Even though Maggie didn’t start off as a cheeky, sometimes even aggressive vixen, Joel has recently discovered a different side to this mild-mannered, sometimes even meek surgical resident.

“I like the fact that the writers have made someone who’s deeply intelligent eccentrically transparent,” Daniel Gillies (who plays Joel) says. “She doesn’t really have a great deal of subtext, she just blurts out the first thing that enters her mind and she’s not ashamed of that.

“I know a great number of people like that, and they’re usually actors or artists. I feel like in another life, Maggie is an artist!”

“I think it shows that she’s really human,” adds Julia Taylor Ross (who plays Maggie). “In the pilot, she has the right instincts, but she has trouble trusting them. She quickly starts to trust those instincts and starts growing as a doctor, and in this relationship, you see a mirroring of that. She sees what she wants and she goes and she takes.

“It’s really fun to play!”

Despite the stresses of their jobs and their professional relationship (with Joel in a senior role to Maggie’s residency), the pair decide to throw caution to the wind and follow their instincts.

“There’s a little bit of chemistry and they act upon that,” says Gillies with a laugh.

“Being a doctor must be a really intense, emotional job, dealing with life and death on a regular basis. Being in a hospital where you’re not sleeping enough and I think the relationship aspect of it is blowing off steam to a certain extent.”

So far, it’s just a fling, but when asked if he thinks it could be the real thing, Gillies admits he’s not sure if it’s in the cards for Joel and Maggie. “Joel needs to fall in love with himself before he can fall in love with anyone else,” he says.