Mandy Moore Tells Us Why Her New Dr. Death Role Is the Total Opposite of This Is Us

If you’ve gotten used to watching Mandy Moore play a loving matriarch in This Is Us, her latest project will subvert everything you’ve been accustomed to seeing the actress do. In the latest season of Peacock’s true crime drama, Dr. Death, Moore is playing Benita Alexander, an investigative reporter who is seduced by Italian thoracic surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. The suspenseful, twisting drama — which is based on true events — sees Moore in one of her darkest plots yet.

The show is streaming on Peacock now but, ahead of its release, Moore chatted with us alongside Edgar Ramirez who plays the deceitful and manipulative Dr. Macchiarini.

“It is such a departure,” Moore said of her decision to take on the role of an NBC journalist who was conned into a relationship with the disgraced doctor who knowingly performed experimental transplant surgeries on patients without sufficient scientific evidence resulting in many deaths.

“It was a very intentional move in a different direction to do something that feels totally so different than anything I’ve really ever dipped my toe in before,” Moore continued. “I’m fascinated that people like Paolo exists in the world, and that people like Benita, this very capable, smart, accomplished woman could find herself, you know, in a position vulnerable enough to fall victim and be susceptible to this kind of degree of manipulation.”

And yet, as different as Benita Alexander is from Moore’s This Is Us character Rebecca Pearson, the actress plays both character with depth and heart. The show’s executive producer and writer, Ashley Michel Hoban, told us she was astounded by how Moore tackled the character.

“It’s just such a privilege to watch her bring this character to life in a really nuanced way,” Michel Hoban says. “It’s pivotal because we we meet Paolo through Benita’s point of view. We’re skeptical the same way she is skeptical and, when he wins her over, that’s an important point for the audience to be won over. So [Moore] really delivered with the kind of warmth, intelligence, savviness and trustworthiness that she brings to screen.”

Opposite her, Ramirez expertly plays the charismatic and convincing Macchiarini who deceives colleagues, patients and the medical community into participating his dangerous surgeries. Moore and Ramirez are joined on-screen by Luke Kirby, Ashley Madekwe and Gustaf Hammarsten, Macchiarini’s colleagues who are also swept along in his lies.

The at times difficult to watch medical malpractice narrative is interjected by Macchiarini and Alexander’s love story that plays a key role in the Italian surgeon’s ability to keep his deceptions hidden. Moore says, “Getting to see the duality of, like, he was that person professionally and he was that person personally as well, it’s sort of like true pathological narcissism at play.”

“What makes the the second season so unique and interesting,” Ramirez adds, “is precisely the love story that lives at the core, at the very center of the story.”

Ramirez describes the season as “a deeper exploration of greater subjects of humanity: trust, betrayal, fantasy, the need to believe and the need to retell your story.” The show weaves between all these elements but keeps both the viewer and the characters as captives in Macchiarini’s grip.

“That’s what great manipulators do. They’re very sensitive in identifying your vulnerabilities and just get through those cracks to wherever they need to go,” Ramirez says. Yet, in spite of his iron grip, the fate Macchiarini ends up laying in the capable hands of Moore’s character and his colleagues, and audiences can expect to be surprised by how that fate is reached.

Dr. Death is streaming now on Peacock.

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