Mandy Moore: 'Dr. Death' Season 2 'should feel empowering'

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Mandy Moore said Season 2 of Dr. Death, premiering Thursday on Peacock, shows the power in telling a vulnerable story. The season is based on the Dr. Death podcast season Miracle Man telling the true story of Beinta Alexander's relationship with a con artist doctor.

Moore plays Alexander, a reporter who profiled Paolo Macchiarini, a surgeon who proved to be a fraud, and then fell in love with him.

Moore said she admired Alexander's vulnerability in telling her story in the Dr. Death podcast, and in Alexander's own podcasts.

Even an experienced journalist like Alexander can fall prey to a con artist's spell, Moore said, but Alexander reclaimed her power by investigating Macchiarini and speaking up.

"We need to recognize that no one's going to advocate for us in the way that we will advocate for ourselves," Moore told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. "Ultimately, it should feel empowering."

Macchiarini was touting a plastic trachea he claimed he could surgically insert. He postulated that stem cell technology would make the artificial trachea grow into the recipient's body.

Unfortunately, the people who agreed to the surgery died because his artificial tracheas didn't work. Ramirez said he considers Macchiarini accountable for his deception.

"The question is how could someone devote their talent and skills to damage other people in this way," Ramirez said. "There are people who are just very smart and they're very masterful in putting manipulations together."

Showrunner Ashley Michel Hoban, who joined Dr. Death creator Patrick Macmanus this season, said she believed Macchiarini also was conning himself by trying to convince himself he could make his trachea work in a living recipient.

"I think Paolo is gaslighting himself that if he makes one change, he'll be successful," Hoban said.

Hoban said Macchiarini represents a different kind of Dr. Death than Season 1 subject Christopher Duntsch, who ultimately was convicted of malpractice for botched spinal surgeries.

In contrast, Macchiarini was a skilled surgeon. Hoban said Macchiarini's crime was crossing ethical lines with terminal trachea patients, convincing himself he was a pioneer like the first heart and liver transplant surgeons.

"There's a grandiosity there and an ego issue there that makes him feel justified to cross lines with people who are going to die, anyway, in his mind," Hoban said.

Moore and Ramirez said they focused their research on the Miracle Man podcast. Dr. Death being a dramatization of true events, Moore said she was more interested in exploring the choices Alexander made than a specific portrayal of Alexander.

"The most exciting part of our job as actors, to me, is delving into the human condition and why people would make specific choices," Moore said. "I get to decide that. I get to bring that to the table. I was excited about digging into that."

Ramirez said he intentionally avoided other sources of information on Macchiarini, adding that if he learned much more about Macchiarini, he would judge his character.

Now that the show is complete, Ramirez said he judged him to be a masterful manipulator. While he was performing, he avoided judgment influencing his portrayal.

"We do have to be very disciplined in not letting your own personal judgments filter into your performance," Ramirez said. "Otherwise, you are not at the service of the character."

Macchiarini ensnares other doctors into his scheme. The Dr. Death characters of Drs. Ana Lasbrey (Ashley Madekwe), Nathan Gamelli (Luke Kirby) and Svensson (Gustaf Hammarsten) are amalgams of real doctors associated with Macchiarini.

Madekwe said Lasbrey is "completely enthralled by" Macchiarini and believes in him enough to make questionable medical choices.

"She really believes in the work he's doing," Madekwe said. "She goes in wholeheartedly and, sometimes against her better judgment, cuts corners in areas she might not necessarily have done had she not been so convinced by him."

Gamelli treats Macchiarini's patients in recovery, and gets close to them as their trachea implants fail.

"It's a disadvantage for Nate how close he sometimes gets," Kirby said. "He just can't help himself and pays a price, obviously. Maybe it's the reason he speaks up."

Dr. Death is Moore's first live-action role after the 2022 series finale of This Is Us. She also reprised the voice of Rapunzel for some Disney shorts since.

Moore said she was not planning to work again so soon, as she gave birth to her second son in California in October 2022. Dr. Death filmed in New York one month later.

"I read those first two scripts and I was like, 'Dang, I have to do this. I guess we're all moving to New York,'" Moore said. "It was so fun to just dive into something that was so different tonally and a different character and the kind of story we were trying to tell."

All episodes of Dr. Death Season 2 premiere Thursday on Peacock.