Playing Dr. Jed Bishop on CTV’s TRANSPLANT Gives Veteran Actor John Hannah Something to Sing About

By BILL HARRIS

Special to The Lede

Is John Hannah appearing in a TV medical drama or a stage musical?

In his role as Dr. Jed Bishop in the CTV Original series TRANSPLANT, which airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET, sometimes Hannah feels as if he’s doing both!

The veteran Scottish actor has been cast alongside everything from mummies to aliens in his lengthy career. But he has found there is something particularly challenging about playing a doctor, especially when he’s asked to recite complex medical jargon, while also moving his hands in the appropriate manner that makes him look like a physician.

“It’s like singing a song in a foreign language,” Hannah said. “I wish I had known that beforehand. The things that nobody tells you, right?”

TRANSPLANT stars Hamza Haq as Dr. Bashir “Bash” Hamed, a Syrian doctor with battle-tested skills in emergency medicine who is making a new life for himself in Canada. Hannah’s Dr. Bishop is Bash’s boss at a top Toronto hospital.

Hannah’s lengthy acting resume includes everything from Four Weddings And A Funeral to The Mummy trilogy. Haq revealed recently that he and some of the other cast members on TRANSPLANT would randomly yell out lines from The Mummy, because they were somewhat starstruck upon first meeting Hannah.

“I thought TRANSPLANT was incredibly different as a piece, partly because of Hamza, and also because of the journey of this refugee who’s here, who has trained for something, and yet he’s not allowed to work in his field, at least not initially,” Hannah said. “I do think they’ve found a great lead character who takes us on a journey, where we meet other interesting characters who are so diverse, even in terms of age.”

As for Hannah’s character, Dr. Bishop is at something of a crossroads, too. (SPOILER ALERT: Some general details about the first few episodes of TRANSPLANT are discussed).

“There’s an incident in the first episode where my character has a severe trauma to the head, and the near-death experience gives him pause to re-evaluate,” Hannah said. “I often think the more you can find in a character that is like yourself, the less acting you have to do. As a man of 57 with teenage twins, I understand some of those feelings, as your kids are starting their own journeys. My character has completely invested himself in his profession, at the cost of his marriage. I’m still happily married, but my character isn’t. He’s still running the hospital, but he’s reviewing his own life, too. I don’t know if part of that is something I’m deliberately bringing to the character, or if that part of the character is resonating with me.”

Either way, TRANSPLANT is sure to provide more challenging and “theatrical” situations for Hannah’s Dr. Bishop, even if he doesn’t literally have to sing a song in a foreign language.

“Honestly, it sets us up for some very funny satire, which is NOT what we’re doing!” Hannah said. “But we can have a laugh, anyway.”

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