Transplant’s Laurence Leboeuf loves smart, ‘spazzy’ Dr. Mags

When the doctors and nurses of the fictional York Memorial Hospital are gathered around an emergency patient, calling out instructions and reaching for life-saving equipment, to actor Laurence Leboeuf it’s a bit like a ballet.

She plays Dr. Magalie “Mags” Leblanc in CTV’s “Transplant,” which ends its first season Wednesday, May 27 at 9 p.m. And she uses the word “ballet” a couple of times during our interview to describe the process of making the show’s medical scenes look and feel believable.

“Transplant” is about Dr. Bashir Hamed (played by Hamza Haq), a Syrian refugee who becomes a resident in the ER of a big Toronto hospital after saving the life of his future boss, Dr. Bishop (Scottish actor John Hannah), in an accident. Mags is one of his fellow ER residents.

As with all medical TV shows, Haq, Leboeuf and their cast mates have to convincingly fake a variety of medical procedures. For the really big traumas, the cast would spend hours rehearsing at weekend “boot camps,” Leboeuf said.

“At the beginning of rehearsal, sometimes I would start and after five minutes I was like, ‘This is never gonna happen. There’s too much to do,'” Leboeuf said over the phone from her hometown of Montreal, where “Transplant” shoots. “Then the puzzle comes together and, at the end, it’s super rewarding when the ballet happens and you’re like ‘Wow, that’s cool, we did that.'”

Not only did the actors have to learn medical jargon (with the help of consultants Dr. Zachary Levine and nurse “Magic Mike” Richardson), they had to learn to use it convincingly, to time it to their movements as they manipulated fake medical equipment and to, well, you know, act while spouting words like “pericardial effusion” and “sternotomy.”

Add the fact that English is not Leboeuf’s first language and it’s that much more of a challenge.

“I wanted Mags to speak really, really fast: to not think, like she knows everything; she’s read all the books, there’s no delay in her mind,” Leboeuf said. “So sometimes, with English being my second language, it was harder for me to put it into my mouth.”

Mags has been one of the most challenging and rewarding roles that Leboeuf has played. It’s the first time in a more than two-decade career that the 34-year-old has been a lead in a TV series.

She has played a doctor before, in the Quebec series “Trauma,” although that character was an “extremely troubled” surgeon “who was seeing her dead father and stuff like that.” Leboeuf has switched back and forth between French and English TV and movies, including “Being Erica,” “Durham County,” the English remake of “19-2” and the limited series “The Disappearance.”

Mags has been special, though. “I love playing Mags,” said Leboeuf. “I love her quickness and her spazziness and her awkwardness and her brain. When I first read the script I was just like, ‘Yeah, I love this character already.’ I could actually be playing her for a while if we get the chance. She is that interesting.”

And just for the record, the workaholic Mags is “just so the opposite of who I am,” Leboeuf said. “I enjoy doing nothing; I love having  a social life outside of my job, although I love what I do.”

As I write this, Bell Media has not yet said if “Transplant” is getting a second season. I would, however, be astonished if it didn’t given that the show has been a ratings hit here at home – drawing more than 1.7 million viewers in early May, according to the most recent Numeris ratings available – and has been picked up by NBC to air in the U.S.

Leboeuf says that last bit of news is “so rewarding.”

“When you’ve worked hard on a show, and we’ve all believed in it and we’ve all loved it and we’ve  all thought we were doing a great show, so just to have that validation not only within Canada but now kind of internationally that’s just really, really rewarding.”

Leboeuf has given some thought to why medical dramas are such an enduring part of our TV landscape.

“Medical shows are like an endless well of amazing stories to tell,” she said. “Always there’s sorrow and rejoicing and courage and life-saving and sacrifices. We see the family struggles, we see the doctor struggles, we see the human part of it.”

And with plot lines that touch on everything from anti-vaxxers to mental illness to racism to drunk driving to gender dysphoria, Leboeuf sees “an endless well of amazing stories, human stories” to draw on.

Assuming “Transplant” does get the go-ahead for more episodes, Leboeuf is itching to get back to work with the cast mates who’ve become “an instant family,” once it’s considered safe for TV production to resume during this COVID-19 pandemic.

In the meantime we’ve got Wednesday’s season finale to look forward to.

“It’s a great cliffhanger, something big’s happening. It’s a great episode,” she said.