Tragic Details About The Cast Of Chicago Med

The following article includes mentions of mental health.

NBC's "Chicago Med" is a drama people have enjoyed watching since its very beginning. The series, which premiered in 2015, deals with various aspects of human life as it depicts the stories of the staff and patients of Gaffney Chicago Medical Center, a fictional Chicago-based hospital. That said, human life can never be all smooth and serene due to the tragedies it's bound to bring along — and that's something the series has shown as accurately as possible.

Just like the characters, the cast members of the show have experienced tragedies in their real lives, too. From Nick Gehlfuss and Torrey DeVitto to Brian Tee and Yaya DaCosta, over the years, quite a few "Chicago Med" actors have opened up about their mental and physical struggles as well as tragic events that have had long-lasting impacts on them. Here's a list of the most tragic details about the cast of "Chicago Med" you probably didn't know.

Actor Torrey DeVitto played Dr. Natalie Manning, an attending physician at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center, in "Chicago Med." DeVitto — who was a regular in the first six seasons of the series and had guest appearances in the opening episode of Season 7 and the finale of Season 8 — is one of the very few celebrities who have been open about living with mental health conditions. Entering her 40s, the actor has revealed her struggles with severe anxiety for the majority of her life.

Speaking to Wondermind in 2023, she recalled how the tidiness of her bathroom affected her as a tween and how her sister disturbing its arrangement would give her panic attacks. "Obviously, it wasn't the bathroom. It was just me transferring anxious energy into something that I wasn't able to have control over," she said. DeVitto's anxiety continued to make things more difficult for her up until she turned to meditation in her mid 20s.

Although the actor has figured out multiple ways to deal with her anxiety, the condition isn't something she can completely control. As she put it, "[Mental health is] a mountain that is forever climbable. ... Even for me, it's like, I try, and then I feel myself slip. I'll feel myself get triggered by something I thought I already worked through." Despite her own struggles, DeVitto continues to be vocal about her mental health, raising awareness as much as she can.

Model-turned-actor Yaya DaCosta started portraying nurse practitioner April Sexton in the first season of "Chicago Med," which aired in 2015. She appeared in all the episodes of the show's first six seasons as well as in three episodes of Season 8. Over the years, DaCosta has proven herself to be a skilled actor through her portrayal of April Sexton alone. However, her skills and immense dedication to acting can be gauged from her roles in several movies, like 2013's "Big Words."

Back in 2012, while the said movie was being filmed, DaCosta lost her brother in an accident. Despite grieving the untimely death of her beloved brother, she delivered a performance worth remembering. Speaking of the tragic loss in a 2016 interview with Complex, the actor noted, "I was only on set for five days. The night before [shooting 'Big Words'], I had learned of my brother's accident ... And those five days, I was being told that he was in a coma, although I knew that he had already passed."

DaCosta further noted that her brother visiting her in her dream while she was feeling overwhelmed by bereavement helped her gather the courage to finish shooting. "I just wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. And I had to perform," she expressed. "I thank my brother for the strength ... I did come out of that experience feeling like, if I could do that, then I could do anything."

Back in July 2022, Marlyne Barrett, who portrays charge nurse Maggie Lockwood in "Chicago Med," was diagnosed with an ovarian tumor that ultimately turned out to be malignant. The actor was soon diagnosed with uterine and ovarian cancer, which required two years of extensive medical intervention.

Barrett — who announced her remission in 2024 — elaborated on what the course of her treatment looked like in a September 2024 interview with People. The process started with 15 sessions of chemo, which were followed by a surgery and 15 more sessions of chemo. She also had to get fluid building up in her abdomen drained through a medical procedure called paracentesis.

Speaking of the treatment and the agony it caused, Barrett told the outlet, "There was pain prior because the mass was causing these spasms, and then on top of that was chemo. When I would get chemo, you're talking about a 10-hour infusion that day. And you don't necessarily get the opportunity to heal between the treatments." That said, even Barrett's cancer diagnosis – as well as the treatment that followed — couldn't keep her from doing her job on "Chicago Med," which, in turn, helped her recover without "having to think about [her health] all the time."

In "Chicago Med," Brian Tee played attending physician Ethan Choi, a character that served as one of the leads for the first eight seasons before being written off the show. Tee is an Asian American actor raised in the U.S. by his Japanese American father and South Korean mother. However, "Brian Tee" isn't really the name the actor was born with; it was Jae-bum Takata. He later chose to use the name Brian Takada, but "Takada" had to be changed to "Tee" when the actor faced racism in the show business.

Tee — who, in an interview with Today, said he was "never really 'othered' for my race" growing up — was subjected to racism when he tried to land himself an acting gig in the American entertainment industry. After his Japanese last name (Takata/Takada) kept him from bagging the role of a Korean man in a student film, Tee realized he was being cornered. "Not only because of the way I looked in the industry, or what I was supposed to play, but then on top of that my name identified me with a particular sector of being Japanese," he noted.

To explore all possibilities and act without being restricted to a particular category, the actor decided to go by "Tee," a last name that sounds Asian yet generic. Tee has advocated for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a nonprofit that aims to make America a safer and better place for all races, with an emphasis on the empowerment of Asian Americans.

Nick Gehlfuss was pretty quick to become a fan favorite when he started portraying attending physician Will Halstead in "Chicago Med." Halstead remained a main character throughout the first eight seasons before Gehlfuss left the show for good. However, before making a name for himself in the entertainment industry, Gehlfuss was a struggling actor looking for acting gigs wherever he could.

The actor faced financial turmoil for the first time when he moved from his hometown, Cleveland, to New York with nothing but a master's degree in fine arts and the hope to find work. Recalling the hardships he went through at the time, Gehlfuss told The Detroit News in 2015, "I hit rock bottom and was broke. I didn't have any money. I'd been there for year and half ... So at one point I said, 'Should I be doing this? Am I built for this?'" Thankfully, his then-girlfriend and now-wife Lilian Matsuda had his back in every possible way, including monetarily, as he struggled to find work.

Gehlfuss did eventually earn himself acting gigs on both the big and small screens, and the rest is, of course, history. Looking back at his struggle during his interview with The Detroit News, Gehlfuss said, "If you don't get to those [low] points. you don't get a view from every angle you possibly can. So the darkness that we experience as an actor — hitting rock bottom and going all around and being thrown around like a rag doll — [it's] the unpredictability that an actor I believe must embrace."

S. Epatha Merkerson has been portraying nurse Sharon Goodwin in "Chicago Med" since the very beginning of the show. Goodwin, who serves as the Executive Director of Patient and Medical Services at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center, is shown to have type 2 diabetes in the series. However, even the most devoted "Chicago Med" fans may not know that Goodwin's condition was actually written into the show because Merkerson wanted to use the platform to raise awareness about the illness.

Merkerson was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes around two decades ago. In 2022, she detailed her struggles while speaking to Clover Health, explaining that he wasn't conscious of her health before her diagnosis. "I'd never been one for exercising in my younger days ... Then in 1994 I quit smoking and I didn't change any of my other habits," she explained. "So I literally watched myself grow on national television — every season I got bigger and bigger! And then, at age 50, I was diagnosed with diabetes."

Needless to say, Merkerson's habits had to be changed post-diagnosis. She turned to walking and healthy eating to help keep her condition in check. Referring to her efforts to mitigate her issues, Merkerson told the said outlet, "I continue to try my best, and I think that's what's most important."

Yaya DaCosta was first brought to the spotlight when she competed on "America's Next Top Model" in 2004. While the reality show was supposed to be DaCosta's big break, it ended up resulting in mental health struggles that troubled the actor for years. She was verbally attacked by the "ANTM" judges on a frequent basis, especially when her ethnicity and race reflected in her appearances.

In a 2021 interview with MSR, DaCosta elaborated on why her "ANTM" experience felt traumatizing to such a great extent, saying, "That introduction to the public eye felt very toxic and abusive ... I had to realize that I'm dealing with people who have preconceived notions of me that are not real that were designed by these writers. We were all impressionable young girls coaxed into saying certain things to serve these storylines." Later on, in an interview with Wondermind, she said what she watched on the show's television broadcast didn't quite align with what actually happened and what she remembered from her time on the show. "That [experience] took many, many years to heal from," she noted.

However, dealing with trauma takes much more than just time. Getting over the experience required DaCosta to gather a great deal of strength and be resilient. What further helped her heal was her decision to "prioritize my self-love, prioritize forgiveness of myself for having made that choice and allowing myself to kind of get taken, but also forgiving others who I felt had wronged me at the time," she told Wondermind.

Back in 2023, actor Torrey DeVitto wrote an opinion piece for USA Today, sharing her views on abortion rights. Before she emphasized the need for women to have control over their reproductive health, DeVitto shared that she had an abortion at the age of 21. DeVitto further revealed that her second pregnancy followed a few years later, and though she did want to carry it to term, it unfortunately ended in miscarriage.

DeVitto ultimately welcomed her first child with husband Jared LaPine in November 2024. However, her journey to getting pregnant wasn't exactly a smooth one. Even though the actor only required one round of IVF to conceive, the fertility treatment was no cakewalk. Just a few months before giving birth, she spoke of her experience with IVF on the "Broad Ideas" podcast, noting, "When you're doing the shots, you start to feel like a bit of a lab rat too, because you do the shots every day. And then at one point, you have to go get your blood drawn every other day for, like, weeks at a time. So you're like, constantly with bruises ... and then you don't even know if it's gonna work." Thankfully, she gave birth to a healthy child and named her Lyle-Josephine Alina LaPine.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.