NBC’s new medical drama “Heartbeat” features two unlikely stars in stand-up comics D.L. Hughley and Jamie Kennedy. The actors — who both had their own TV comedies back in the late ’90s/early 2000s — are tackling serious roles as head psychiatrist Dr. Hackett (Hughley) and socially-awkward surgeon Dr. Callahan (Kennedy), who provide emotional and professional support to the series’ lead: Ball-busting heart surgeon Dr. Alex Panttiere (Melissa George). “When I [auditioned] it was very dramatic because people wanted to see if I could do that,” Kennedy tells The Post. “When I got the part they allowed me to add some funny to it and then they started writing more funny [lines]. There is a lot of comic relief but [Dr. Callahan] has a [dramatic] side storyline.” While Hughley’s and Kennedy’s characters only have two scenes together in “Heartbeat” (premiering Tuesday at 9 p.m. on NBC) this season, the actors’ history actually goes back to the early ’90s — when Kennedy was a struggling comedian and working as a Pizza Hut delivery man in LA. “I delivered pizza to [Hughley] at his apartment in the Valley, probably three times,” Kennedy says. “I would ask him questions about joke-telling. And then I saw him three years after that at a stand-up show and he’s like, ‘Aw s–t, it’s the pizza man!’” In another twist of fate, the two comedians also have a previous connection to their “Heartbeat” co-star Dave Annable, who plays Alex’s love interest, Dr. Pierce Harrison. “He worked at Caroline’s in New York as a doorman. So he worked with me and D.L. [there] and his first job was on my [WB] show, ‘The Jamie Kennedy Experiment,’” Kennedy says. “It was a New York episode called ‘World’s Smallest Apartment.’ [And] he used to get us chicken fingers at the comedy club.” To convincingly be able to play a doctor, Kennedy and the rest of the cast spent two days working with a medical professional, learning the correct way to hold surgical tools, mimic stitching and speak all the jargon. And while tongue-twisting words like “tracheotomy” and “cardiothoracic” are unlikely to appear in a stand-up set, Hughley does see one thing that comedians and doctors have in common. “Comics have to have egos. I don’t think that is too much different [with doctors],” he recently told Parade. “The stakes are so much higher for them. Anybody who has that level of life and death would obviously have some level of ego.” Both men managed to keep a busy stand-up schedule while filming “Heartbeat” at LA’s Universal Studios, going out on tour dates almost every weekend — a humbling reminder of that old acting adage “drama is easy, comedy is hard.” “It’s way harder to be funny. It’s subjective,” Kennedy says. “In drama … you don’t know if they like you or not until the end of the movie. In comedy, if they’re not laughing, you stink. “You can’t hide that you stink in comedy [but] you can hide that you stink in drama.”
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