Dr. Mary Morstan (Rochelle Aytes) is going to have to be taking on a new role in the Watson Season 2 premiere on Monday, October 13: worried daughter. Her mother, Elizabeth (Juanita Jennings), is the patient of the episode, and she has a mysterious and fast-progressing form of dementia that has her thinking she’s 25.
“It’s pretty devastating” for Mary, Aytes tells TV Insider. “Mary has been working in this industry for so long, and so as a doctor, you have to have some type of distance from it, right? I think she always cares about her patients, but of course, when it’s her mom, who is the closest person to her besides Watson [Morris Chestnut], being the only child, it’s devastating.”
Aytes reveals that when executive producer Craig Sweeny told her about the storyline, she shared details about her own mother. “I added some personal experience because my mom got sick. She had kidney failure. She was in the hospital for six months. She’s since passed,” the star says. “But it was very dramatic for me, and it was so emotional, so when I read the script and he implemented a couple of things that happened with her, I just teared up because it was so close to home.” Sweeny adapted some of the symptoms Aytes’ mother had to what’s happening with Elizabeth — including that Mary wants to be a donor when her mother needs a transplant, but runs into an obstacle.
The trailer already hints at some tension between Mary and her ex-husband, John Watson, regarding how he’s treating Elizabeth.
“In the beginning, he’s doing everything he can and she’s appreciative, but then it becomes a little challenging because she wants him to overstep his boundaries, like he does so many other times with other patients,” explains Aytes. “When Mary is not a viable donor of her liver, she wants him to overstep that so that she can donate. She wants to do anything to save her mother’s life, and he doesn’t want to lose her, so he’s like, ‘No, we can’t do it.’ And really, for a moment, it pisses her off because she’s not thinking rationally and she just wants him to help and she thinks he’s not doing all that he could.”
Mary and Watson are, in some ways, heading into this season in a better place. After their marriage ended when he left her to work with Sherlock Holmes (Robert Carlyle recurs as the sleuth this season), she opened up last season about her miscarriage while he was gone. They’re also keeping a secret together: what led to Moriarty’s (Randall Park) death after Watson dosed him to get him to give up an antidote to for the poison he’d used against twins Stephens and Adam (Peter Mark Kendall).
That “connects them, and they’re bonded in a different way,” says Aytes.
What are you hoping to see for Mary in Season 2? Let us know in the comments section below.
Watson, Season 2 Premiere, Monday, October 13, 10/9c, CBS