‘Transplant’: Hamza Haq Explains Why Bash Likes Competing Against Mags

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Transplant Season 4 Episode 1 “Crete” and Episode 2 “Sinkhole.”]

Transplant adds another complication to the relationship between exes Bash (Hamza Haq) and Mags (Laurence Leboeuf) in its fourth and final season: competitors for one residency spot at York Memorial. But it’s a storyline that Haq enjoys.

“I think the thing that has been evident from the moment that Bash met Mags is that he has met his match. I got goosebumps saying that. I’ve never said that before. That’s so good,” he tells TV Insider with a laugh. “I think Joe [creator Joseph Kay] made a very concerted effort to be like, she is his mirror and his partner throughout all of it. And to be like, alright, now they’re going head-to-head, too?”

He points to the end of Episode 2 as one of his favorite moments, with Mags letting Bash know she’s glad he’s okay, she wants the job, and she’s going to do everything she can to get it, and he tells her she’ll need to. “I’m just like, ‘Oh, that’s such good banter,'” Hamza Haq says.

“I think there’s a level of excitement. They’re not together, too, so even competing for the same job is this kind of sexy flirtation that they’ve got going on, but it’s also very intimate to be ambitious about the same thing,” he adds. “I think competing with one another is a great way to have maintained that intimacy throughout them having gone their separate ways as far as their relationship is concerned. I think he likes it, I think he hates it, and I think he can’t control it. And that pretty much explains the relationship.”

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The second episode also ends with Bash tracking down Elliot (Mark Rendall), who was the one to direct him to Canada. It has been six years since they’ve seen each other. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me again,” Bash admits. Elliot asks what he wants.

“I think as Bash is maturing and as he’s finding different ways to express himself and also take care of himself — it’s evident, and we see it all the time, that if you’re not taking care of yourself and if you’re lost within yourself, you end up taking it out on the people closest to you,” explains Haq. “And I think to realize that he was just in such turmoil that he couldn’t take care of somebody that was being really kind to him and mistreated him…. I think for him it was the easiest way he could say, ‘I’m really sorry.’ And there’s this still sort of self-flagellation thing that Bashir has to go through to punish himself for being human. So instead of just saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ he’s just like, ‘I don’t know if you wanted to see me again,’ because he can’t face himself either for how he couldn’t maintain that relationship, too.”

Transplant, Thursdays, 8/7c, NBC