Rob Lowe Takes To Instagram To Brag About His New Role on CBS Medical Drama ‘Code Black’

Rob Lowe is delighted about joining the cast of the CBS medical drama Code Black. Entertainment Tonight reported that Rob Lowe took to Instagram to brag about becoming a series regular for the show’s second season.

Code Black is a medical drama on CBS airing Wednesday nights at 10:00 Eastern/9:00 Central. Although Code Black took a while to develop an audience, by its first season finale, it had risen 20 percent in the ratings. The show is set in the fictional Angels Memorial Hospital, where the overcrowded, busy emergency room goes into “code black,” where there are more patients than medical resources, on an almost daily basis.

CBS announced that Rob Lowe will be joining Code Black as a series regular in the second season premiere.

Lowe will play Colonel Ethan Willis, a doctor in the U.S. Military’s prestigious Combat Casualty Care research program who has been pulled out of a combat hospital in Afghanistan and embedded at Angels Memorial to teach what the military has learned about combat medicine. His aggressive, rule-breaking style is greeted enthusiastically by Dr. Leanne Rorish (Marcia Gay Harden), but not by all the other doctors.

Benjamin Hollingsworth, who plays Dr. Mario Savetti, also posted on Instagram to show off his new co-star Rob Lowe joining the cast of Code Black.

As The Inquisitr reported already, Rob Lowe joining as Dr. Ethan Willis is not the only cast change for Code Black. Bonnie Somerville, who played Dr. Christa Lorenson, and Jeffrey Raza, who played Dr. Neal Hudson, are leaving the show. Austrian-born actor Boris Kodjoe, who appeared in four episodes last season as Dr. Will Campbell, will be a series regular for the second season, according to Variety.

Code Black won’t be the first time Rob Lowe has played a doctor. In 2013, Lowe was Dr. Jack Startz, a plastic surgeon, in the movie Behind the Candelabra. He was Dr. Billy Grant, star of the television show Dr. Vegas, in 2004. Lowe was considered for the role of Dr. Derek Shepherd on Grey’s Anatomy in 2005, but he turned down the role. Patrick Dempsey was hired instead, and he played the role for over a decade.

Rob Lowe describes himself on Instagram as an “actor, best-selling author, producer and @Profile4Men founder, a lifestyle brand of essentials for men. Happy husband & father of 2 great young men.”

Rob Lowe’s most recent television roles were as Dean Sanderson on the Fox comedy The Grinder, for which he was nominated for both a Golden Globe award and a People’s Choice award, and as the voice of Simba, father of Kion and Kiara, in the Disney Junior cartoon series The Lion Guard. He began his TV career as Tony Flanagan, son of Eileen Brennan’s Kit Flanagan in the short-lived A New Kind of Family, when he was only 15 years old.

He’s had a variety of television roles since then: lawyer Jack Turner in The Lyon’s Den, Deputy White House Communications Director Sam Seaborn in The West Wing, Dr. Billy Grant in Dr. Vegas, Senator Robert McAllister in Brothers and Sisters, actor Eddie Nero in Californication, and auditor Chris Traeger in Parks and Recreation. Lowe has been nominated for Golden Globe Awards six times and for an Emmy once.

The #CodeBlack crew is gearing up for Season 2 with their Medical Bootcamp training. #BehindTheScenes pic.twitter.com/h3MKYT2GjR

— Code Black (@CodeBlackCBS) July 6, 2016

Rob Lowe attended “medical boot camp” with his new co-stars to learn medical terminology, emergency room technology, and how to mimic performing ER procedures. Marcia Gay Harden, whose character Dr. Leanne Rorish may be a possible love interest for Lowe’s Dr. Willis, told Entertainment Tonight that the vocabulary was the hardest part of medical boot camp for her and the other actors.

The terms are really hard. You can’t really do a good job if you don’t know what you’re talking about. There are a lot of terms and they come fast and furious because the show is docu-style, so we’re here at boot camp and we’re actually learning to do what we need to do.

Will you be watching Rob Lowe on Code Black as Dr. Ethan Willis this fall?

[Photo by Helga Esteb/Shutterstock]