Season 3 of NBC’s The Night Shift is filled with tension, comedy, and important social commentary you might not expect from a medical drama.
Robert Bailey Jr., who plays Dr. Paul Cummings, opens up about his experiences on the show, what he hopes people will get out of it, and his burgeoning career as a musician.
Q: How did you get involved with Night Shift?
A: It’s a bit of a funny story. I’ve been working in the business for 20 years now, and we did the pilot in 2012, and I remember I was in a fantasy football league with a bunch of buddies, and it was on a Sunday. I was eating a plate full of loaded nachos and feeling like I was at a low point because I just couldn’t eat anymore. I got an email for this audition to play a doctor, and I was like, “I’m not going to go to that, I’m way too young to play a doctor,” and one of my buddies was like, “Ah, just go in.” And so on Monday I go in and you have to juggle in the audition scene, and I don’t know how to juggle, so I bought two tennis balls and just mimed it. Monday I go to the audition, I get a studio test Tuesday, Wednesday I audition for the network for NBC, and then Thursday I’m on a plane to New Mexico to film the show. Still have no clue what the show’s about, and I just know I’m playing a doctor all of a sudden. So it was really a whirlwind, and it’s kind of something I’ve always loved about being in the business. No matter what you’re doing, literally the next day you could be in a completely different part of the world shooting a new project. You never know, so it’s always a fun roller coaster.
Q: Tell me a little bit about your character.
A: I play Dr. Paul Cummings, and we’re in the third season now, so the first episode of the show ever was his first day on the job. He’s a young intern, very awkward, very eager, and very brilliant, but just socially terribly awkward. And so the first couple of seasons, he’s kind of grown into his own. You find that he’s actually a brilliant doctor and has come from a very privileged background, has never really been around people. And our group of doctors, this renegade group of ex-military doctors, he particularly didn’t fit in with this group at first, but you come to form a family, and so he’s really trying to take on more responsibilities. This year, he’s become a rather gifted surgeon, taking on a lot more responsibility, and just looking to be respected by the rest of the group. He’s still really socially awkward, but I think he’s starting to find who he is as a man and as a doctor, and to find his comfort zone. You’re going to see him in some really, really interesting situations tonight and this season. Tonight is one of the biggest ones where he has to go out into this riot that’s going on around a trial of a potentially racially motivated shooting, and so he finds himself in the middle of a very tightened, divisive situation, and he finds out who he is in that moment. It’s a big moment for my character, so I’m really excited for people to see it.
Q: Do you find that you relate to your character at all?
A: I do, and there are certain things about my character that I admire and try to emulate, really. I think Gabe Sach’s and Jeff Judah, our creators, try to take little bits of who we are as people and kind of implement them into our characters, and then eventually our characters surpass us so you’re like, “Oh crap, I need to work on that because he’s way cooler than I am.” But I think he has a certain openness and earnestness to him that maybe I have a bit of, but the way he kind of carries that no matter what situation he’s in, no matter who he’s dealing with is definitely something I would strive for because it’s something I really admire. He’s just a person with a huge amount of empathy. He can always put himself in other people’s shoes, and I think that really complements and enhances who he is as a doctor, because he can really get to the bottom of things, and not everyone can. He sees people and has an open heart towards them. There’s no judgement, there’s no anything, and that I really admire in the character, and I love playing that. He’s just a big, open heart, and it’s a lot of fun to bounce that off of other people.
Q: What’s been the highlight of working on the show?
A: First of all, you don’t often find a cast that is as tight knit as we are and were from day one, so getting to go to work with my family, my best friends every day is obviously a bonus. And then we just have brilliant actors that come onto our show, whether it’s the cast we have or guest stars. I started the show when I was 22 and I’m 26 now, and it’s been the best form of school you could possibly imagine, getting to go to work every day. I’ve grown mentally as an actor but also just as a person in all different realms of my life, so it’s been an amazing experience for me, and it’s something I certainly wouldn’t trade for. I know a great deal of medical jargon, but I have no clue what it means, so that’ll come in handy during dinner parties, I’m sure. I think there’s just been a lot of amazing benefits of being on the show, and in tonight’s episode we’re dealing with race, which is not always an easy thing to talk about. There’s a moment on the show that I’m supremely proud of, and it might be my favorite episode that I’ve seen of the show since we started. I’m just really proud of the growth we’ve had on the show. From Season 1 to Season 3, it almost seems like a completely different show, and yet the bond we have as a cast has always been there, and so we’ve just kind of grown into our own, and I’m so proud of where we’re at right now.
Q: It’s great that you get to explore so many different issues on the show.
Fresh out of med school, Paul is still finding his confidence in the ER after spending last season being pranked by the other doctors. Now he’s ready to prove to himself – and his famous neurosurgeon father – that he’s on the right track.
A: Absolutely, especially since we’re a medical show, and not all shows like that are able to go into deeper issues, but I think the fact that we have such a diverse cast means there’s going to be separate issues that we can kind of pick up on and different perspectives within those issues. I think it’s really amazing that we’re able to go certain places that people might not be expecting from us. So if people watch this episode, even if they haven’t seen an episode of the show, I think they’re going to be shocked and surprised about some of the real things we’re able to speak on.
Q: Is there anything you hope the audience takes away from tonight’s episode or The Night Shift in general?
A: I would say for The Night Shift in general, really and from this episode, especially in the climate today with the elections going on, I hope that people can see so many people from different backgrounds, different races, and different economic situations coming together and working as a team and becoming a family. Even when you have disagreements, and even when they can get rather large and it seems like it’s the end of the world if you don’t have your way, there’s always a way back as long as there’s respect and you can have a conversation with each other. I think we find that in tonight’s episode, but I think that goes in any of the issues we’ve discussed on our show. At the end of the day, there’s a family working together, and we work that stuff out, and I hope people can take away from our show a little tiny microcosm of what hopefully is going to go on in the larger world. It doesn’t matter what divisive issues we’re speaking on, we can always come together and have differences of opinion but still have respect and love for each other.
Q: Is there anything you think people wouldn’t expect to know about you?
A: I’m really over 6 feet but I’m just a terrific actor. I play my roles at like 5’8” or so, so that’s something that people wouldn’t expect. But I’m a musician as well. I’m a singer, I write music, I’ll probably be working on a project most of this summer, hopefully releasing something later this year. So if you follow me on social media, I’m Robert Bailey, whether it’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You’ll start to see me putting out more and more on there. I have some older videos of me just kind of singing, but you’ll see more of that in the future. So yeah, I’m a musician. A lot of our cast is multi-talented, whether it’s in writing, directing, music, and so I think people will start to hear more and more from the rest of us doing our other things as the show progresses and we get a chance to branch out.
Q: What kind of music do you make?
A: Well that’s the funny thing is that I write for all different genres. I used to write for other artists, and so it’s really just been a project of figuring out exactly what I want to make a project about because I write songs all over the place. I would say my sound is more so R&B/soul/pop, but it’s definitely got some singer-songwriter aspects to it. That’s how I write, so it’s just a combo of a lot of different things I’m excited for people to hear.
The show will air tonight on NBC at 10/9c.
