Since its debut in 2008, The Doctors has been must-see daytime talk TV. The show’s five co-hosts dispense sound medical advice along with answers to the questions viewers are too embarrassed to ask their own doctors. The Doctors, already a 2008 Daytime Emmy Award winner, has been nominated again in 2016. That’s a prescription for excitement for Dr. Rachael Ross, who joined The Doctors in 2013.
Dr. Rachael, as she is known to millions of viewers, is the show’s first African American co-host. She took a break during the busy Emmy season to talk with Reel Urban News about her journey from the exam room to the TV studio.
“I’m very excited. The first time the Emmy came about I wasn’t on the show. Now I’m a new member of the team and we have this Emmy nomination and I’m super-excited.”
Dr. Rachael, a board-certified family medicine physician and sexologist, tackles topics like relationships, sex, abstinence and HIV/AIDS prevention. Having her on the program has struck a chord with viewers, especially African Americans.
“You know, I never realized the impact it was having until one day I was in the airport in Atlanta, and I hear, ‘Girl, do you think you’re hiding?’ She was like, ‘I know exactly who you are.’ It was a sister, an older lady. She told me how important and how good it felt to have me on the show. Through talking with her it was the first time it hit me that I have a national audience.”
Despite her celebrity, Dr. Rachael has not abandoned her patients for Hollywood. She continues to practice in her childhood home of Gary, Ind. with her father, Dr. David Ross and her brother, Dr. Nathaniel Ross. Her mother Ruthie serves as office manager.
“Black women are feeling some kind of way seeing me up there. You hear your parents, patients and people from the home town, but when you get out and start to feel how people are experiencing you being on the show, that’s when it really starts to count.”
We couldn’t resist asking Dr. Rachael for some advice for people who hope to take control of their health. “The biggest message that I could impart – and this is from me being the family medical physician, this is from me being in the grocery store and this is from me being on the TV show: What you eat is everything. Everything starts from what we’re putting in our bodies.”
