How old is Elaine from Best Medicine? Fans who grew up on Nickelodeon already know her face
The show never tells you how old Elaine is, which leaves the internet to work it out from her job title and her posting habits. The actress playing her is easier to pin down, and a lot of viewers have already met her.
Elaine Denton is played by Cree — born Cree Cicchino on 9 May 2002 in Glendale, Queens, which makes her 24 as of September 2026. She's been credited mononymously since 2024's Turtles All the Way Down, a change she made on purpose.
Going by one name "just felt the most comfortable," she said in 2024, describing it as a new era as she moved into her twenties.
Where you've seen her
Nickelodeon, almost certainly. Cicchino was cast at 13 as Babe Carano in Game Shakers, the Dan Schneider sitcom about two middle schoolers running a gaming company, and played the part across three seasons from 2015 to 2019. Anyone who had a Nickelodeon-age household in the second half of the 2010s has that face filed somewhere.
The years since have been steadier work rather than a second breakout:
- Mr. Iglesias (2019–2020) — Marisol Fuentes, the Netflix Gabriel Iglesias comedy.
- And Just Like That... (2021–2022) — Luisa Torres in the Sex and the City continuation.
- Big Sky (2022–2023) — Emily Arlen in the ABC thriller's third season.
- The Sleepover (2020) and Turtles All the Way Down (2024) — the Netflix comedy and the HBO Max John Green adaptation.
- Best Medicine (2026– ) — Elaine Denton, main cast.
What the show gives you to go on
Best Medicine premiered on Fox on 4 January 2026, adapting the British series Doc Martin through writer-producer Liz Tuccillo. Josh Charles plays Dr Martin Best, a Boston heart surgeon who develops a blood phobia and relocates to private practice in Port Wenn, Maine. Elaine is his administrative assistant, and the show's main running joke about her is that the job is not the career she wants — she's an aspiring influencer working a reception desk.
That places her, functionally, at the start of a working life rather than in the middle of one, which is where the original put her too. In Doc Martin, Elaine Denton was the first in a line of receptionists who treated the surgery's phone as an inconvenience.
How much of her there is
Cree appears in all 13 episodes of season 1, which ran from 4 January to 7 April 2026, and returns in season 2, which premiered 20 September 2026 with an expanded 14-episode order. The show holds 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and 62 on Metacritic.
For the record: Cicchino has a twin sister, Jayce, and started dancing at four — a decade of training before Nickelodeon ever called.
Previously we wrote: Brothers on Apple TV: what to know about the McConaughey–Harrelson series premiere
