Doctor nurses desire to act

Molly Shore

Jennifer Weston may be a doctor, but she often plays a nurse on

television.

Weston is a pediatrician who cares for youngsters at Providence

St. Joseph Medical Center’s urgent-care facility. But when she’s not

on duty, Weston can usually be found on a TV sound stage or movie set

working as an actress.

“When I was a little kid I fell in love with acting, and when I

got older I fell in love with medicine,” she said. “Nobody said I

can’t do both, so I do both.”

Weston earned her Screen Actors Guild card in 1998, when NBC held

an open casting call near the State University of New York’s Health

Science Center at Syracuse, where she attended medical school.

“I went to the audition and got a callback and then a role,”

Weston said. “I had so much fun. I was hooked.”

Weston plays a Navy medic in an episode of the new CBS action

drama “Navy NCIS,” and is cast as a nurse in an upcoming episode of

the NBC soap opera “Days of Our Lives.”

She has also appeared in multiple episodes of the CBS daytime

drama, “The Bold and the Beautiful,” two Lifetime TV series -- “The

Division,” and “Strong Medicine -- NBC’s “The Pretender,” and in

director Wes Craven’s 1997 movie, “Scream 2.”

Because of Weston’s expertise in medicine, she often serves as a

consultant on the set of “Days of Our Lives,” senior coordi- nating

producer Janet Spellman- Rider said.

“We’ve used medical consultants that have been off-camera, but

it’s nice that she’s able to be on-camera as well,” she said.

When Weston gets her script, she reads it and suggests changes

that are more medically accurate, Spellman-Rider said, adding that

Weston also checks to make sure that the medical equipment used on

the show is hooked up correctly.

“Often we’re not too savvy on that,” Spellman-Rider said.

In addition to her acting credits, Weston also writes. She

recently completed her third screenplay, a family drama that she

hopes might become a television pilot.