A scene from “Five Days at Memorial,” premiering globally on August 12 on Apple TV+.
Five Days at Memorial — premiering Friday, August 12 with the first three episodes on Apple TV+ — is based on actual events and adapted from the book of the same title by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sheri Fink, chronicling the impact of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath on a local hospital.
Although the series, like the book, focuses on Hurricane Katrina, one of the show’s stars says not only did healthcare workers’ heroic efforts around the globe during the pandemic make her want to take on the project, but that the show also salutes them.
“In so many ways, I think this was an homage,” actor Vera Farmiga (the Conjuring films, Bates Motel, The Departed), who plays “Dr. Anna Pou”, told me via Zoom video. “It’s kind of a tribute to our healthcare workers, our doctors, and nurses. It really gives the audience a perspective of what that role is like. These are extraordinary people.
“These are everyday people who have earned that title of heroes amongst us because of their sheer willingness to report, to work in times of catastrophe and disaster, and to uplift everyone, put others’ well-being before their own is just something to shine a spotlight on and to salute, I think, after these last few years of the pandemic.”
Cherry Jones (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Succession, 24), who portrays ‘Susan Mulderick’, hopes the eight-episode limited series will drive people to support healthcare workers.
“I hope there’ll be lots of eyes out there that are reminded by this series that we as a people have got to start asking for funding and support for our healthcare workers because we’re losing droves of them by the day at a time when we only need more and more and more and more,” Jones said.
“My little county hospital had 800 people before the pandemic. Now on staff, there are 300 people. And this is a hospital that serves four counties. This series, it covers so many different issues, but certainly, that’s one of them. And that society cannot survive without superb healthcare.”
In playing a doctor dealing with a wide-scale crisis at a local hospital, Farmiga wanted to convey both the exhaustion and the flight-or-fight response and instincts that healthcare workers in those types of situations deal with.
“I think what was most important in my interpretation was to get into that mindset, to understand the dire straits, how abysmal the conditions were of the circumstances in that hospital that kind of just zapped their mental and emotional reserves in combination with just the mental, physical, emotional, spiritual exhaustion and the dementia of lack of sleep, all of it,” Vera said.
“But also the frustration of knowing that you are not getting help, that you have been abandoned. There is no plan. Nobody’s coming to rescue you. And then there will be certain people, based on your personality and your work ethic and who you are that will either click into fight or flight. And I was portraying a doctor and a woman who doesn’t run away from danger. She doesn’t run away from the fire. She runs towards it, and she’ll do her best to put it out.”
Jones’ character had a unique background which would help her be of service in dealing with the effects of Katrina as well.
“My character had been at that hospital for 30 years and had started there right out of school and had been an ICU nurse, and she was actually better prepared to be in the position she was in than anyone else in the hospital,” Cherry said.
“But it was an impossible position and a position that no one in their right mind would ever want to have to be in. But she, I think, looked at what they all would have called Baptist Memorial because that’s what the hospital had been before. It had been bought by a corporation. That was her family, that was her home, and she was fighting to save her family and her home. It was that personal to my character.”
