Here are the cast, character, and production bios for the new TNT series “Monday Mornings” which will premiere on February 4, 2013 on TNT.
Cast and Crew
Season 1, Episode 1
“Pilot”
Format: One-hour scripted series for television
Network: TNT
Premiere: Monday, February 4, at 10 p.m. (ET/PT)
TV Rating: TV-14-DL
Directed by: Bill D’Elia
Teleplay by: David E. Kelley
Created by: David E. Kelley
Based on the novel by: Sanjay Gupta M.D.
Executive Producers: David E. Kelley
Bill D’Elia
Sanjay Gupta
Produced by: Lewis Abel
Co-Producers: Peter Chomsky
Billy Redner
Music By: Danny Lux
Director of Photography: Colin Watkinson
Production Designer: Peter Politanoff
Edited by: Craig Bench
Casting by: Gary M. Zuckerbrod, C.S.A.
Costume Designer: Lisa Eisler
Starring:
Ving Rhames
Jamie Bamber
Jennifer Finnigan
Bill Irwin
Keong Sim
Sarayu Rao
Emily Swallow
Alfred Molina
Character Descriptions
Dr. Jorge Villanueva
Ving Rhames
Dr. Jorge Villanueva, known as El Gato, is a giant of a man. He is also perhaps the most celebrated trauma chief in the country -- clearly the elephant in this circus. El Gato's seat-of-the-pants diagnoses are the stuff of legend around Chelsea General.
Dr. Harding Hooten
Alfred Molina
Dr. Harding Hooten, the steely-eyed Chief of Staff, speaks softly but carries a massive stick. He was nicknamed "Hardly Human" long ago for his exacting, punishing ways during the weekly morbidity and mortality meetings.
Dr. Tyler Wilson
Jamie Bamber
Dr. Tyler Wilson is a supernova neurosurgeon. When he says something is so, it is so. If he has a god complex, it's well-earned.
Dr. Tina Ridgeway
Jennifer Finnigan
Dr. Tina Ridgeway is a compassionate neurosurgeon willing to fight for cases that may seem like lost causes to others. Her home life in turmoil, she finds refuge at the hospital.
Dr. Buck Tierney
Bill Irwin
Dr. Buck Tierney is the hospital's Chief of Transplantation. A man driven to the point of bullish, he is least liked among the Chelsea General staff.
Dr. Sung Park
Keong Sim
Dr. Sung Park, a Korean-American, is abrupt socially and English-challenged, but he's also ambitious to the core. His searing intensity is palpable.
Dr. Sydney Napur
Sarayu Rao
Dr. Sydney Napur is a cardiothoracic surgeon who's married to the job. A compulsive multi-tasker, she speaks quickly and takes absolutely no prisoners.
Dr. Michelle Robidaux
Emily Swallow
Dr. Michelle Robidaux is a 20-something resident. Inexperienced yet eager, she is finding her footing among giants.
Cast Bios
Ving Rhames
Dr. Jorge Villanueva
Ving Rhames was born and raised in Harlem, N.Y. His thespian career began at the New York High School of Performing Arts, followed by the prestigious Julliard School of Drama. His training quickly landed the talented actor his first role on Broadway in The Winter Boys. After the play, he made the transition to television, making his first appearance on Go Tell It On the Mountain in 1985, followed by Miami Vice. He then effortlessly segued to feature films, with such credits as Jacob's Ladder and Homicide.
A few years after his on screen debut, Rhames was cast as a merciless drug dealer opposite Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Quentin Tarrantino's Pulp Fiction. His performance in the film helped land him the role of Luther Stickell in Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible, opposite Tom Cruise and Jon Voight.
Rhames' notable performances led him towards the long path of starring in many other blockbuster hits such as John Singleton's Rosewood, with Jon Voight, and Simon West's Con Air, with Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich and John Cusack. In 1997, the busy actor played the role of Don King in HBO's Don King: Only in America. His portrayal earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Miniseries. From this award- winning performance he went on to star in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight, with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez; Jon Amiel's Entrapment, with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones; and Martin Scorcese's Bringing Out the Dead, with Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette and Tom Sizemore.
In 2000 Rhames returned as Luther Stickell in John Woo's Mission: Impossible II, with Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton and Dougray Scott. He then starred in John Singleton's Baby Boy, with Tyrese Gibson; Walter Hill's Undisputed, with Wesley Snipes; Ron Shelton's Dark Blue, with Kurt Russell; Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, with Sarah Polley and Mekhi Phifer; and Mission: Impossible III, with Tom Cruise and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
Rhames ventured behind the camera in 2005 as a producer for the USA series Kojak. His producer credits also include Back in the Day, Animal and Shooting Gallery. Rhames has also starred in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, with Adam Sandler and Kevin James; and Surrogates, with Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell, and he made a cameo appearance in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
Alfred Molina
Dr. Harding Hooten
Alfred Molina is an accomplished London-born actor whose diverse and distinguished gallery of performances have led to a lengthy and triumphant career in film, television and the stage. Prior to Monday Mornings, he starred in NBC's Law & Order: Los Angeles for producer Dick Wolf. He also opened in the critically acclaimed movie An Education and filmed a TV comedy for the BBC, Rog & Val Have Just Got In, opposite Dawn French. In late fall 2009, Molina opened in the UK in the highly celebrated Donmar Warehouse production of Red, which opened on Broadway in April 2010 and for which Molina received rave reviews and a Tony nomination. Red recently opened in Los Angeles at The Mark Taper Forum.
In summer of 2010 Molina had two movies released, Prince of Persia, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, and Sorcerer's Apprentice, with Nicolas Cage. In September 2011, Molina was seen in the Lionsgate feature Abduction, co-starring with Taylor Lautner and Sigourney Weaver and directed by John Singleton. He then he appeared in three episodes of Harry's Law, starring Kathy Bates.
In 2002, Molina won rave reviews and nominations for the British Academy Award (BAFTA), the Screen Actors Guild Award, the Broadcast Film Critics prize and the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for his Best Supporting Actor turn as the hedonistic Mexican artist Diego Rivera in Frida, Julie Taymor's docudrama about the life of Frida Kahlo starring Oscar nominee Salma Hayek. Other screen roles include The Pink Panther 2, opposite Steve Martin; The Little Traitor, an adaptation of the Amos Oz novel, Panther In the Basement, directed by Lynn Roth and produced by Marilyn Hall; and The Tempest, director Julie Taymor's version of the Shakespearian play. The latter was released in late 2010.
Following Molina's education at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, he quickly gained membership in England's prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, where he performed both in classics like Troilus and Cressida and new original works like Frozen Assets and Dingo. In 1979, he won acclaim (and a Plays and Players Award as Most Promising New Actor) as The Maniac in Accidental Death of an Anarchist at London's Half Moon Theatre.
Two years later, Molina found himself on the big screen making his American debut in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And in Stephen Frears' 1987 drama, Prick Up Your Ears, Molina won great notices for his portrait of a vengeful, murderous Kenneth Halliwell, playwright Joe Orton's gay lover.
Molina's career continued to soar in the following decade, with roles as an unhappy upper-class husband in Mike Newell's Enchanted April, the joyous painter Titorelli in David Jones' 1993 adaptation of Kafka's novel The Trial and the duplicitous Persian spouse in Not Without My Daughter. He re-teamed with director Donner in the comic western Maverick and played the small but pivotal role of a crazed drug dealer in Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar-nominated Boogie Nights (1997). Molina joined Anderson once again for his epic ensemble drama Magnolia (1999), collecting Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for both as part of the films' ensemble casts. He also continued to display his ability to embody a variety of nationalities, playing a Cuban immigrant in Mira Nair's The Perez Family (1995) and a Greek-American lawyer in Barbet Schroeder's drama Before and After (1996). Other films over this 10-year span include Roger Donaldson's sci-fi thriller Species, Jon Amiel's comic thriller The Man Who Knew Too Little, Bernard Rose's Anna Karenina, Woody Allen's Celebrity and Stanley Tucci's The Impostors.
In the new century, Molina collected his third SAG Awards Ensemble Cast nomination for Lasse Hallström's whimsical, Oscar-nominated romantic comedy Chocolat and reunited with Hallström opposite Richard Gere in The Hoax. He also turned heads as the villainous Dr. Otto Octavius, a.k.a. Dr. Octopus, in Sam Raimi's blockbuster sequel Spider-Man 2. Molina co-starred in such films as Identity, Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, Ron Howard's adaptation of the enormously popular book The Da Vinci Code, Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me, Eric Till's biographical drama Luther, the bilingual suspense thriller Crónicas, Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptation As You Like It, François Girard's Silk and John Irvin's The Moon and the Stars.
Molina has also stared in two comedies for CBS. He played a washed-up writer sought out by his estranged daughter in Bram and Alice (2002), and he played Jimmy Stiles in Ladies' Man, on which he also served as one of the producers. His other television work has included the acclaimed 1983 miniseries Reilly: Ace of Spies, Miami Vice, the BBC telefilm Revolutionary Witness, Granada TV's El C.I.D., the BBC miniseries Ashenden (based on Peter Mayles' bestseller, A Year in Provence) and the Hallmark Channel's Joan of Arc (as narrator). He also starred in the TNT miniseries The Company, produced by Scott Free Productions, and he has made guest appearances on Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit and Monk.
Despite his thriving film and television career, Molina has never wandered far from the stage for long. He returned to the RSC to give a much-praised performance as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (1985) and earned an Olivier nomination for his work in the British production of David Mamet's Speed the Plow. In his Broadway debut as the good-natured Yvan in Yasmina Reza's Art (1998, starring with Alan Alda and Victor Garber), Molina collected the first of his two Tony nominations for Best Actor. He made his Broadway debut as the Irish chatterbox Frank Sweeney in Brian Friel's play Molly Sweeney (1995-96) and most recently triumphed as Tevye in the 2004 revival of Fiddler on the Roof, for which he earned his second Tony nod. He also completed a run at the Mark Taper Forum of The Cherry Orchard in 2006, opposite Annette Bening.
Jamie Bamber
Dr. Tyler Wilson
Deep space is a long way from London, England, but classically trained actor Jamie Bamber has proven adept at navigating both territories. Known to millions as Commander Apollo from the cult phenomenon Battlestar Galactica, which the likes of Rolling Stone and Time deemed the top show on television, Bamber more recently relocated home to London to star in ITV's hit drama Law & Order: UK. He has since returned to Los Angeles for recurring arcs on Body of Proof and TNT's Perception. In addition to Monday Mornings, he also stars in the title role of the crime-thriller John Doe.
Born in Hammersmith, England, Bamber moved with his American father and Northern Irish mother to Paris for the first seven years of its life. It was in Paris that his actress mother who, lacking a daughter, cast him as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Hence began Bamber's penchant for acting.
Bamber attended St. Paul's School in London and eventually Cambridge University, where he earned 1st Class M.A. Honors in modern languages, including French and Italian. While there, he played rugby and performed in numerous theatrical productions. Though Bamber had been acting since childhood, it was not until his acceptance to the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts that he opted to pursue it as his career. Shortly thereafter, he was cast in his first professional role as Archie Kennedy in the acclaimed British miniseries Horatio Hornblower.
Bamber's more recent credits include the French-language film Le Perde de Ma Fille, the lead in Weinstein Co's sequel to the thriller Pulse, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hank's award-winning HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, guest-starring turns on the dramas House, CSI: Miami, Dollhouse, Cold Case, Ghost Whisperer, the BBC telefilm Daniel Deronda, the BBC series Outcasts and ITV's Peak Justice and Ultimate Force. On stage, he has starred as Prince Hal in Henry IV at the Bristol Old Vic and as Mephistopheles in Dr. Faustus.
In his spare time, Bamber is equally as athletic as his Apollo character appeared on screen. He has run the London Marathon and is an avid golfer, skier and tennis player.
