LOS ANGELES--Jada Pinkett Smith is starring in TNT’s “Hawthorne,” a character-driven drama series about a nurse who is a true everyday hero.“Hawthorne” premieres at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, June 16.
The starring actor plays Christina Hawthorne, a compassionate and headstrong chief nursing officer heading up a group of dedicated nurses at Richmond Trinity Hospital, who spend long days and nights on the “front lines” of health care delivery.
Hawthorne is the kind of nurse you want on your side when you or someone you love is in the hospital.
She is the kind of nurse who fights for her patients and doesn’t let them slip through the cracks, and, when necessary, she takes on doctors and administrators, who are overworked, distracted or just unable to see the human being behind the hospital chart.
Whether showing a degree of humaneness to a homeless woman, trying to talk a suicidal cancer patient off a ledge or exposing a doctor’s near-fatal error, Hawthorne will do everything in her power to help her patients.
When a patient’s care is at-risk, she doesn’t hesitate to violate protocol, defend her staff or stand up to administrators who seem to have forgotten a hospital’s true purpose.
The long days at the hospital, though, and Hawthorne’s intense focus on helping others take a toll on her personal life.
Christina Hawthorne is recently widowed.
Her husband died one year ago after a battle with cancer, leaving her to raise a smart, rebellious teenage daughter on her own.
Hawthorne is still coming to terms with losing her husband, finding a way to balance her career with her equally important role as a single parent and finding the time to take care of someone who always seems to fall through the cracks: herself.
In “Hawthorne,” too, is Michael Varian as Dr. Tom Wakefield, the oncologist who treated Hawthorne’s husband and serves as chief of surgery at the hospital.
The cast also includes Suleka Mathew as Bobbie Jackson, a fellow nurse and one of Hawthorne’s best friends; and David Julian Hirsh as Ray Stein, a nurse struggling with being accepted in a female-dominated profession.
In addition, among cast-members are Christina Moore, who stars as Candy Sullivan, a nurse with a unique sense of duty; and Hannah Hodson, who takes on the role of Camille, Hawthorne’s daughter.
Joanna Cassidy portrays Amanda, Hawthorne’s mother-in-law, who also happens to be a member of the hospital board of directors.
