Phillipa Soo Weighs In On Those Doctor Odyssey Fan Theories: Its Doing Its Job

2 weeks ago 5

Doctor Odyssey

In the wake of the Halloween episode of Doctor Odyssey, the Joshua Jackson-led procedural drama has already given audiences tons of titillating topics to talk about. After all, why leave all the twists and turns in the spooky season’s themed installment, especially when it comes to a Ryan Murphy production? Already, viewers have been marking up their white boards Pepe Silvia style and trying to prove their favorite theory, with many seeming more and more plausible as the episodes roll out. And, if it’s any consolation, the creative team behind ABC’s latest hit series is paddling along beside us right there in the same boat (pun intended).

Recently speaking with series star Phillipa Soo for an installment of Collider Ladies Night, Perri Nemiroff brought up some of the intuitive fan theories that have sprouted from the first few Doctor Odyssey episodes. While she couldn’t fully confirm or deny any of the theories in particular, Soo said that she was fully loving the things that fans were already coming up with, adding:

“I mean look, only Ryan knows what it’s truly going to be. And also, maybe it's truly a testament to what we’ve built, which is something that I think really has a lot of— tonally it’s very specific, and I think it sort of makes you intrigued because you’re like, ‘This isn’t like the real world as I know it.’ So I think it’s doing its job. It’s making people curious, they’re using their own imaginations . I mean, I love that. Anything that I do where I can make people think about it just beyond the experience of watching it, I’m like ‘Great, that makes me happy.’”

Ryan “King of Secrets” Murphy Loves That You're Theorizing About 'Doctor Odyssey'

Anyone who’s been with Murphy since the early days of shows like Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story knows the man loves a good twist or ten. Now, more than two decades after becoming a household name, those types of storytelling devices are essentially expected in anything new that’s coming from the creative. It’s something that he recently said that he was proud of during a chat with Collider’s Christina Radish while the pair discussed Murphy’s other new series, Grotesquerie.

“All I will say is I was surprised,” Murphy said of the wave of fan theories that have been swelling behind Doctor Odyssey since its premiere. He explained:

“I love stuff like that. I love it when the audience takes ownership of a show and has ideas and theories, and they’re putting together clues along the way about something. With Doctor Odyssey , that’s all I’ll say… I love that you’re talking to your friends about it the next day. Josh Jackson and I, when we were making it, talked about things like this. He and I were like, ‘Wow, have you been reading what people are saying?’ So, we are very aware of things.”

Speaking of Jackson, who appears on the show as the main character and titular ship’s doctor, Max Bankman, he’s also playing his cards close to his chest but was fully upfront that he and the rest of the cast were also suspicious of what could really be going on aboard the good ship Odyssey. Touching on one very popular theory that posits the idea that Dr. Bankman is hallucinating all the events of Doctor Odyssey from inside a coma brought on by COVID-19, Jackson said:

“ The only person who knows whether that’s true or not is Ryan. I don’t know that we’ll find out this season. I don’t know that we’ll find out ever. And we might just be wrong. We definitely have the same kind of conspiracy parlor game going on, on set. So, I just want you and everybody at home who’s like trying to figure out the details to know that we are on the same page. He definitely didn’t pitch it to me as a fever dream transitioning to heaven, but it also may just be that he didn’t tell me the full details.”

Get caught up on the first batch of Doctor Odyssey episodes as they’re now streaming on Hulu.