Private Practice's Paul Adelstein: A Threat to the Triplets 'Puts Everything Else on the Backburner'
This Tuesday on Private Practice (ABC, 10/9c) it’s “Cooper’s Greatest Hits” as the winding-down medical drama presents an hour told from the perspective of Paul Adelstein‘s character.
Specifically, Adelstein’s alter ego will break the fourth wall and share with the audience his inner monologue as he reflects on milestones throughout wife Charlotte’s pregnancy with not one, not two but three little ones.
VIDEOS | Private Practice‘s Cooper Breaks the Fourth Wall for a ‘Project Cooplets’ Update
Series boss Shonda Rhimes “told me probably around Episode 6, the way they were going to go” with the POV storytelling, Adelstein tells us. Faced with the most dialogue of his own seen in any script to date, “It was exciting,” he raves.
The Cooper-centric hour even revisits the moment, from this season’s premiere, that Charlotte first told her husband that they were expecting triplets. That required extreme attention to continuity, Adelstein says, since “instead of using clips [of the original scene] and trying to add to it, we reshot it [with Cooper's amusing asides to the camera]. It was fun to go back and do that.”
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The episode, however, is far from all laughs. Rather, one of what Adelstein calls the marrieds’ “trivial fights” has an adverse effect on Charlotte, ultimately threatening the miracle going on inside her. There are some curve balls thrown,” the actor previews. “Until now they’ve been dealing with the ‘pedestrian stuff,’ getting ready to expand their family considerably, which of course has its own challenges. But then everything turns on a dime. Something comes up with the pregnancy that puts everything else on the backburner.”
Adelstein says the medical crisis is not fully resolved by hour’s end. But in the vein of better news, along the way, “The genders will be revealed” for all three Cooplets.
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This crucible is but the latest one endured by Cooper and/or his lady love Charlotte over six seasons. And having weathered such storms together, Adelstein says his time alongside scene partner KaDee Strickland “will definitely be missed” as the series concludes with Episode 13.
“She’s so easy and fun and game to work with,” he says of Strickland. “You joke that people have ‘work husbands’ and ‘work wives,’ and we’re literally each other’s work husband and work wife, so we fall into the pattern…. We’ve been through the wringer together.”
After Private Practice wraps the series finale shooting this week, Adelstein says he “probably” will next set his sights on the coming pilot season. With the same gung-ho attitude that carried him from the role of Prison Break’s cunning Kellerman into Coop’s shoes, he says, “Let’s see what’s out there!”
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