The medic that appears at the end of the movie “Captain Phillips” was a real corpsman and improvised the scene with Tom Hanks. Some of her shipmates were resentful of the attention she got and gave her a hard time during her deployment, causing her to regret appearing in the film.
by LookAtThatBacon
29 Comments
Here’s her scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMDdT24_98
(Tried to post this video directly on Reddit, but it kept getting removed.)
Source: https://www.pilotonline.com/2015/07/27/whatever-happened-to-the-surprise-star-in-captain-phillips/
(Apparently there’s a paywall, but I can open it just fine with no account and an adblocker. Here’s an archive link if you want: https://archive.ph/lsQ4O)
Quote from source to support the title:
> Her scene, in which she portrays a medic caring for a traumatized Richard Phillips following his rescue from Somali pirates, wasn’t part of the original script. Director Paul Greengrass added it the day of the shoot at Norfolk Naval Station and asked Albert, a real-life corpsman, to improvise the scene with the two-time Academy Award-winning actor.
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> Some of her fellow sailors didn’t let her forget it, she said. Albert wouldn’t detail the teasing she experienced after the ship deployed a few months after the film’s release, but she said it often went beyond good-hearted ribbing.
> It didn’t help that she continued to receive attention: When the ship pulled into foreign ports, the commanding officer would sometimes invite dignitaries to come down to sick bay to pose for photos with the medic from “Captain Phillips.”
> “Some people were resentful,” she said. “But I never asked for any of this attention.”
> Albert recalls crying in her rack at night, regretting that she’d appeared in the film. She learned to avoid discussing the movie, but some shipmates continued to give her a hard time, calling her “big shot” or sarcastically saying she was “too important” for her regular duties.
She regrets it but she got promoted.
She’s the captain now.
She’s a Navy Chief. She doesn’t care.
Hooooly crap.. I’ve never seen the movie, but just watched that clip, and it hits HARD even not knowing what’s goin on. Tom Hanks is amazing, she setup the scene perfectly for him!
Worst scene of the movie IMO, overly dramatized. Hank’s character goes from stoic and heroic the whole movie, then is all whimpering and she’s being uber motherly. gag.
Is anyone surprised? The majority of ppl in the American forces are racist and misogynistic…are we surprised by this shithole country still? Just americunts being americunts if ya ask me
About as real as it can get. She’s talking to him like she would talk to anyone in her care.
One helluva scene.
Bravo!!!
I’ve rewatched this scene many times. It’s stellar. Nothing can replace the real thing. The ER scene in ET was also real doctors and it’s clear as day.
I was a teenage boy when I saw this in theaters and this scene had me welled up
I do you one better. The Transformers franchise uses real military in a lot of scenes. In the first Transformer, this Air Force Lt was literally someone in the background with no lines and if you blinked, you missed him. Home skittle went and joined the Screen Actors Guild after in hopes of launching a career. We mercilessly trolled him into oblivion. Before you ask, not gonna dox him.
This story always breaks my heart.
The scene it’s self is a masterpiece, and her role in it is so fucking on point with how trauma patients are handled. She is clearly really fucking good at her job, because if that is improvised it speaks to tireless practice and experience.
Then she was harassed by her peers, and paraded around like a fucking trophy, and it ruined her career.
All I can think of is how heartbreaking that must have been to experience. To not be allowed to be proud of herself or her profession.
She legit out acted a true SSS tier actor, AND represented herself as a doctor, doctors in general, and the whole damn NAVY in the best possible light.
If the god damn boys club had just shut the fuck up, how many lives she could have saved in her military career?
I hope she is still in medicine somewhere.
This scene and Good Will Hunting’s ‘It’s not your fault,’ are cinematic marvels.
Corpsman…the USN has Corpsman not Medics.
The military really is that petty and promotes that type of atmosphere.
That is so disappointing to hear. This was a pretty good film, and this scene in particular was so well done. Both her and Tom knocked it out of the park, this scene really tugs on your emotions and now knowing that she wasnt just an actor playing the part, it increases my respect for her and all those like her even more.
I was an EMT for a long while. I 100% remember seeing her and hearing her and I was like “woah, Hollywood got the medical encounter right for once”. They just had an actual healthcare professional so the job. Nice!
They should do that more, healthcare pay fucking sucks.
I love it when movies or shows use true to life scenes. I missed the whole thing except to know it was well done.
For what a movie costs to make they could hire a few people with basic knowledge of “things”.
For example, motorcycles don’t have 10 speeds. In car scenes where you can see the column mounted gear selector in the park position. (HVAC tech here) most of the HVAC stuff is wrong, looking at you “die hard”. Commercial ducts are NEVER that clean, and even if they’re big enough they have vanes and dampers in them so you wouldn’t be able to crawl very far.
The military is great but sometimes attracts the worst people.
This scene was incredible. It’s one of the few I remember from the movie just because of how professional she was.
Yeah it turns out that whole camaraderie thing the military is supposed to be about is extremely conditional
Crabs in a bucket.
one of the members on a motorcycle forum I used to be on was a sailor and actually sailed with on a ship under Philips as a captain. Said he was an asshole and nearly got him killed in a storm.
Isn’t the word *jealous?*
That’s so wild. Love this movie but for some reason this specific scene with her always struck me super powerfully. The calmness yet repetitive tone in her voice to be kind but effective. It always struck me as so sincere in some strange scripted way.
Unfortunate she was given shit for it she deserves awards and kudos to her for brining good attention to her teams.
Fuck them jealous shipmates. Why are people so shitty
I remember this as a stand out scene. Very cool to know that she is a real person.
Trump really makes the whole Thank You for Your Service feel completely unwarranted nowadays considering how many Military think he is the savior.
You fvcks swore an Oath to the Constitution of the US…not to a Nonce Rapist.
True story, this clip was part of my training when I joined a peer support group for first responders as an example of how to support someone going through it.
The initial script simply had them taking Captain Phillips to the ship’s captains cabin and giving him a blanket. But the real captain of the ship pointed out that’s not what they would do, they would run through the infirmary first.
The director pointed out they hadn’t thought to cast a Corpsman. The ship’s captain offered whoever was on duty as corpsman at the moment.
So Hanks and a film crew went down to the infirmary. This young woman apparently messed up the first take, no doubt a little overwhelmed by how her day was taking shape.
But she got the second take perfectly and that’s what we see on film.
She wasn’t the only amateur in the film. The “look at me. Look at me. I’m the captain now.” Guy had only acted in community theater before this. There aren’t a lot of Somali actors in central casting apparently.
He ad-libbed that line to Hanks. Think of that, a very inexperienced actor ad-libs to a two-time academy award actor, and it worked and ended up in the film.