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Is St. Denis Medical Filmed in a Real Hospital?
St. Denis Medical is set in a hospital, but does the cast actually film one?
Mekki Leeper plays nurse Matt on St. Denis Medical, and the actor has a special surprise in store for excited fans. The comedy series from NBC premiered on a wave of eager expectations on November 12, and many are wondering if the Oregon hospital at the center of the show is real place.
Luckily for curious St. Denis Medical fans, all of those questions are answered in a new video where Leeper walks us through where the show is filmed and everything that's real and fake about it.
Is St. Denis Medical a real hospital?
No, although it may look real, everything you see on St. Denis Medical is a well-built set designed to just look like a real hospital.
However, it's worth noting that the pilot episode of St. Denis Medical was shot in a real hospital. Specifically, the St. Vincent hospital in downtown L.A. Actress Wendi McLendon-Covey revealed that in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times where she also noted she believes the building is haunted. Fortunately, that doesn't matter now as the show moved to a set after the pilot was picked up to series.
Leeper took a break from filming to walk us through the St. Denis Medical set. Everything from the trash bins to the shots of the hospital’s outside are a façade. However, Leeper points out that certain potentially dangerous props are actually real. “Ooooh! This is a defibrillator… I play around with this a lot, and I’m always afraid that it’s going to kill me or something,” he said.
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Luckily, the set designer knows to leave it unplugged.
The rest of the hospital was basically built from scratch on the Universal lot in Los Angeles, but incorporates such realistic details and flourishes that viewers at home would never guess. Just like with every hospital, there is a Wall of Gratitude.
“It’s a bunch of nice notes from the children of people whose parents we have healed in our fictional universe… I think that a comedy writer did this,” he says as he points out the funnier ones.
Why is St. Denis Medical set in Oregon?
Though the series is filmed entirely in California, co-creator Eric Ledgin explained why he and fellow executive producer Justin Spitzer chose Oregon as the location.
“Oregon was chosen for a couple reasons. One is, I just feel like it’s a very underrepresented state. It’s a great and beautiful state that you don’t hear a lot about,” he said during the 2024 Television Critics Association summer press tour via Oregon Live.
“It’s a fun place for us to discover as we go. We’ve got little references to Oregon throughout Season 1, but, of course, if we get more seasons of the show, we’ll explore more outside the hospital,” he revealed.
St. Denis Medical is set in a town called Merrick, but even that is not entirely real. It’s named after Ledgin’s hometown — not in Oregon, but on Long Island. He explained in the interview he couldn’t get legal clearance on his first three choices.
“Then I found that it’s like $1,500 every time you clear a city. So, I just threw out my hometown name, and that ended up being the name of the town that show takes place in. It’s called Merrick,” he said.
At the end of the tour, Leeper takes viewers “outside” of the hospital to reveal floodlights that mimic daylight and the “flimsy” plywood on the back of the set. It all goes to show the incredible world-building required to take an empty soundstage and transform it into the emergency department of a busy hospital overrun with patients — and filled with laughs.
Catch St. Denis Medical Tuesdays at 8/7c on NBC and streaming the next day on Peacock.
