Actor Plays "Slacker Hero" Paramedic on 'Saved'

"We shoot 'Saved' in Portland, Oregon, because it's where you get the best paramedic stories," says Tom Everett Scott, uttering a straight-faced lie, knowing fully well that one would find bigger and better carnage in a major metropolis such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami. Perhaps Kansas City, Mo.

In fact, Scott has never set foot in Portland, as the initial 13 episodes are shot entirely in Vancouver, British Columbia, with only a handful of second unit helicopter shots of the landmarks and mean streets in Oregon's most populous city are edited into every segment to lend a whiff of authenticity. He also stopped short of taking real paramedic training before starring in 'Saved' as ace 911 rescue worker Wyatt Cole, a "slacker hero" who refuses to follow the path of his brilliant father as a legendary surgeon at a local hospital. He shares the ambulance with fellow paramedic Sack (Omari Hardwick) and occasionally gets samples from his ex-girlfriend, Alice (Elizabeth Reaser), an emergency room physician who loves fumbling around in the sick bay linen closet.

But Scott did chat with dozens of paramedics through friends and associates, plus he went for several ride-alongs with genuine professionals in Ventura County, Calif., and Vancouver, B.C., to learn the ropes. Lucky, the outings were fairly uneventful and he always went home for a good night's sleep.

Even the scariest incident while riding shotgun in the ambulance turned out to be messy rather than life-threatening. "In Vancouver, the bloodiest case came about when a bald, drunk man in his late-50s fell 50 feet down an escalator and tore his head open," says Scott, 35. "It looked like he had been mauled by a tiger.

"Sitting in the jump seat, the patient's head was between my knees and bleeding all over - I thought I'd have nightmares, but I was fine," he continues.

"And working with technical advisers on the set, we're constantly working on things like getting the gurneys in and out of the vehicle as efficiently as possible. After dropping a couple of people, the nice guest-stars weren't talking to us anymore."

Wyatt Cole also has a serious gambling problem, spending a large portion of his off-duty hours in high-stakes poker games, but Scott doesn't have to work hard at it. "My dad taught me how to play poker when I was a kid and I love it," he says. "I played weekly with friends in New York. But I came in third in the pro-celebrity World Poker Tour a couple of years ago. OK, I was very lucky."

Born and raised (along with three sisters) in the three-stop light community of East Bridgewater, Mass., he is the son of a retired civil engineer and an insurance company functionary who discovered the joys of acting in high school productions and earned a bachelor's degree in drama at New York's Syracuse University. In no time at all, he was waiting tables in Manhattan's finest eateries.

A TV commercial for the McDonald's fast food franchise marked Scott's professional acting debut, followed - in fits and starts - by stints with several East

Coast repertory companies and co-founding New York's Theater Co. Along the way, Scott starred on such series as "The $treet" and "Philly;" he had recurring roles on "Grace Under Fire" and "ER."

"Early on, whenever I'd run out of money, I'd go back to various odd-jobs or wait tables again," he says, the memories still painful. "Like when I was running food at Madison Square Gardens ... somebody would take a premium seat customer's order and I would bring it to them, on the run. I thought of it as bringing someone their take-out food. That was horrible. And I never even met a famous person in the process."

"That Thing You Do!" (1996) accelerated his feature film career that now includes "An American Werewolf in Paris" (1997), "River Red" (1998), "The Love Letter" (1999) and "Because I Said So" (2006) with Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore.