Wendi McLendon-Covey, St. Denis Medical‘s Joyce, discusses her character’s obsession with death and why Joyce will probably die alone, watching her family fight over her stuff from the heavens.
Wendi McLendon-Covey has done a ton of TV and movies, from her iconic role as Clem in Reno: 911 to the Academy Award-nominated Bridesmaids, but NBC’s St. Denis Medical marks the first time she’s been on a medical comedy series.
“Luckily, I’m just the administrator,” says McLendon-Covey of her character Joyce. “I don’t have to do any of the needle stuff. Thank goodness. You don’t really have to learn the lingo or anything. Not as much as the [rest of the cast has] to. And I am a fainter. So, you know, it’s best if I just stick to the paper shuffling of it all.”
And it’s best for Joyce to stick to it as well!
“We mentioned briefly in the pilot that Joyce was an oncologist for a while. So she holds that degree. And in my mind, she got sick of dealing with insurance companies and thought, you know what, I’m going to make change from the inside. I’m going to run this hospital. I’m going to show everybody what’s what. I’m going to streamline everything. And that’s not how that works in the medical profession. But what’s she going to do, change careers again? Yes, she could scrub in and do things if needed. That is frightening. Yeah, right. With these nails?”
“But It Was Never Sexual!”
Yes, St. Denis Medical’s executive director is a little unhinged, something we learn right away in Season 1, Episode 2’s “A Very Robust Personal Life,” when she deals with the loss of her marimba teacher, Alan.
“We had a year break between the pilot and the second episode. It was fun because I had no idea what Joyce’s home life was like, and I never would have come up with those things. And yet they make sense. Of course, she plays the marimba. It’s fun to pound on things. Of course, she ties knots. What else are you going to do at three in the morning when you can’t sleep? And, you know, there are those bone brothers out there where that is their religion. Full personality. I bet their house stinks because making bone broth is a stinky proposition.”
In the episode, once Joyce starts crying at work, she can’t stop. Her smiley, resilient demeanor suddenly breaks down as she sobs at her desk. Then, she gets too personal on a work Zoom call and reveals she was in love with Alan!
“We’ve all been there, right? It’s the same with tears and church giggles; you can’t stop those things once they start coming. So yeah, that was really fun to play. But it was kind of tough. I don’t want to reveal that, you know, it’s Alan she’s been in love with. Yes, but it was never sexual! No, Megan, never sexual!”
For the episode, the producers did get McLendon-Covey marimba lessons so she could play a short bit of “Lean On Me.”
“I love the sound of it. It’s a very beautiful-sounding instrument. And so it was fun to have one in my house for a little bit and just play around and drive my poor husband crazy. What I found with it, though, is, I start going cross-eyed, watching the things bounce. And it’s a very intuitive instrument.”
“I’m Ready for Death at a Moment’s Notice”
Between Alan’s death and Episode 9’s “You Gotta Have a Plan” where she reveals “I’m ready for death at a moment’s notice,” Joyce has a morbid fascination with her demise. She has all her assets in order and just needs an executor, Alex (Alison Tolman) or Ron (David Alan Grier), to run the show.
“Joyce spends a lot of time yearning for death, but I also think she loves to have things in order so they go smoothly. She’s a control freak, so she wants to control things from beyond the grave with these papers. It’s not so much, ‘Oh, I want things to be easier for my family.’ It’s, ‘I want it to be easier for them to fight over my stuff.’ And then I can watch from the heavens.”
While McLendon-Covey believes “Joyce will die alone,” she also thinks she’ll drag it out with her notary boyfriend Sanderson (Steve Little).
“I can’t believe she’s been a disaster her entire life. But I do believe, like a lot of people who dedicate themselves to work, time flies by. And you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t have a family. Oops. I never got that going.’ So she has her useless boyfriend, Sanderson. But you know, that’s just a bad habit. That’s not much of a relationship.”
St. Denis Medical airs on NBC.
