Keke Palmer and Stephanie Hsu play alien doctors and best friends who stumble across a potential cure for anxiety while navigating sexual exploration, family drama and workplace politics in the new animated sci-fi series The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy.
The new Prime Video comedy, out Feb. 23, follows Dr. Sleech (Hsu) and Dr. Klak (Palmer) who are intergalactically renowned surgeons who don’t mind bending the rules a bit.
They find themselves in a whirlwind as they “tackle anxiety-eating parasites, illegal time loops and deep-space STIs,” according to the series description. They risk taking on a “highly dangerous and potentially groundbreaking” case that puts existence in jeopardy, but could also help solve a big problem.
As Dr. Klak likes to say nonchalantly, the worst that could happen is death.
The voice cast also includes Kieran Culkin, Sam Smith, Maya Rudolph and Natasha Lyonne.
Reaction to the out-of-this-world script
Hsu tells Yahoo Entertainment she laughed a lot when she first read the script.
“I feel like I remember just giggling a lot and then also being kind of like, ‘Oh, what?’ There’s a sex closet, there’s love triangles … and alien hormones and intergalactic STIs,” she says. “Then getting to see the images, that was like such an aha moment of the world that we get to inhabit in this show.”
Hsu, who starred in 2023’s Academy Award-winning interdimensional sci-fi film Everything Everywhere All At Once, believes she “might just be weird” after landing another sci-fi role.
“That might just be the bottom line. You know, it’s like just in my blood,” she laughs.
Despite the laughs, Palmer felt the script was “really deep and real.”
“For me, my favorite medium to talk about deep things is always going to be comedy because I love the idea of, ‘Oh my gosh, I made you laugh while you’re crying,’” she tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I think that’s when stuff is able to be received better. It’s like, let’s not be sad about it. Let’s laugh and cry at just the ridiculousness of life at times and I think that this show does that really well.”
Palmer’s connection to Klak
In the show, anxiety is a major storyline. Dr. Klak suffers from anxiety and her mother, a fellow doctor, has made a career out of it by writing a successful book about her daughter’s condition. In the series, Klak tries different methods to control her anxiety but ultimately hopes to cure it altogether.
Palmer and Hsu worked to build great chemistry between their characters despite not recording in the same room.
“That is one of the drawbacks. With animation work, you know, you’re usually in there by yourself, you don’t get the opportunity to play off your cast member or your colleagues, so to speak,” Palmer explains.
Of working with Hsu, Palmer felt she knew “her personality from interviews and just sort of style. But then when they would play me her recordings, it would offer me an opportunity to also see how we exist together. So it was just a continued development of this character.”
Hsu echoes Palmer’s sentiment.
Hsu says listening to Palmer’s audio playbacks gave her a way into “developing that friendship and relationship based on these hammy two that already exist as human beings.”
“That was really, really special,” she says. “It’s really rare when you can kind of feel that chemistry even through voices.”