Exclusive | How Best Medicine transformed quaint…
Fresh Maine lobster, straight from New York.
In the new Fox comedy “Best Medicine,” which showrunner Liz Tuccillo described as “House” meets “Gilmore Girls,” the curmudgeonly Dr. Martin Best (Josh Charles) strikes from Boston to be the overall practitioner in a quaint Maine fishing village called Port Wenn.
“Best Medicine” premieres Tuesday, Jan. 6 (8 p.m. on Fox), and the city is crammed with quirky characters performed by Annie Potts, Abigail Spencer, and Josh Segarra. It’s all based on the British show, “Doc Martin.”
But, the solid didn’t have to relocate to distant Maine – it was all filmed in New York.
“I was spending time in Maine with friends during Covid,” Tuccillo told The Post. “I wanted to put it in a place that was not just a small, cozy small town, but also had an industry attached to it and a livelihood and a lifestyle. I liked the idea of being in a fishing community.”
Josh Segarra, Josh Charles and Abigail Spencer in “Best Medecine.” FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
Josh Charles in “Best Medecine.” F.ROMAN
Josh Charles in “Best Medicine.” FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
Since Maine is so distant and has “no television infrastructure,” it didn’t make sense to movie there. Instead, Tuccillo and the “Best Medicine” workforce discovered some quaint Hudson Valley cities about ninety minutes exterior of Manhattan that might be transformed into Maine onscreen, including New Hamburg, Cornwall, Beacon, and Hudson.
Although the places make the show scenic, they also made for some amusing misadventures for the solid.
Segarra told The Post that when they have been filming in Cornwall, “there is a train that goes by probably every eight minutes. So, we will be in the middle of a scene. And here comes that beautiful train!”
He described the prepare as, “one of those long ones. You’re sitting there for about ten minutes,” ready for it to go, which interrupted a scene. “We had one that I felt like it took an hour.”
The “Other Two” actor joked that since it was such a half of the filming expertise, he needed “to make sure that we put that train in the show!”
Josh Segarra in “Best Medecine.” FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
Josh Charles in “Best Medecine.” FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
Martin’s home / workplace was on a soundstage, but in any other case, the manufacturing used buildings such as real houses, or an previous barn in Cornwall for on-location shoots.
They used photographs of the Hudson River to stand in for the harbor in their Maine city.
“The idea is that the town is on a cove. So it’s sort of like this feeling of a bay, an inlet that goes out into the ocean. We were able to use the river because it gave the feeling of the cove,” said Tuccillo, who also used to write on “intimacy and the City.”
Didi Conn, John Quilty, and Abigail Spencer in “Best Medicine.” FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
Abigail Spencer in “Best Medicine.” FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
Just because the show wasn’t in the Big Apple, however, that doesn’t imply it was immune to New York type goings-on.
For occasion, Spencer told The Post, “I’ve never been hit on so much!”
She recalled an incident when she was shopping for wine, and a man in the wine store “ran after” her when she left. He requested what wine she purchased before asking, “Do you want to share that?’”
She recalled that there have been “other stories” along those strains.
“I was like, ‘Oh wow, this is bold.’ It was just so funny. I was like, ‘Wow. I guess this is what people do in small towns. They notice you don’t have a ring on that finger, lady!’”
Josh Charles in “Best Medicine.” FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
Josh Charles in “Best Medicine.” FOX Image Collection via Getty Images
The former “Suits” actress recalled another incident when she was out with Charles and Segarra — and they walked past a “murder crime scene” with warning tape.
“And we were kind of making light of it,” she said, because they assumed that homicide wouldn’t occur in a quaint small city.
But, when they checked the news the next day, “it was a murder. And we were like, ‘Oh my God!’”
So, during her time filming in quaint Hudson Valley cities, she quipped, “I get hit on, or, there might be murder.”
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