‘New Amsterdam’: Why Max Won’t Have Dr. Greene’s ‘ER’ Ending
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New Amsterdam‘s final season may have just started, but with only 12 episodes left, we’re already looking ahead.
After all, the premiere began with Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) not in the best of places, after Dr. Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) left him. But the good news is we can rule one thing out: Max won’t die. Eggold and executive producers David Schulner and Peter Horton explain why and offer a hint at what is coming up for Max.
What can you say about how the series ends for Max?
Ryan Eggold: I was very curious about that myself. I had a handful of ideas and maybe this could happen or maybe that could happen. I was wondering how do we possibly wrap up this story that we’ve been telling for so many years now. And at the end of last season, David told me about an idea that he had for potentially a last moment that really caught me by surprise and I did not see coming and I thought was really thoughtful and really heartfelt and very much of our show. And I most certainly can’t say what that is or I’ll get fired on this Zoom. But it was really cool. And I was just excited to — how do you end a series? It’s such a mammoth task and a really cool idea.
David, Peter?
Peter Horton: He’s exactly right.
David Schulner: Ryan said it all.
Eric Liebowitz/NBC
So I’m going to assume it’s not an auditorium scene to parallel the pilot.
Schulner: [Shrugs]
Horton: That’s a cool idea. We’ll bring back Dr. Meritt. He was my character.
Eggold: Oh yeah, we do need to bring you back. I had one thought that was a Wizard of Oz type ending where Max just sort of floats away in the hot air balloon and waves. They didn’t go for that.
Horton: Or clicks his heels together.
Eggold: Yes, and wakes up in Kansas and it was all a dream.
Schulner: I guess the only thing I’ll say is I wouldn’t want to imagine a world where there wasn’t a Max Goodwin, so we didn’t want to kill him off, like Dr. Greene [Anthony Edwards] in ER. I want to believe that Max Goodwin is still out there helping people, even if the series is off the air, because I don’t want everything he stood for — that optimism and that hope — to be gone. So he won’t be dying. His cancer will not come back, and he will not die.
I was going to ask if that will be coming up again.
Schulner: It definitely comes up, as it does for any cancer survivor. Every year when you get that scan, it’s the most anxious and most terrifying time of your life every year.
And now he’s dealing with it without Helen.
Horton: Right.
New Amsterdam, Tuesdays, 10/9c, NBC
