From show creator Kourtney Kang (Fresh Off the Boat), the Disney+ original series Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. follows Lahela Kamealoha (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a 16-year-old prodigy who is trying to find a balance between her very adult medical career and life as a teenager in Hawaii. Everything from the blurred lines of her doctor mother (Kathleen Rose Perkins) also being her supervisor at the hospital, to surfing with her father (Jason Scott Lee), to saving a stranger on the side of the road, to wanting her crush to return her feelings, are all part of a typical but sometimes very complicated day for “Doogie.”
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, showrunner Kang talked about how the idea for this show came about and developed, how she wanted to incorporate Doogie Howser into this new story, the way they wanted to establish the character early on, basing the relationship with the parents a bit on her own relationship with her husband, what Lee brings to her character, the challenges of the half-hour format, and what she’d like to explore with a possible second season.
Collider: How did this come about for you? Did you get inspired to remake Doogie Howser and this is what came out of that, or was the idea brought to you?
KOURTNEY KANG: There were multiple trains going. It first came to me. My good friends, Melvin Mar and Jake Kasdan, who I did Fresh Off the Boat with were like, “They wanna reboot Doogie Howser and put an Asian girl at the center of it.” And I was like, “Well, how is she Doogie Howser? What’s the relation? How is this working?” And everybody was like, “You’ll figure it.” I was like, “I like the idea in theory, but I think there’s some math that needs to be worked out.” And so, I started thinking about it, and then I had the idea of, “What if it takes place in our world and Doogie Howser is just a show from the ‘90s and that’s her nickname?” More than that, she’s like, “I don’t even know what that show is. I wasn’t born then. I didn’t really even know what you’re talking about.” That’s from a whole other generation and it’s just this nickname that she’s saddled with, so I thought that could be fun.
And then, I had the idea of, what if you set it in Hawaii and you got to see that place and explore that world? Growing up, I never saw shows on TV where there were families like mine and that’s always something that I wanted to do. I realized this was a great opportunity to take this classic title that I grew up watching and loving, and make it my own. In a way, you’re almost rewriting it to be the dream show I would have wanted to watch growing up. Now, I’m a mom and I have three girls, so I love that they’re gonna grow up with a show where there’s a Doogie and she’s a half-Asian girl in Hawaii. It has really been a dream come true, how this has all come together.
How familiar had you been with the series? Did you go back and watch any of it, or did you feel like you didn’t need to do that?
KANG: Our goal was, for folks who watched the original, that there would be some familiar things that they would recognize. I always loved Vinnie crawling through Doogie’s window, so it was important to me to keep that aspect of it. But we wanted it to be that folks who never watched it could just sit right down and settle in and watch this. I watched the original, years ago, and when we were doing this, I went back and we watched it. One of the things that really struck me was that Neil Patrick Harris brings so much to Doogie. Even though he’s 16, the character feels very universal because he’s in an adult world, but he’s still a kid and figuring it out. I think one of the reasons why it resonated with adults and kids and everyone is that, even as an adult, we feel that way sometimes. I’m a mom and I have three kids, but sometimes, especially during this pandemic, it’s like, “Wait, I’m in charge? I’m the one who has to make decisions about how we’re operating in this world? I want someone to take care of me.” I think it’s a very universal position to feel like a kid in an adult world.
And so, one of the things, as we were setting out to cast this part, was that we were always thinking about Neil and what he brought to the character. So much of what he brought was that adults could identify with him. There was something about him where he had an old soul and he was someone that adults could relate to, but kids could relate to. That really was a north star for us, as we were going through this casting process. Peyton [Elizabeth Lee] is someone who I think also has that same quality. As an adult, you can identify with her. And yet, as a kid, you can also identify with her. You buy her as a doctor. You buy her as someone who’s fighting with her mom over keys to the car. In finding her, this whole series started to come together . . . One of the things that is tricky about casting is that Doogie is an aspirational character. It’s a 16-year-old doctor. It’s a genius. It’s all of these things that you wanna be.
But on the flip side of that, you’re also asking the audience to care about them. And when things don’t go their way, you want the audience to feel for that character and to be on that journey. We’ve all seen TV shows or movies where there’s the aspirational character who then, when something goes wrong, you’re like, “You’re fine. You’re a 16-year-old doctor. It’s gonna be okay.” And so, you wanna be able to have both of those qualities. It’s the person you wanna be and that you aspire to, but then when that person is wounded or in need or trying to figure something out, you’re like, “Oh, I feel that way too,” and you empathize with that character. Peyton, as an actress, just has so many tools available to her and so many notes she can play. We really lucked out with her.
In the first five minutes of the show, she’s already saving somebody’s life. How did you figure out the best way to introduce her to everyone?
KANG: The first moments of the show are her and her dad surfing. It was important to me to have this beat that settles the audience into this world where we’re in Hawaii and there’s this family, with dad and daughter doing this thing together, and that she feels like a local girl surfing. And then, she’s gotta go do her driver’s license test. And then, we see her kick into high gear. I call it our superhero moment. She’s running and she saves the day, and it leaves you like, “Who is this girl? What is happening?” We loved that idea of playing with the fact that she’s this little surfer girl, but wait a minute, this girl is doctor. We wanted to use our main title, like the original did, to fill in the blanks of how this came to be. We have the newspaper clippings of how she graduated high school very young and went to college at 10 and graduated med school.
I also love how you have hot parents on the show, and that they love each other and have a great relationship with each other and their kids. Was that something that was also important to you, or did that develop out of who you cast?
KANG: They’re both (Jason Scott Lee and Kathleen Rose Perkins) so great. It’s like me and my husband. I love my husband very dearly and I based them a little bit on us. We’re both very different, but appreciate the differences in each other. What we wanted this family to be is that they’re very different, but they admire those differences in each other. And Kathleen and Jason both brought so much to these characters. As we cast them, we molded them more and more to fit with them. Ultimately, you’ll see throughout the season, that there’s a romance between mom and dad, and they support each other and guide each other through things. It’s the same with Walter and Lahela. We track that relationship as well. It’s also partly that the writing staff is predominantly women and there are a lot of moms on staff. We would laugh in the writers’ room that every episode is about how mom has a problem or Lahela has a problem, and then the super attractive Benny or Walter is like, “Tell me everything. How can I best support you and your career?” That’s the show we’re doing. It’s our turn now.” It’s been really fun to do that.
What do you enjoy about watching this family together? Between the parents and these three kids, what’s it like to see that relationship develop, not just as characters, but watching the actors actually grow together?
KANG: It’s been really wonderful to watch. It’s great how we bring our own things to it. Episode 103 explores Lahela’s relationship with her older brother Kai a little bit, and it was very much based on me and my older brother. My parents are endlessly charmed by him. He’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong, but my parents are charmed by him in a way where I sometimes feel like, “I’m here, I swear. Someone pay attention to me.” I think it’s a little bit of why I ended up creating a TV show. Peyton is a middle child, and has an older sister and a younger brother, so she brought her family dynamics to it. And Matt Sato, who plays Kai, brought his family dynamics into it. The goal is to start from this germ of something real, and then everyone can build on it and bring their experiences to it. It was really gratifying to watch this family, as we went along. They just feel like a family, in their own weird little way. It has been very gratifying to watch these actors bring their talents to these roles.
I really enjoy the friendship between Lahela and her best friend. It seems like it would take a special person to be friends with and to understand someone like that, when you’re having typical teenage problems and your friend is off saving lives in the hospitals. What do you enjoy about that relationship and finding the balance between those characters?
KANG: One of my favorite parts about that is that I was a big fan of the original and one of my favorite things was always Vinny climbing through the window, so I knew, in this version, we had to have that. So, Steph Denisco, our best friend in this version, the name is my best friend from college. And Emma Meisel, who plays her, brings so much to the character. There’s so much love there and such a connection between them. One of the things, when we were building the show, was to think about her medical life and her family life, but we also wanted to have the world of a teenager, and that’s what the Steph character represents. And the two girls, Peyton and Emma, became really good friends throughout the course of filming. They have a great chemistry together, as two best friends, so it was really exciting to see that come to life. Episode 106 really dives into their friendship, and I think it’s one of our best episodes.
What are the challenges in telling this story in a half-hour format? With so many different elements to cram into with the limited amount of time, as a storyteller, is it better to feel like you have too much story to tell?
KANG: I think so. Our show is so rich and there are so many places to go for story. We have medical stories, we have the family dynamics, and then we have this YA romance for Lahela and Walter. Early on, it was a challenge to have one show housing all of these different things, but it was always our intention to figure that out. What makes the show great is that it has all of these textures and places to go. That’s one of the nice things about being on Disney+ and being on a streamer. They’re not looking for a formulaic show. We were never put in a position to answer, “Well, it’s 30% at the hospital and 30% at home.” The stories go where they want to go, but they’re all interrelated. They all are of this larger piece of Lahela figuring out the world and her place in it and how to be the best version of herself. It was a challenge, initially, to figure out whether we were a medical show, a family show, or a comedy, but the truth of the matter is it’s all of that. Life is all of these things. It’s been really freeing to be able to create a show that can play these different notes and have these different vibes. We have such a tremendous cast, between Jeffrey [Bowyer-Chapman], Mapuana [Makia], and Ronnie Chieng at the hospital, and then at home. It’s been really great. The writers’ room is a feast. There are so many different places we could go that it’s really, really exciting.
Do you feel like you have a pretty good map for what Season 2 would look like? Have you thought further than that? When you think about the show, how far ahead are you thinking about?
KANG: There are so many stories and 10 episodes happened so quick. There is so much that we wanted to explore. One thing I’m really excited to get more into in Season 2 is more stories that only our show could tell about Hawaii and Hawaiian culture, the things that are happening there, and what it’s really like. There are stories we wanna tell at the hospital, between what’s going on in Noelani’s life and Charles’ life. We’ve set up these great characters and now it’d be really great, in Season 2, to have the real estate to delve further into what’s going on with them as well. Season 1 has been so much about Lahela and the family, and now we have so many great players to go to. With Mapuana and Jeffrey, their friendship is so wonderful. Mom and dad have so much love to them. And even Dr. Lee, by the end of the season, is part of the little family there at work. It would be really exciting to delve further into those characters. Matt Sato, who plays Kai, is so wonderful, so I’d love to delve more into his character and Brian Patrick. We have so many great players to go to.
Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. is available to stream at Disney+.
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