wanted to eat in the lunchroom. If I were eating in a lunchroom, I would definitely eat cup noodles like Nongshim Shin Noodle or kimbap.”

Leeper, who is of mixed Moroccan descent and raised in both a Christian and Muslim household, says his portrayal of Matt’s uber-religious background isn’t to poke fun at anyone. He says it’s to make fun of how these things affect you as a person rather than the religion itself. 

“[My parents] were strict, and it affects your life in so many ways,” Leeper explains. “If it’s really strict and conservative, you become a sheltered, naive, buttoned-up person in a particular way. You don’t ever need to talk about religion to feel the ways that it touched your life. So when Matt hasn’t seen movies, TV, and music, it’s just funny to him to not know about so many things.”

Though having an episode centering on Filipino nurses doesn’t change the fact that there are only two AAPI regulars, it’s a start that the creatives and showrunners hope to continue more visibility if more seasons are green-lit.

“I think we’re trying to meet that niche for people to have something to watch that, hopefully, if they’re in the industry, they see themselves, or they see something they relate to,” Ledgin says. “If they’re not, they [will] get a more human portrait of the people that they go to during their hardest moments, [who] are trying their best to help them.”

St. Denis Medical airs on Tuesdays on NBC and on Peacock the next day.