Himesh Patel on the major 'Station Eleven' moment where Jeevan becomes Dr. Chaudhary - Q&A

Welcome to My Favorite Scene! In this series, IndieWire talks to the actors behind some of our favorite Emmy-nominated TV performances about their personal best moment on screen and how it came together.

Jeevan Chaudhary, brought to life by Himesh Patel, is a man of inaction constantly driven to action. When we first meet the bearded Chicagoan in "Station Eleven," he witnesses a re-enactment of Shakespeare's "King Lear" when the lead actor (Gael García Bernal) collapses and only Jeevan can see that he doesn't play anymore. After the play is canceled, he meets a young actress, Kirsten (Matilda Lawler), who needs help getting home. But as they take an eerily silent L train and wander through empty, snowy streets, it becomes clear that her parents aren't expecting her. Jeevan will have to step up. He will have to keep them alive, when everyone around them is dying.

As the fierce (fictional) pandemic unfolds, we learn that Jeevan is unemployed. His girlfriend abandoned him in the chaos of the canceled play. His sister, Siya, is a doctor – who warns him of the escalating crisis – and his brother, Frank (Nabhaan Rizwan) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose work abroad resulted in a permanent injury to the leg. When Kirsten asks what he's done for work, Jeevan comes across an answer - he's "like a journalist", more of a culture critic... well, he had a website - but even though he has Looking crummy on paper, his few (forced) actions early on are evidence of dormant potential, waiting to be discovered.

His ensuing experience with Kirsten, who serves as "Station Eleven's" emotional backbone among an expansive cast spanning multiple timelines, helps bring out the best (and, at times, the worst) in Jeevan, but his maturation culminates once she's gone, because he's surrounded by strangers who think he's someone he's not - but maybe, just maybe, it can still become. Episode 9, "Dr. Chaudhary", sees Jeevan kidnapped by a group of pregnant women who need help with their corresponding deliveries. They are convinced he is a doctor and, thinking he wants to leave, won't listen when he says otherwise.

And so our man of inaction is forced into action. In a six-minute scene, Jeevan hobbles from one delivery girl to another. He offers comfort, a hand to hold, and ultimately more than that – as Jeevan walks from bed to bed, leaning on his cane as much (if not more) than his patients lean on him. Maybe I forgot to mention: Shortly before being taken to the birthing center, Jeevan was attacked by a wolf, leaving half a mangled foot. Knowing his character's injury was lasting, Patel spent weeks with movement specialist Esie Mensah to learn how to walk with a limp.

"She was really great," Patel said in an interview with IndieWire. "We did a few sessions and did everything from walking with the cane - and I made sure we had pretty much the one I would use because every little detail is important - to little things like, 'Qu would it be to go up a step and down a step? "What would it be like to sit down when you're holding a cane and can't use one leg?" "You limp, but why are you limping?" Because he's lost his toes, basically. He lost that front part of his foot. So it's almost like starting to realize what your toes actually do for you, then realizing that's what you don't have anymore, and then go from there."

But Patel hadn't had any coaching before Jeevan's monumental birthing scene. It wasn't until scenes set decades later, when Jeevan accepted his role as a healer (and a break from filming gave Patel enough time to practice), that the study of the actor paid off. For the childbirth scene, the lack of proper training is an appropriate absence: an actor playing a man who is still learning to be what he will become. But at this crucial moment, viewers never doubt what they see. Patel saw it, alongside his character, allowing us to do the same. He's still performing, even when his character is stuck, and he's always digging deeper to build Jeevan in a way that's as endearing and human as the series he directs.

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