Finding the Happy Medium in the Mockumentary Workplace Comedy with ‘St. Denis Medical’ Co-Creator and Showrunner Eric Ledgin

A mockumentary about an underfunded, understaffed Oregon hospital where the dedicated doctors and nurses try their best to treat patients while maintaining their own sanity. Wendi McLendon-Covey, David Alan Grier, Allison Tolman, Josh Lawson, Kahyun Kim, Mekki Leeper and Kaliko Kauahi star.

In dire need of a big dose of a feel-good comedy? Eric Ledgin, co-creator and showrunner of the newly released workplace comedy mocumentary television series St. Denis Medical has you covered. Fresh characters, simple storylines that carry both humor and heart, plus comedy greats David Alan Grier and Wendi McLendon-Covey. Need I say more?

Eric Ledgin recently spoke with Script about his love for the workplace comedy mockumentary format, emphasizing the importance of making it feel real and authentic, developing complex and flawed characters, putting together his dream team writers’ room, and shares his guiding writing principles.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Mockumentary workplace comedies will not die, and that’s fine by me. There's something about the simplicity of this show that works so well, especially, while also finding the humor and the heart to it. How did this concept between you and Justin Spitzer come to be?

Eric Ledgin: So, first to speak to the mockumentary piece, ever since the British Office, I remember very specifically the feeling I had watching the first episode. And I didn't even know if I was supposed to be laughing or not, but I was like, ‘Do they know this is funny?’ Very naive reaction to it, but it really got me. I was probably 23 or so when I saw it, it was the first show that I was just like, ‘This is a TV show I would want to make. I wish I made this show.’

The problem was that by the time I finally felt like I made it as a writer, I was 30, and I was like, those shows are not going to be in fashion anymore. Luckily, I got so old that the pendulum swung back and they are in vogue again, thanks to Abbott Elementary, a show I'm hugely grateful for.

I had this idea for a show that takes place in the hospital, and I knew I wanted it to feel real. And neither of us remembers how the mockumentary idea came into it, but we're both grateful for it. We both love that format. 

I had a chance to work on a mockumentary in my first scripted show, which is called The Comedians on FX. That was sort of a loose version of the format, and I really wanted this to be strict and to really feel like it's a docuseries about these people that work in a very complicated profession, where, I think especially during COVID, we were all like ‘they're heroes and we love them,’ but the system doesn't always love them, and we don't always love them when we're in a bad mood or we don't feel like we're being treated right. At the same time, here are people who in the moments that you're in a hospital make you feel so seen and so loved and cared for – and also people that sometimes make you feel like shit. [laughs]

I thought that there was just really something there that was complicated and potentially very funny. With those moments of heart, I feel drawn towards a little break from just laughing and saying, ‘What is the point here? And what are we wanting people to feel or get out of this?’ There's always a little bit of that I'm drawn to.

Sadie: What I really enjoyed about this too, is the development of these characters and how you establish them, their dynamics, and their voices. And to top it off, you find a way to humble each one in each episode. It's like a sleight of hand. Each character gets an unexpected arc that they didn’t realize they needed in that moment. Can you talk about developing and fleshing these characters out, their voices and how they maneuver it in this world?

Eric: I can say that from the beginning, when Justin Spitzer and I started talking about these characters, one of the best signs that this was going to be something that we both loved and something I knew that I could take and run with, was how easily the characters were unfolding, and it felt intuitive. It's like when you start to feel locked into a character, whether it's because you know someone like that, or you've seen a lot of people like that, it's an amalgam of something you know. 

One specific character I can speak to is the character of Alex, who I wasn't sure what the central character was going to be like. I met a nurse named Alex from Oregon. She had all these qualities that felt very archetypal to me, of a nurse that I would want to watch, and a nurse that I felt I had seen people like this in hospitals that were on the good side - on the side of like, that's the nurse you hope you get because she cares. She doesn't take shit, which is a good quality, and she takes everything on, and she's competent, but also, she can make you laugh if you get too big for your britches as a patient and have some fun with you. And that was the person I felt like I wanted people to spend the most time with.

And then as you build these characters, I think one thing working for Justin on a couple of different shows, and I worked on a lot of other shows, he always hammers home just how flawed you need to make people, to make them funny. But also, that's a pretty good reflection of all people who are all a little bit flawed and finding ways to point that out in these characters. 

Hopefully, people will see it in themselves or in someone they love. Especially now, I feel like we want to be able to still love people even when we see their flaws. I think that's in some ways, the role of a comedy, a sitcom, especially, is to just remind ourselves that people are flawed. Everybody has stuff. It doesn't mean that they're not the same reliable, hard, trying person that they are. Most of us are doing our best.

Sadie: When it came to casting, you guys have such a solid cast, but like the likes of David Alan Grier and Wendi McLendon-Covey, once they came into play, did you guys go back to their characters and refine their voices to go in lockstep with their own comedy rhythm?

Eric: Totally. I so love each one of these actors, and I'm in awe of them. For me, the fact that David Alan Grier, who I used to walk the halls of my elementary school quoting, is a cast member on my show, and he talks to me and knows my name, [laughs] and I get to write for him. And he has not just a great comedic voice, I think he's also a phenomenal dramatic actor. He's just a great actor, period. And his actual, just physical voice is incredible. And so, you want to write to all these wonderful moves that he has in different directions. And I love that he's playing sort of a rock of a character, a reliable character, a steady character, because then seeing him get rattled, is a lot more fun. But he so speaks to that character.

And then Wendi, who I had laughed at so much in my life without knowing I would ever work with, just came in with a different energy for Joyce than I think I was going for. It was a little more fumbling and sputtering. And then Wendi comes in with such confidence and joy, and she takes these big swings that are so funny. It just felt very fortuitous, very lucky that we had someone that was so strong and could go in that direction and made the whole show just come up in energy and joy.

Sadie: With this show, you guys play this really fine line of inappropriate versus appropriate humor, especially in the workplace. And I wonder how much has that been influenced by or something that you learned from working on shows like in Late Night, or something totally absurd, like Always Sunny?

Eric: A few answers to that, but I'll try to get there quickly. One is that working in late night for Jimmy Fallon with a live audience was one of the best schools of what an audience will tolerate, what they will laugh at, what they'll bust out laughing at even though they don't want to, versus what will make them turn on you. And I had all of those things happen at various points.

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Sunny is about as opposite in tone as you can get from another show I worked on called WordGirl, which was a children's animated show run by PBS, and it was for six-year-olds. And I think, in a way, that was more instructive than any other show I worked on - how can you be funny without all of the crutches? Sunny a show that was equally smart had access to all those crutches and all those in that show, they were more like sprinkling and toppings and crutches.

I had to figure out for me, what's my happy medium? Where do I want to be in terms of the voice of the show, and especially for the audience that I'm looking for? I go back to something like The Office, the British one and the American one, where they were able to cast this wide net audience-wise and be like ‘We are not going to make you feel bad about yourself after you watch this.’ You're not going to feel like you're getting away with something that's a little dirty. You're going to feel clean at the end of this, but you will hopefully have had a half hour where you've been laughing and maybe, ideally, in some episodes, you'll feel something or think about something a little bit differently than you did. Those are secondary goals, but the first job is just to be entertaining and make people laugh.

Sadie: When putting together your writers’ room, what kind of voices were you looking for?

Eric: Yeah, that's a good question. Unfortunately, I was lucky for a bad reason, with the strike so many people were hungry for work and available. I had written down this list of some of my favorite writers that I had worked with. I've worked on a ton of different shows and gotten to work with a lot of talented people. And I was able to make the list of all of my favorite, most talented people who all bring different things to the table and different experiences and backgrounds, which is very important to me.

A lot of them had hospital connections, like their dad was a doctor, or they volunteered in an ER for a while. That wasn't necessarily by design, but it was very lucky. Most of those people on the list came and worked on the show. I also got to work with old friends, Bridget Kyle and Vicky Lou, who helped me run it – we were Superstore buddies – [they] are just so funny and such good leaders and storytellers. Justin Shanes, who has been a close friend of mine for a long time, was a co-EP on the show. Sierra Teller Ornelas, I worked for on Rutherford Falls. She brings just so much comedy and such good story ideas. And down the line, we just had a ton of great writers who I was extremely fortunate to have, not the least of which is Justin Spitzer, having him in the room for most of the season was incredible.

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Sadie: Any advice for writers looking to break in, especially in the comedy space, and developing a story of their own? It goes without saying, this show will be compared to others that came before it, like Scrubs. Maybe something that you personally took to heart for yourself while developing this show?

Eric: It's a good question. One of them is that someone said to me, ‘I've seen a story like this before, but not with these characters.’ And I think that that really speaks to, especially workplace comedies. But I guess family sitcoms too, it's so much about the characters and their dynamics together, they are never going to feel familiar if you do this.

The second piece of advice that I got from a writing teacher in college, ‘Specificity is the antidote to cliché. Be as specific as you can.’ Making it as real as we possibly can. The mockumentary aspect helps that, but a mockumentary format doesn't work if all the characters are silly and broad and crazy. If you're writing a show like this, you have to find the balance. It always needs to feel real. And usually, there are real people that do roll their eyes and call it out.

To me, the guiding principle of the show has been it should feel like the most coincidentally funny and interesting documentary series that was ever made. Having a guiding principle is always important. Your guiding principle might be totally different. You might be writing a cartoon that takes place in space, and maybe your rule is the science needs to be sound, or it needs to feel like these characters could be having this conversation in their living room in Iowa, but they happen to be on a spaceship outside Jupiter. Having a guiding principle and always honoring that and being as specific as possible, those are all things that have proved to be true.

I think knowing what your characters want at all times, at least your main characters in a story is always very crucial. I even at this age and after doing this for many years, I often look at a story I'm breaking that I'm having trouble with and go, ‘I have no idea what this person's going for here.’ So those are the big pieces of advice that I try to pass on in my writing.

Sadie: Great advice and totally practical too. I think some of us tend to forget the ‘why’ of characters and the importance of them and that connection.

Eric: There’s much to remember. I reread writing books from time to time, because you forget these basic rules, and especially if you're a writer, if you have something to say or something to reflect or something that happened to you that you want to put down, it doesn't necessarily follow those rules. As my wife says, which I repeat all the time, ‘Just because it happened to you doesn't make it interesting.’ [laughs] It's about incorporating those stories you want to tell into these quote-unquote rules, which are really just pieces of advice taken out of great stories, so you can have a guide. You just need those reminders.

St. Denis Medical premiered on November 11 and will air new episodes weekly on NBC.