FOX/Guy D’Alema(LOS ANGELES) — Actor Morris Chestnut plays arrogant, and unethical neurosurgeon Dr. Barrett Cain on Fox’s The Resident, and he’s so good at the smarm that the affable actor says he’s now getting confronted by fans.
“When people come up to me about this show, I know they’re really watching because they come up to me and [say], ‘Oooh, I can’t stand your character. Why did you lie to those people?’ Yeah, they admonish me,” he laughed on a recent episode of PeopleTV’s Couch Surfing.
“It’s kind of like being able to play the villain, something that people don’t really expect from me.”
However, just as the series had been doubling down on Chestnut’s character’s unethical behavior — he tricked a patient into undergoing an unnecessary procedure during the pandemic just to pad the hospital’s bottom line, endangering the man’s life — the producers threw fans a curveball.
Tuesday night’s episode showed Chestnut’s character doing something selfless for a change — pulling a woman from a burning car — only to see him struck by a car and seriously injured, meaning the staff of Chastain Memorial has to save the career, and the life, of a guy we’ve all come to love to hate.
Executive producer Andrew Chapman tells PeopleTV partner Entertainment Weekly, “…[H]e’s arrogant and a bad guy, but yet at the same time he’s only human. So even if Cain survives the accident, would he change his core personality? Would he ever become a good guy? That’s more iffy.”
The Resident airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
By Stephen Iervolino
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