Broadway Vets Alfred Molina & Bill Irwin to Star in TNT Medical Drama Chelsea General

Broadway alum Alfred Molina will star in the pilot of TNT medical drama Chelsea General along with Tony winner Bill Irwin, according to Deadline.com. The pilot, from producer David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, Boston Legal, Harry’s Law), is based on CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta’s upcoming novel Monday Mornings.

The project follows the lives of five surgeons, set against the backdrop of the hospital’s Monday Morbidity and Mortality conference. Considered the most secretive meeting in all of medicine, doctors gather for a confidential review of complications and errors in patient care.

Molina will play Dr. Harding Hooten, the Chief of Surgery at Chelsea General, known for his punishing and outwardly-uncaring ways, who heads up the weekly meeting. Irwin will play Dr. Buck Tierney, a smug doctor who takes himself very seriously and rubs his colleagues the wrong way.

Molina earned Tony Award nominations for all three of his Broadway roles, in Art, Fiddler on the Roof and Red. Among his many film roles are Chocolat, Frida, Magnolia, Spider-Man 2, An Education, The Da Vinci Code, The Tempest, Boogie Nights, The Perez Family, Enchanted April and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Irwin is a Tony winner for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and a nominee for Largely New York. His other Broadway credits include The Regard of Flight, Fool Moon, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? and Bye Bye Birdie. His screen work includes the films Rachel Getting Married, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Eight Men Out and Igby Goes Down, and TV shows CSI, A Gifted Man and Sesame Street.

Kelley and Gupta, who is a practicing neurosurgeon, are executive producers of Chelsea General. Bill D’Elia will direct the pilot.