The Knick’s newbie nurse: Not just Bono’s daughter

SINGAPORE — They say nursing is a noble profession and it must be true if even Bono’s daughter Eve Hewson wants to be a nurse — or rather, play one.

The 23-year-old Irish actress preferred not to talk about her famous father over the telephone from Los Angeles, but she was more than happy to talk about her role as a rookie nurse in The Knick.

Set in New York City’s Knickerbocker Hospital in the early 1900s, the drama is directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars Clive Owen as one of the pioneers of modern medicine, carrying out primitive surgical experiments while battling his own cocaine and opium addictions.

With a second season already in the works for the series, Hewson said her family jokingly expects her to have picked up some medical knowledge from her time on set.

“My family do say, like if they cut themselves or something, ‘Oh, call the nurse. She’ll know what to do’. I never know what to do,” she deadpanned. “Unfortunately, I didn’t take a lot with me from the job.”

She did, however, replace her fear of blood — seeing her own blood makes her “very, very nervous”, she said — with a penchant for fake blood.

“I love fake blood. Fake blood is so fun,” she said. “We used a lot of fake blood to scare each other and prank each other and write things on each other’s walls, like leave scary messages like ‘redrum’ (“murder” spelt backwards a la the iconic scene from The Shining). I was surprised by how much I enjoyed working with blood and I actually didn’t faint at all.”

That’s not to say that it was all fun and games on set. Hewson was a consummate professional even in the much talked-about scene in the first episode where she has to inject Clive Owen with cocaine in the nether regions — the only part of his body where his veins haven’t collapsed from drug abuse.

“It wasn’t awkward because we had been doing so much stuff with people’s bodies — you know, we’re slicing pregnant women open,” she said. “People were very comfortable with staring at someone’s genitals for a certain amount of time. Everyone tries to laugh about it and have a good time. It would be stupid to be too serious when you’re about to inject someone’s penis.”

She continued: “It was the first scene up in the morning and that was our morning, and we moved on to other ridiculous scenes that we just can’t even talk about. It’s crazy.”

It’s all in keeping with the vibe on Steven Soderbergh’s set. “It’s nice working with someone who’s fearless, in a way, because he just kind of takes risks and goes for it. It’s great to work with someone like that, as an actor, because it pushes you to do things outside of your comfort zone and not be so worried about the outcome and just do it,” Hewson said.

With so many famous names in Hewson’s orbit, what’s the biggest piece of advice she has been given about working in showbiz? “I think everyone I’ve ever spoken to has always been like, ‘Keep your integrity, don’t say yes to everything, don’t do everything that other people tell you to do, and if something doesn’t feel right, you don’t have to do it. You are in control of your career and the kind of artist that you are’,” she said.

Catch The Knick on Saturdays at 10pm on Cinemax (StarHub TV Ch 611) and free on HBO On Demand (StarHub TV Ch 602) starting Aug 18. The first episode is also available free on youtube.com/HBOAsia and cinemaxasia.com