In a comedy, it was her cross to bear

This a question few of us are ever asked:
What’s it like, really, to carry an enormous cross?
“Heavier than I thought it would be,” Kaliko Kauahi said.
That duty falls to her in the third episode (shown here) of “St. Denis Medical,” which airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19. A patient insists surgery can’t begin until her cross arrives; it was up to Val (Kauahi’s character), the administrative nurse, to hoist it out of the truck and through the hospital corridors.
Producers were reassuring, she Kauahi told the Television Critics Association. “They were like, ‘It’s foam; it’s fine.’ (But) the thing is huge.”
Allison Tolman, who plays the chief nurse, added helpfully: “It’s massive foam.”
Such scenes are part of the “St. Denis” formula. This is one of the few shows that can drop large sight gags alongside verbal humor.
That’s an approach the same producers have used for “Superstore,” in which Kauahi played the meek Sharon. Now they’ve moved to a hospital.
“It’s such a stakes-y place,” producer Eric Ledgin said. “There’s so much inherent drama and joy and awkwardness and camaraderie in a hospital.”
And despite the high-stakes world, people still have to worry about everyday concerns; on the Nov. 26 episode, that involves parking places. “I find something really charming about the mundane in the most extreme circumstances,” Tolman said.
Kauahi is from Hawaii; Tolman is from Texas, but mastered a Minnesota accent for the first “Fargo” mini-series. She returned home recently, when her father was recovering in a hospital.
“I was really entrenched in the … healthcare system for the first time in my life,” she said. “My mother would come home from being with him and all she could do was watch like a half-hour comedy.”
Their life was serious by day and sitcom by night. “When I got this script, it felt like Kismet.”
She was stepping into a make-believe world that could be serious one moment and cross-toting silly the next.