When Samuel Johnson woke up in emergency, he had one thought
When Gold Logie winner Samuel Johnson woke up in the emergency ward after being hit by a car in 2021, an accident that left him with post-traumatic amnesia, his first thought was about getting back to work. Not as an actor – he had just filmed Stan drama series Eden – but as the original narrator of Nine’s observational program Paramedics, now in its fifth season.
“Paramedics means even more to me now,” says Johnson, from his home in Tallarook, in regional Victoria. “When I woke up from my brain injury, I was obsessed about getting my job back. I was convinced they’d move on and find someone else, and that was perhaps a little insecure of me, but we’re in a disposable industry and a disposable world.”
Samuel Johnson worked hard to retain his role as narrator of Paramedics after he was hit by a car in 2021.
Doctors advised him otherwise, and, from his hospital bed, Johnson worked his way slowly up to the one-hour recording time, practising with scripts in 30-minute increments. In the meantime, Underbelly’s Gyton Grantley stepped in.
“He’s a very worthy man and voice artist himself,” says Johnson. “He’s a really lovely guy. Of course, he was a complete gentleman, but what he doesn’t know is that I would have fought to the death for my job back.”
Johnson’s experience as a patient, and throughout treatment for his late sister, Connie Johnson, with whom he established the cancer charity Love Your Sister, contributed to his “mixed emotions” about the series. He immerses himself in each episode before recordings, and has got to know the medical staff that appear in the show.
“I go through the whole gamut, every episode,” he says. “I’m proud to be a part of it, but I’m not a coal-facer. I’m the guy in the birthing ward that you give a helmet to. So I find it confronting and bedazzling. It’s inspiring and I cry with joy, but I’m partially traumatised, as well.”
A scene from the new season of observational show Paramedics, which is narrated by Samuel Johnson.
Working closely with executive producer Anne-Maree Sparkman, aka “Sparky”, who was originally slated to narrate the series, Johnson uses his trademark “lumpy authenticity” to draw out the palpable emotions on screen.
“Sparky is able to absolutely get me to where I need to be with one or two words,” says Johnson. “It’s one of the most special working relationships I’ve found in three decades. If the network had decided to go with a female voice, I firmly believe she’d be better for this job than me. But I’m happy to take it.”
Johnson doesn’t watch Ten’s Ambulance Australia, and jokes, “I assume that it’s inferior … That’s just from a production perspective. The ambos, no doubt, are brilliant”. But he says that, now, more than ever, these programs, in addition to Nine’s Emergency, are a reminder of the precious nature of health services.
“These people train half of their lives to combat some of the most complex problems that we face, but the system is under a lot of pressure, and good people are going, and their knowledge banks are going with them,” he says. “So the question, for me, is, in another 40 years, is there still going to be a Medicare? And this show explores those questions.”
He puts part of the appeal of medical emergency shows down to “rubbernecking”.
“When you drive past an accident, even though you don’t want to see the blood, you still look,” he says. “But if you ask me, it’s not so much the technical stuff as the humanism … It’s the moment between life and death itself, and you’ve got all that love in there. People are overwrought with the mere thought of losing their loved ones.
“The amount of naked love that you see in people’s eyes is what made me want this job so bad after I had my accident. Because we all crave that connection and we all, in our final hour, want to know, were we loved and did we love well? In Paramedics, you see people go through all that and that’s why it’s laugh-and-cry material.”
Paramedics returns on Monday, April 15, at 8.45pm, on Nine, the owner of this masthead.
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