‘The Resident’ Boss on Why Conrad’s Choice Isn’t End of Triangle, KitBell’s Wedding & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Resident Season 6 premiere “Two Hearts.”]

It’s not until the end of the Season 6 premiere that we get confirmation of Conrad’s (Matt Czuchry) choice: Cade (Kaley Ronayne).

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope for him and Billie (Jessica Lucas)! Plus, Kit (Jane Leeves) and Bell’s (Bruce Greenwood) wedding is coming up, and Ian (Andrew McCarthy) can only hide his addiction so long. Co-creator Amy Holden Jones teases what’s next.

What are we going to see from Conrad and Cade’s relationship this season? How are you approaching that given the love for Conrad and Nic (Emily VanCamp)?

Amy Holden Jones: When you first saw Conrad and Nic, for quite a while, they weren’t actually together and there were issues in their relationship. It took a while for it all to work out. Conrad and Cade have started a relationship, and what you’re seeing in the season is how does that go? Everything’s not necessarily an ice cream sundae from day one. What’s their chemistry like? I think that Raptor’s [Malcolm-Jamal Warner] analysis is correct, that Conrad likely made what was a very difficult decision based on the fact that Billie was Nic’s friend and he was not aware she thought of him that way. How does that impact them going forward long-term?

I’m a fan of the 19th century novel, and if the heroine in Jane Austin gets who they want in the first chapter, then you’re not gonna keep reading. Life is a more complicated story than that, which doesn’t mean that in the end, Billie wins. That’s to be determined because in the course of the season, Billie’s not gonna just mope around. There’s another potential love interest for her that comes in, and she has a very strong relationship with Conrad as his friend and a growing relationship with Austin as his friend, which might or may not become something else. They both have other stories which don’t relate to Conrad. I want people to understand that our female characters don’t only have stories that relate to the guys in their life and even their relationship to each other will evolve apart from how they feel about Conrad.

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I was going to ask if Billie’s love interest is someone we know or someone new, then you mentioned the potential with AJ…

The potential with AJ and there’s a potential with someone new.

We see tension between Billie and Cade in the premiere. Besides Conrad, is that also because of who they are as people and they need to get used to being around each other without him? 

Correct. It’s something that’s happened to Cade, which she addresses on screen this year: She came in, but wasn’t quite part of the team yet. She has to become part of the team, which she does, and that alters how she relates to Billie because she’s gonna have to relate to her professionally as well and get to know her as a person. All that is quite complicated and fraught. I don’t want them to only be in relation to Conrad. It starts that way, there’s some friction between them, which you see in the premiere, that Billie’s a little short with her, but there’s no cat fight in store. It’s not my thing.

What’s next for Conrad and Billie? More of the closeness from the premiere? Teases of what could be between them?

Yes. In particular, the wedding episode for Kit and Bell, which happens in our 100th episode, airing as the sixth episode. A lot of things happen at weddings, so who knows what’ll happen from there. It might take a while for Conrad to understand his feelings. But at the same time, this is not a wallflower Billie. She’s not going to just hang around and mope, which could make him jealous.

Drew Herrmann/FOX

On the other hand, if you come back for [Episode] 2, you’ll discover how amazingly fascinating Cade is. It’s left to be unwrapped really in 2, what is the nature of their relationship and what is their sexual chemistry? That’s what you begin to find out to a large degree in 2, so gotta give it a chance before you write it off. I think he has very viable options here. Neither one’s a bad choice.

And they’re both kickass doctors.

Exactly. Which you’ll see more and more of from Cade. We know it from Billie and you’ll always have that, but you’ll see more of that from Cade. She was paired a lot with Conrad in the previous season. She has her own cases now.

How much will we see of Bell in the episodes leading up to the wedding? Is that because of Bruce filming The Fall of the House of Usher?

He was not available for the first episodes, which is why you barely see him in the premiere, something we had to cope with. But he is fully available to us by the fifth episode, so it’s not a terribly long wait and then his story’s enormous for all the rest of the season. He’s very huge in the show from that point on. We love him to pieces obviously, and we were sorry we had to make that adjustment, but we did. His shoes in that role of the elder statesmen were very firmly filled by Andrew McCarthy, who steps into this addiction plot that we have running at about 100 miles an hour and nailed it. That gets to be so compelling. I think that the audience will be OK with waiting a little bit to see Bruce full-time because those episodes up until he comes back are very fraught with Andrew McCarthy material.

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Cade’s noticing the pills, and it seems like only a matter of time before someone else does. Is that going to become a problem soon? He’s putting himself out there to help the hospital, so Kit’s gonna have to deal with that.

Exactly. You’re right on it. He doesn’t get exposed immediately, no, because — I read a lot about [addiction] for this season — addicts are incredibly canny at hiding what they’re doing and what Ian is doing for a long time helps him function rather than hinders him functioning. He’s dealing with the stress of his job, which is huge, operating on children, and why he ever got into drugs has to deal with that stress. When it gets out of control, obviously it will pose problems.

But that is a big thematic issue that really impacts Kit: He saves lives extensively in the first episodes. Here you have someone saving lives who you discover is doing it with the help of something they shouldn’t be using, not under the supervision of the doctor, and in such a way that it will get out of control. Kit’s dilemma and the hospital’s dilemma is definitely part of the story, but also very much a part of it as well as his journey is Cade’s journey. How long until she figures out what’s going on? Is she being paranoid? You saw him take pills, but they could have been vitamins, so she doesn’t have any proof of anything. Is she overreacting? Is she being overprotective? Is she being over suspicious? That’s the kind of thing addicts play on a lot. She’ll question herself. Then, how does she deal with it? Because addicts also lie, when she realizes that this father she’d come to love again is struggling with this.

At the same time, she’s a doctor and so is Kit. They know addiction’s a disease. That complicates everything too. But her journey in relation to that, how she can learn to protect herself as well as support her father as much as she can, where is the line where you can’t do it anymore, because it destroys you, how do you learn boundaries? It’s a co-dependent journey.

Tom Griscom/FOX

What can you tease about Kit and Bell’s wedding?

It hasn’t been filmed yet because we’ve been filming out of order due to Bruce being not available. But I know the venue and I got to weigh in on some of the outfits, not that I choose them, but I get to veto. It has to be different from the other weddings because they are a mature couple who’ve been married before but also an incredibly romantic celebration. It’s more classical in many ways than a young person’s wedding. Some of the music is drawn from their era, for example, rather than other eras.

It’s paired with a high-powered medical story that relates to the survival of the hospital that both Kit and Bell are fighting for. That’s part of the story of the season. Their love story intertwines with the fight that she has to save the hospital because there’s a new villain, the governor, roughly modeled on a governor of a major southern state who committed a lot of Medicare fraud and still became governor of his state, Florida. How does she deal with it when that guy’s going to cut the budget to an extent that would destroy Chastain? How do they take on someone so powerful who then comes back and attacks Bell? How do they try to save each other and Chastain is the major story the second half of the season.

Who’s best man and maid of honor?

[Laughs] I’m not gonna give too much away.

Conrad and Billie?

I will say that Jake is there and the flower girls are Gigi and Sammie.

Any big returns coming up?

Nope. No more ghost of Nic, sorry.

The Resident, Tuesdays, 8/7c, Fox