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St. Denis Medical hinted at a possible onscreen connection between David Alan Grier and Wendi McLendon-Covey but the actor wants to push it one step further with an “over-sexualized” romance.
“I’ll tell you what I pitched. I pitched a really over the top and over-sexualized office romance,” Grier, 70, exclusively told Us. “Because who doesn’t hate that couple, the one that you worked with for years. All of a sudden, they’re hooking up and they want everybody to know.”
He continued: “And we all know it’s not gonna last. But they swear up and down, ‘I love her, and I don’t care who knows it.’”
NBC’s medical sitcom, which premiered in 2024, introduced Us to Joyce (McLendon-Covey) and Ron’s (Grier) friendship. At the end of season 2, their dynamic appeared to evolve when Ron affectionately spoke about Joyce post-surgery.
“I don’t want to blow it so you just have to wait and see [what happens next],” the actor told Us. “But part of it is when Ron first wakes up is if you’ve ever had a friend who got too drunk, part of that is the next day going, ‘Do you remember what you said to me?’ That’s what he’s going through now. He’s like, ‘What? I remember everything.’ He doesn’t remember everything.”
The Monday, November 2, premiere hinted at a slow trajectory for Ron and Joyce.
“You gotta wait. I know one thing: Joyce is a firecracker, baby,” Grier added. “I don’t know if Ron can handle all that.”
Grier was excited to see how the story would evolve, saying, “I love working with Wendi. She is so crazy and so just out there with her intensity and her commitment. That’s the thing about comedy. You have to be able and willing to make a complete fool out of yourself in every circumstance. So I’m really more amazed when the writers give me an emotional moment and don’t put a rubber chicken in it somewhere or a water balloon.”
He continued: “It is fun to try and carve out those honest emotional moments because I think a lot of times in life, that’s just how it happens. It’s not like a movie. It is awkward. It’s ill-fitting. All of a sudden, you are there and you just spilled your guts and you got poop on your shoe. It’s always complicated by real life. So we might as well just make room for it.”
Showrunner Eric Ledgin also teased the fictional couple’s possible journey.
“The biggest thing in Ron’s life — at the forefront of his life at the beginning of this season — was recovering from surgery. And what does that look like for me as a human being? And what does it mean for his role as an emergency department doctor, which is not an easy job for a guy with a heart problem,” he told Us. “That took center stage in a good way because I think it allowed the question of Joyce to be a little bit more in the background.”
Ledgin hinted the show would circle back around, sharing, “So we could explore that at the pace that feels right. It’s not something where after so many years of working with someone, you just go, ‘Oh, now I’m in love with them.’ It’s more of a, ‘Is this something I don’t even know that I know?’ And so that, to me, was the most interesting dynamic that felt different than the other relationship dynamics. For our show, I’m more drawn to like not repeating ourselves from one relationship to the next.”
St. Denis Medical airs on NBC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET before streaming the next day on Peacock.
