How do you explain the tremendous popularity of Virgin River? At the center of everything is Alexandra Breckenridge as Melinda; she’s the heart of the show. I think Virgin River is one of those places where everybody thinks, If I go to that small town, it’s going to be great, and then you find out not so much. What are Doc’s biggest challenges now? It’s Hope’s health and dealing with this grandson who’s come into his life and opened feelings about this woman who was a girlfriend for a minute, and a son he probably had who passed away and he never got to meet. So it’s unlocked a lot of old wounds. Doc Mullins has a lot going on this season. It was a great season, I thought. There was so much going on and so many different elements to his life and to his career. It was like, “Wow!” Doc and Hope had just been reunited when Hope went on a trip to take care of an aunt and she had this serious car accident. What’s it like when he realizes she may never be the same after he waited so long to be reunited with her? It’s very traumatic. It’s worse for her and kind of ironically disappointing because just when they thought they would get it back together, she may never recover. We don’t know. She does show sparks of her old self and, as we all know when we’re treating somebody who is ill—my mother had dementia—they get a little ornery. Brain injury is not dissimilar to dementia, so the only question, the real hope and prayer is that she recovers and returns to who she was. Is it harder for him because he is a doctor, and he knows the reality of it, than it would be for somebody not in the medical profession? I’m always trying to stay in character when I’m working, and from the reading I’ve done about country doctors and why they’re drawn to that lifestyle rather than work at a big hospital, I think it is harder knowing. He doesn’t want to tell her everything and he doesn’t want to get into technical explanations of this and that, but he’s very aware of the odds and her strength. Anything he can do to help her to recover is vital to him. Balancing that with his work and with his young grandson coming to see him, it’s a delicate balance. How is he as a grandfather considering he was never a father? I think that’s the crux. He’s exploring that relationship tentatively at first but embracing it more and more. It’s charming and it’s fun and it’s waking up a part of him that he has never ever connected with, which is your progeny, your offspring. When Mel first showed up in his office, Doc was very brusque, to put it mildly. He seems to really have mellowed and they seem to have a really nice relationship now. How do you explain the change? I think Mel proved her mettle, she proved herself in a variety of situations. She’s been extremely helpful to him and a worthy partner. She’s hard to dislike. I just adore her. That’s the daughter Doc never had. There’s a connection between them, and Alex Breckenridge, I just can’t resist her. She’s just one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met. It’s so great to work in a scene with her because it’s just so real and natural. What a pro and wonderful scene partner. Is it because Doc has mellowed toward Mel that he is finally able to bring in another doctor to help at the clinic, or is it his eyesight issue [wet age-related macular degeneration] that has him thinking he needs help? I think it’s both. I think the eyesight thing is recurring. I know people who have it and they pretty much lead normal lives, so I think there’s a hint of that until he sees how the treatments play out, but I think it’s really more to do with Mel and the way things are running. He also wants to take some time to be with his grandson and to be with Hope, so he’s building in some personal space. He’s in his 70s, so I think there comes a time when you want to smell the roses. Season five has already been picked up, so what would you like to see next? There was some talk about a vow renewal with Doc and Hope that was canceled due to COVID. I would love to see that. It’s a connection he’s wanted for years and years, and he screwed their relationship up at one point and worked hard to win her back. Then this calamity occurred, so it would be wonderful if they could complete that part of their lives together. I think that’s another thing too, when you’ve been around each other for so many years and gone through so much, it’s like, “Why don’t we just be together?” Virgin River may be based in a small, nostalgic-feeling town, but it has modern 21st century issues—people with PTSD and the drug cartel. Does that also make it relatable? I think at the heart of it, what I love about it—and one of the reasons that Doc went into medical work in a smaller town rather than running a department at a hospital in Seattle—is you know all your patients. You see them on the street, you see them in Jack’s bar, and they’re your friends. You have a personal relationship with your clientele, and I think that’s important to him. You work a little harder and medically you get to do everything. He does some minor surgery, and he does triage for injuries and things. In a regular hospital, you only focus on your specialty. You do that one thing over and over and over. Patients become just parts of a car. I think that this town has a connection between all the people. The ones that charm me the most are all the ladies, Connie, Jo Ellen, Muriel and Hope, the group of ladies who get together. There’s give and take, there’s digs and there’s fun, but it’s basically what we would love to have. We’d love to have those kinds of relationships in our lives. Many of us who live in larger cities don’t have that little group of people around all the time. I think that’s a great part of the show. It’s not the first time you’ve played the small-town doctor. You were in Hart of Dixie as well. I adored that show. I love playing a doctor. Now that I think about it, I’ve been playing a doctor since I was mid-20s when I did this series with Kurt Russell called The Quest back in 1976. That was my first doctor, then Animal House, of course, Eric Stratton became a gynecologist in Beverly Hills, so it’s been something that I’ve gravitated towards. It’s fun because I love research. I love digging in, so every episode when some medical thing comes up, I immerse myself in the medical aspects of it. And then if I have to perform, I always need to know, “OK, what would a real doctor do in this situation?” We have a great tech adviser, who’s a nurse, and she’s wonderful. You’ve been working continuously since the early ’60s. When you started, you were a teenager, so it’s quite the career. What do you consider some of the high points? The greatest thing is to be able to still be doing something I love so dearly. It’s perhaps the place I’ve been the most comfortable since so much time in my life is on a set, whether you’re on location or in a stage on a studio lot. I did the voice of Jonny Quest, which was the first non-comedic cartoon show that was on ABC. I did that when I was 15 and 16 and it opened a whole part of my career into voice acting and things where I really got to see the nuts and bolts of really good actors that came out of radio, like Mel Blanc. He’s probably one of the finest actors I’ve ever worked with. He did the voice of all the cartoons at Warner Bros. and just was amazing. He could play a scene with two-character voices talking to each other and never miss. I was always, “What voice did I do for that? I lost the voice for that.” Then Animal House certainly was one of the high points. It’s my first comedy. I was very nervous about it, but I fought to get that part. I just knew that I had to be in that movie, and it would help my career tremendously. It opened a great new avenue for me to do comedies. I think working with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft in To Be or Not to Be was a high point because they were just amazing together. I don’t think anybody could handle Mel like Anne could. She could certainly just tamp him down because Mel gets excited. They’re both brilliant. Then The West Wing. Working on the characters and the dialogue that Aaron Sorkin created and the situation and the ethical and moral center of that series I thought was just amazing. It was amazing writing. I was happy to be a recurring character and they never let me be the good guy. Maybe once or twice I could do something that had some humanity, but generally speaking no. I was always the foil, the adversary, which was fine. I’m more than happy to do that. I loved Hart of Dixie and working with Rachel Bilson. Really, that was my first series. I had been recurring in The West Wing and I’ve done a couple of shows that lasted 13,15, 16 episodes. I’ve just been very fortunate. Also Fletch, working with Chevy Chase and Michael Ritchie, who directed it. And Steven Spielberg? You have 45 directing credits. Did you learn from him? I actually looked at that movie, 1941, not too long ago. It wasn’t a very successful movie for Steven, but the chance to work with a director of that esteem and humanity. He’s just so wonderful and so smart. As I started directing, I’d always find myself watching Spielberg’s movies to inspire me and, please, to steal from because I would say, “Well, look what he did here.” He’s one of the greatest. I think that one of the critical parts of being a good director, certainly is working with actors and writers and knowing what the scene is about, all that, but Steven stages things that affect the drama and affect the shooting of it. It’s almost sometimes theatrical like a play. In the film Munich, he did a scene where there was a huge meeting of people all around a table with a light over it. Somebody came into the room and the camera followed him over to the end of the table and then followed him back. He was handing a manila folder off and it blocks the whole screen. It came over to somebody and the person they revealed was Golda Meir. It was her first entry into the movie. They always say when you’re doing theater, give your star an entrance. Let everybody know this is the star. It would just make me laugh that Steven staged it that way. He knows intrinsically how to do those things and where they’re needed, so I’m always impressed and delighted by his work. You’ve said that you reinvent yourself every five to seven years. Is that the key to your success? There’s the old joke, “Who is Tim Matheson?… Get me Tim Matheson… Get me someone like Tim Matheson… Who’s Tim Matheson?” That’s the span of your career, so if you keep mixing it up, you don’t get stuck. Is there something other than acting and directing that you’re passionate about? My wife and I have been finishing a house that we built in the Hollywood Hills. When I moved back to L.A. about 10 years ago after my divorce, I was looking at this empty lot that I bought just before I started The Quest, and I said, “I’ve always wanted to put a house up here.” So I did it, and then I got remarried. It was the completion of a dream.
