I just tuned in to the new Fox series “The Mob Doctor.” Do mob doctors really exist?
—Jordan Ruhl, Boise, Idaho
According to the show’s creators Josh Berman and Rob Wright, they do. They discovered several books about real-life mob doctors when they were doing research to write the pilot script, but the book that Sony bought the rights to make the series was “Il Dottore: The Double Life of a Mafia Doctor,” written by Ron Felber.
It is the story of a New York cardiac surgeon whose clients included mob dons John Gotti, Carlos Gambino and Joe Bonanno.
“Il Dottore” was set in the 1970s and ’80s, so to make the series current, Berman and Wright moved it into present day with the added twist of making the doctor a woman, Grace (played by Jordana Spiro).
“When you look into it, the doctors to the mob are more motivated by greed,” Berman says. “They get seduced by the mob world. It’s not for the reasons we have in our pilot. We’ve kind of flipped that and, hopefully, we’re a little bit more idealized version of the mob doctor. But who knows what the character of Grace will be seduced by in the future.”
