'Emily Owens, MD' star Michael Rady is leery of 'blood and guts'

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - No one expected Michael Rady to grow up to be a doctor, even on TV.

The Philadelphia-born actor, who graduated from St. Joseph's Prep and Temple University before hitting it big almost immediately with a plum role in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," is, um, not good with the medical stuff, he confessed this summer.

"It's been a running joke my whole life," said Rady, who was in the CW's "Melrose Place" reboot and Showtime's "House of Lies" and who starting Tuesday can be seen playing a hospital resident who supervises Mamie Gummer's title character in the CW's new "Emily Owens, M.D."

"I'm notoriously squeamish with blood and guts. My mom's a nurse - she was not allowed to talk about work at the dinner table. We couldn't watch 'ER.' They'd have to turn it off if I came in. To this day, I don't do well in hospitals," although he managed to help his wife Rachael Kemery, deliver their son Ellington on July 12.

"I expected to pass out. I did not pass out and am quite proud of that fact," said Rady, 31, who met Kemery in the theater department at Temple. They recently moved to Vancouver, Canada, where "Emily Owens" is filmed.

On the job, where the blood and body parts may not be real but the expectations are, Rady's been working on controlling his panic.

"They called me in two hours early the day of my surgery that I had to do on the show. Two hours early, just to come in and like touch everything. 'And you can tell it's rubber, Michael. You see that? And this is just cellophane.'

"It got a lot better after that. But when they brought me in that day, I first stopped in to see how filming was going and they were shooting the open-heart surgery scene and I was [not looking well]. My hearing starts to go, I get really sweaty, and I have to lay down. My pulse just drops so no blood is getting to my brain."