‘Nurse the Dead’ is alive and kickin’ in iWant

By Janet Susan R. Nepales

Creating the first bilingual series on American soil is one thing. Making the first Filipino TV series filmed in Hollywood is another. But making it to the top 7 shows after only being on the iWant streaming service for two days is something else.

“Nurse the Dead” is the TV series that we are talking about, and we were able to have an exclusive chat with cast members Jelynn Malone (Noa Reyes) and Gigette Reyes (Mami Tess), and creator-showrunner-writer-director Mark Labella. We talked about the personal significance of this historic series for each of them, their challenges, and memorable experiences in the making of this show.

Mark Labella (creator, showrunner, writer, director)

As creator-showrunner-writer-director of this series, can you please talk more about the personal significance of creating this series?

I’m not a nurse, but I had access to it because I worked with them on the front lines and everything that we went through- all the heartbreak, the grief, the fight to save people’s lives. And we know the statistics, right? That we’re the number one immigrant nursing population in the country. It’s only 4%. But 30% of the nurses who died during COVID were Filipinos, right? And so, for the longest, longest, longest time, I have wanted to write a series about nurses.

And what my mom went through, and her best friend passed away during COVID and her best friend’s husband leaving three kids behind.

So, I really wanted to find a way to tell our story in a heartfelt way without it being so depressing all the time.

Comedy really does come from pain. And I sent it to Jelynn (Malone) and Drea (Castro), and they’re like, no, we have to make this. They told me to fight for it. And we did. Now, thank God, we found our Kapamilya, and we were able to create this together because if Jo Koy couldn’t get a Hollywood studio to support his cancelled ABC pilot nursing show called “Josep,” where Jo Koy himself played the main character who was a recently divorced Filipino American nurse, how are we going to do it? And I’m a nobody.”

So, when even Jo Koy couldn’t get that project off the ground at a major network, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle for me when we shopped “Nurse the Dead” in Hollywood.

That’s why this moment means so much. The fact that we got here, with a Filipino nurse story actually made, released, and finding an audience, feels bigger than just one show.

There’s such a thing as birth pains. So, Mark, can you please talk about the challenges of making the series and how you overcame them?

Oh my gosh. I mean, not only is this my first series as a showrunner, but this was done on a Filipino budget, right? And we have not even a pinky’s worth of budget compared to what those other shows like “The Pitt.”

Jelynn and Gigette and the entire cast and crew had to do everything. I’m talking about waking up at five in the morning, four in the morning, carrying the cameras myself. Driving the grip ends at midnight so I can come home to do rewrites. Some of our actors, because of this, are really collaborative.

Everything that we did was so collaborative, and a lot of kindness and patience and compassion had to go into this with everyone. That was the first thing I said. Like this was a show that was made on healing. So, if we didn’t have that attitude going in there, none of this would have been possible at all.

So, Mark, can you talk about your mom and how much of an inspiration she was in the making of this series?

First of all, my mom, Nora Ceniza Miralles, who has been a nurse for 46 years, is from Mandaue City, Cebu. She practiced both in Cebu and the USA at Sharp Chula Vista in San Diego. I was born in Cebu and raised in San Diego. When I attended the Philippine Nurses Association in San Diego Gala to talk about “Nurse the Dead” recently, some of them knew my Mama. It was such a sweet moment.

I love my mom. My mom is listening right now, so I have to be careful what I say, because I’m going to get it right here. But she is the only mom in the history of the United States Navy to infiltrate her son’s barracks at 6:00 in the morning. All I got was a knock on my door from the master at arms. Really pissed off. And he goes, “Your mom and dad are downstairs.” I was in an all-male barracks. She’s a civilian, and to this day, I still don’t know how she got on base. You know what she said? She was looking for me in the naval base. It’s because I didn’t answer my phone for two days. That’s mom. Oh, my goodness.

But Gigette and Jelynn and all of them, they love my mom. It was so wonderful to do this with my mom. I dedicate this to her because, for 40 years as a single mom, she’s all I have. That’s something that Noa even says. So, I’m very thankful. I’m so grateful that I get to tell a story in her honor. That’s another reason why I had access to this story. We have a responsibility to my mom, to the Filipino nurses, to honor this story and to give it our all.

I also want to give a shout-out to Alaga Scrubs (Philippines) who put traditional handwoven tela on the nursing scrubs they’re wearing! The rest of the scrubs were donated from Fabletics. So that was really cool of them.

Mark, can you please share some fun facts about the show?

Fun fact: I actually wrote the “Nurse the Dead” theme song and Episode 104 while on a medical mission in Panama last October. Several of the doctors from that mission ended up appearing in the episode.

Even crazier trivia: one of my most memorable experiences in medicine was helping deliver babies during an earthquake while training in Cebu. Life is weird. It made it to the opening montage of episode 101!

Jelynn Malone (Noa Reyes)

Jelynn, this series is also significant for you as it’s your first Filipino TV series. So, can you please talk more about the importance of being part of this TV series?

Since I was a little girl, I had always dreamed about creating representation in the media and opening up opportunities for more Filipinos to be in leading roles, to be in meaningful roles where we could just allow the Filipino community to be able to identify with characters and stories in our TV and films that we all watch. Just through my acting career, I look Korean, so a lot of people will see me and think, is she even Filipino? But I am I’m full Filipino. In my acting career, I got cast as everything, but Filipino, and it was just because the roles weren’t being written for us yet.

It wasn’t until Mark, who has been championing Filipino stories, Filipino people, and Filipino characters as the lead roles, came. These are the types of things that we need to do to open up those doors. So, this came at a perfect time. The community is becoming more and more familiar with our culture.

You’ve got “The Pitt” with the Filipino actors there. You have “St. Denis Medical,” and they have a Filipino actor there. Asians in general are just becoming more prominent in Hollywood, which I’m so grateful for. So, I think “Nurse the Dead” is coming at the most perfect time. I am so humbled and grateful to have the honor to play a nurse, to play Filipina, and to be able to honor my relatives who are nurses.

Your character, Noa Reyes, can see ghosts with her third eye. I heard that there were actually real ghost stories and encounters in the hospital. Can you please narrate some?

Oh my gosh, where do I begin? Well, first off, one of my favorite ones was the day that we wrapped the entire series. We were in one particular hospital room. We came out into the hallway, and then as soon as Mark yelled, “That’s a wrap on season one of Nurse the Dead!” We were all screaming. We’re cheering, we’re laughing. Then the call button right above that door started blinking. That was a thing that would happen ongoing.

Whatever room we were filming in, or if we were in a hallway, whatever room we were directly in front of, it was like the ghosts and the spirits of the hospital wanted to participate and let us know that they were there, blessing us, cheering us on, and participating because it was only in that room that would blink.

So that day, Mark yelled, “That’s a wrap!” Then blink, blink, blink, blink, blink over that door. We’re all like, oh my gosh. Then one of us was standing in the hall. Then Mark would say, “That’s a wrap” to every person. He yelled, whoever the last one was, standing in the middle of the hallway. As soon as he yelled “That’s a wrap” to that person, then the light, the call button above that person, started to flicker, and it wasn’t the regular yellow.

It was the red light. We were like, oh my gosh, now it’s moving. It’s like literally moving to wherever, Mark was saying. When I asked the hospital that night, I said, “What is it? Is this normal? Like, how do these lights start flickering? They’re like you have to physically be in the room pressing call to get it turned on.

This is a floor that is empty. No one’s using it. We have the entire floor to ourselves. When these things happen, we’ll look in the room, and nobody’s in there. So, when it’s blinking red, it means somebody dying or something. It would be flickering. So, we had a team bring what is called an EMF tracker to check the energy and the spirits.

We toured the whole floor and everywhere, the different places that we were filming, to see what kind of activity was going on. Then it was flickering a little bit. But then when we went into my dressing room, the lights would go to maximum, and it was like all within our rooms. We thought that that was so bizarre. We had things falling off the walls all the time.

There was one scene. We were all in one room, and there’s a trash can that’s empty. All of a sudden, we’re all standing there, and we hear the trash can just drop, and you have to drop trash in there to make it fall. Anyway, we look inside. There’s nothing there. We all heard it.

Someone else saw a backpack fall and get dragged underneath like one of the tables. We hear kids laughing. My Lola was on set. She thought that a part of the floor we were on had actual patients because she could hear children on the other side of this curtain that they had to help diffuse the light. I was like, Lola, no kids are allowed up here. No one under 18 is allowed to be on this floor. She said, well, I heard kids, but Mark and Marvin heard kids. Then the guy at the check-in counter on the lobby floor of the hospital said, “Did you hear the kids?” And we’re like, well, yes, it’s been confirmed.

That’s just a fraction of it. Everyone has a story. Everybody! But it didn’t feel like evil energy. It wasn’t like we were being haunted. If anything, it was a very loving energy. I felt like they were saying, thank you for acknowledging us. Thank you for seeing us. They just wanted their presence to be known.

So, Jelynn, what kind of preparation did you do as a nurse in this series? Did you do some interviews or research?

I called one of my closest first cousins, Nikki Avalos, and I asked her, okay, first off, what should I be wearing? What am I allowed to wear? And she was giving me all kinds of advice about just the way that you would present yourself. We had to bring our own shoes because, as I said, this was like our own low-budget thing, so they’re like, “Bring some shoes to wear with your scrubs.” My cousin was like, well, what the nurses wear are Figs by New Balance. So, I’m the new nursing supervisor of Ward Five. And my Noa character is like an overachiever, and she wants to be ready, professional, and present herself well.

So, I was like, Noa would have brand-new shoes for her brand-new job. I made sure to go buy myself some real nursing sneakers. Then, I asked Mark how much medical experience I need. For season one, it was a lot more than just introducing the characters and really introducing these relationships. So, I didn’t have to be very trained ahead of time, but there were a couple of scenes that I don’t want to talk about now where I had to get technical with it.

And Mark is a doctor (he has a Doctor of Medicine degree, but he is not a practicing physician), so I had my own on-set professional there, showing me how I had to be moving and talking around things and looking comfortable putting gloves on, for example. I had to practice literally walking around, talking, putting latex gloves on. Because when you’re in the medical field, that’s just like second nature to you. For me, as someone who’s never had to do that, I’m weaving my fingers into the glove, and he’s like, no, you got to look cool and relax about it.

So, I’d be walking around talking, doing my lines, just putting gloves on, just things like that. But for the most part, for this season, it was really just establishing who we are, who we are as people and characters in our relationship. That’s what I was mostly focused on for this. But ever since I started doing this show, I look at everyone wearing scrubs differently. Like if I see someone with scrubs, I’m like, oh, like a nurse. I just feel this different appreciation for it and it’s all because of this experience.

Gigette Reyes (Mami Tess)

You are a veteran TV and film actress and just fresh from your “Freaky Friday” stint, why is your involvement in “Nurse the Dead” significant for you?

Oh, it’s extremely significant. This is a Filipino-led TV studio series filmed entirely in Hollywood. It’s a first, and Jelynn mentioned “The Pitt” and in “St. Denis Medical,” they do have the nurses there, but they’re not the leads. We are the leads; the Filipinos are the leads. And representation is very important. Also, the fact that I get to speak Tagalog on a Hollywood set for a series, and I’m not talking about one or two lines that they do in “The Pitt.” I’m talking about pages of dialogue.

Eventually I was like, is this even going to work? But as I was going through it, it really made me feel it was impactful. This is important, and I felt proud and honored. I’m so grateful to be on this project. The minute I read the script, I just read the first episode, and the writing of Mark Labella is amazing. Kudos to our showrunner, creator, and director. The writing is absolutely beautiful. There’s a lot of heart, but there’s also a lot of comedy, intelligent comedy. So, I did drop a project for this. I would drop other projects for this.

As Mami Tess, can you talk about how much you relate to your character and why nurses should be watching this series?

Mami Tess is a very strong woman. She’s a workaholic. She’s a workaholic because she loves being a nurse. She loves helping people. It gives her fulfillment; it gives her purpose. But then she’s also a single mom, and she has to earn the money and provide financially. So, there’s that career part.

Then she has her daughter, and being a single mom, she can’t spend enough time with her daughter if she’s going to be a workaholic. There’s a lot of guilt there. I went through that as a single mom myself. It’s very hard. She loves her daughter more than life itself. She climbed the highest mountain. She’d go through fire for Noa, but she can’t give her what she needs.

So again, there’s a lot of love. She has a lot of emotions deep inside, but she will not show it. She tries not to. Although it does come out. She tries to be very stoic. I’m a lot like her except for this stoic part. They know I’m not stoic at all. So, there’s a lot of the usual dilemmas that single parents go through, and I relate to her in just about everything being a single mom.

And why should nurses watch it?

This is for you. We’re doing this for you. We are shining a spotlight on you. It’s about time that we do shine a spotlight on you. Not just nurses, healthcare workers, especially Filipino nurses and healthcare workers. There’s also the Filipino representation part of it. It’s high time, and we need your help to keep going and keep having Filipino representation out there.

What do you hope this series will inspire?

It’s a story. It’s a script written so beautifully that it deals with love, friendship, struggles, grief, and all the feelings that people have every day. I think if they really get into the show and get into every character, they will feel a lot. They will resonate with just about every character. I’m hoping that it can either heal them, make them smile, make them laugh, make them cry, get them to get more into their feelings, and be better people because of it.

Because of having worked on it, having read eight episodes, and having gone through all of the things that my character Mami Tess went through, I found it very human and very inspiring.

With everything that’s going on in the world, we really need something like this. There’s a lot of comedy too, so it’ll make you laugh as well, which we all need. That’s what I’m hoping for.