Mekia Cox Talks ‘Secrets and Lies’ and ‘Chicago Med’ [Exclusive Interview]

If you’ve been watching television at all recently, chances are, you’ve seen Mekia Cox.

She’s had roles on such shows as Modern Family, Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, and One Tree Hill. And in addition to her recent roles on TV Land’s Impastor and ABC’s Secrets and Lies, she can also be seen on the popular NBC drama, Chicago Med.

I had the chance to chat with Cox about all three of these roles and how she got her start as an entertainer.

“I started at a really young age. I started dancing first when I was about two and a half years old, and I moved into singing kind of in elementary school then middle school. And it was probably in the beginning of middle school that I really got into acting. I was born in The Virgin Islands and we moved up to Orlando. And, you know, there’s Disney World and Nickelodeon there, and I started to do some work on shows both at Disney and at Nickelodeon in Orlando. That was kind of how I got my foot in the door initially,” Cox recalled.

She also attended a magnet school in high school, and went on to study musical theater in college. After graduating, she landed her first television role, which was on One Tree Hill.

Cox feels lucky to be able to play such differing roles on television right now, from intense dramas to a unique comedy. “I enjoy the fact that I’m able to… I haven’t been pigeonholed yet into one sort of role. I’m able to do a variety a roles,” she said.

Cox shared what it was like to play the role of Amanda Warner on Secrets and Lies, which recently aired its season finale.

“As soon as I read the script, I immediately was hooked. I knew that I could play that character. There’s something that happens sometimes when I read certain scripts, and I’m immediately like, yes, I can do that. There’s just an immediate connection to the character, and that happened for sure with this script and this role. And I liked the fact that she is such a strong and powerful role, but yet she’s still also compassionate and cares for others.”

Cox did say one of the major challenges in playing the role involved the stellar cast.

“On the one hand, it was really awesome, because I’m working with such amazing actors and I get to learn from them. But on the other hand, it was also a little intimidating because, you know, I’m there with Juliette Lewis and Michael Ealy and all these different [actors] who have been in the business for a while,” Cox admitted.

“They’re actors that I look up to. So it can be someone intimidating at times. But luckily they were such down to earth, awesome people that they made it easier for me once I got on set and I got over my own self-conscious nerves.”

In addition to Secrets and Lies, you can also catch Cox on NBC’s Chicago Med as Robyn Charles.

“It’s been great so far. The cast is very welcoming. And they just sort of folded me into their group which has been really nice. And I get to work with Oliver who plays my father — Oliver Platt — and he is amazing. It’s an honor to be able to work with someone like him,” Cox said.

“It’s been a good time. I’ve really enjoyed my time on the set.”

One of the challenges in preparing for that role, unsurprisingly, was getting accustomed to the medical jargon.

“The most preparation goes into learning this medical jargon, because it’s so outside of the norm of the way you speak. That took a while for me to get used to,” Cox said.

“It has to just roll off of your tongue like this is something that you say every day,” she laughed. “The repetition is just working those muscles inside of your mouth to make sure that you say it the way a doctor would normally say it. They’ve also discovered that in different regions they say things in different ways. I can’t remember what the word was, but they say it different here in LA than they do in Chicago.”

The transition from playing Amanda Warner to Robyn Charles, however, wasn’t all that difficult.

“There are some similarities I feel like between this character and Amanda from Secrets and Lies, because they’re very driven and they’re both very career oriented,” Cox explained. “It was easy enough for me to be able to switch those gears to play this character. I think the difference for them is family. They have a different sort of family life.”

Quite different from her characters on Chicago Med and Secrets and Lies, Cox recently played the role of Jasmin on TV Land’s Impastor. For Cox, that was a welcome change.

“It was a fun cast, and it was nice to be able to sort of just let go. It’s not dealing with such intense material, especially with Secrets and Lies. So it was nice to be able to laugh on set, a lot, which I did. It was a good time.”

Though Cox has been able to play a variety of different roles recently, she admitted that her preferences tended toward more intense dramas.

“I do enjoy things that are intense. I think as actors we always like to indulge in our roles,” she laughed. “I think there was an intensity to Secrets and Lies that I really enjoyed, but that intensity is also happening in Chicago Med, and in a way in Impastor as well. If there just one genre in particular that I am drawn to, I guess that it would be drama.”

In fact, those are also the kinds of things Cox finds herself enjoying when she sits down to watch television — that is, when she has the time!

“I do like to binge stuff a lot, because it’s like when you do finally have time, you have time to binge it and then move on. I will say one that I’ve been watching weekly is Westworld. I really enjoy Westworld. I think I kind of like sci-fi fantasy type — Game of Thrones I enjoy, and I also like Homeland. These are all kind of intense dramas,” she said.

Be sure to catch Mekia Cox on Chicago Med, returning to NBC on Thursday, January 5th at 9/8c.