The 10-part series stars Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson and follows the events that unfold when a once-secret serial killer attempts to change his murderous ways.
However, it is not a session of criminal psychology that takes place. Instead, Sam (played by Domhnall Gleeson) kidnaps his therapist, Dr. Alan Strauss (Steve Carell), and holds him against his will in his childhood home.
Fans of Carell, who are used to seeing him in a variety of roles from the loveable Michael Scott from The Office to the hilarious Brick Tamland in Anchorman, will see him take on a much darker, complicated role of Dr. Alan Strauss in The Patient.
Dr. Alan Strauss is a quietly troubled therapist who finds himself facing his demons whilst incarcerated by Sam, his patient.
When audiences meet Alan, they learn he is grieving the loss of his dear wife Beth (Laura Niemi). He is also processing his estrangement from his deeply Orthodox Jewish son, Ezra (Andrew Leeds).
As his captivity intensifies, he is also haunted by visions of the Holocaust.
Carell himself is not Jewish and The Patient creators, Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, told Newsweek his character Dr. Alan Strauss was not originally intended to be, but the idea came to them during the creative process.
Fields, who is the son of a rabbi, shared: “The part of what interested us was there was a character who is a therapist and his whole identity is bound up in being on the solid emotional footing, and in being able to parse these things through and build good relationships because that’s what he does. And we’re interested in that character struggling with his own personal failings and ultimately facing them in these trying circumstances.”
Weisberg also shared with Newsweek how their Jewish upbringing influenced the character of Alan Strauss.
He explained: “[The Jewish faith] that was initially just one of the constant efforts you make when you’re creating characters to add specificity and dimension and things that make them more individual. But I think as soon as we had that idea for this guy we pretty quickly realized, as two Jews, it was giving us a window into certain aspects of his psyche and his personality.
“We immediately knew we were going to bear a lot of fruit and we didn’t know exactly which fruit and that’s part of what’s fun about writing, is you find out what the fruit is as you go along and then you pick it. But for example, I don’t think we would have immediately said this is going to start tapping into images and feelings about the Holocaust that you have inside of you somewhere if you’re Jewish, but that was one of the many places that it went. It just got richer and richer.”
The character Alan is not based on a real person, Fields and Weisberg explained, but they stressed they wanted to ensure Sam and Alan were “authentic” and “dimensional.”
Fields said: “What we tried to do was always keep the characters feeling authentic and dimensional and we felt like if we could do that and not fall into them feeling like clichés, then we could have something that would be of interest to us and we hoped if it was of interest to us, maybe it will be a little bit to others too.”
Weisberg said: “You’re faced with the kind of problem that one of the characters, Dr. Alan Strauss, is obviously inherently sympathetic and relatable and because of the kind of way Joe [Fields] and I like to write, it’s not that interesting to us to write a story with a good guy and bad guy so the challenge was how do you make Sam sympathetic and relatable.”
The Patient airs Tuesdays on FX on Hulu.
