‘Chicago Med’s S. Epatha Merkerson Says Goodwin ‘Really Crosses the Line’ to Help a Patient
Q&A
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Sharon Goodwin is the one who keeps Med running, and in order to do so, she has to work within the boundaries of the law. But that may change in an upcoming episode of Chicago Med Season 5.
TV Insider recently caught up with S. Epatha Merkerson at NBC’s NYC press junket, where she previewed an upcoming episode in which her character — and others — will cross a line to help a patient.
Here, Merkerson discusses the support Goodwin has provided for others this season, the doctor who is her biggest challenge, and more.
Which doctor is providing Goodwin with the biggest challenge this season? Will, right?
S. Epatha Merkerson: Will is always a challenge. He’s always doing something that is very close to crossing the line, if not crossing the line. There will always be issues with him.
(Elizabeth Sisson/NBC)
Especially lately, with the safe injection site.
Exactly. But she supported him at the beginning and it fell through because of Gwen. She supports him because he does things for ethical and moral reasons. He does them for the right reasons, but he does them the wrong way. Right now she doesn’t know about the safe injection places. It’ll be interesting to see what happens and how long that goes on before she finds out.
You brought up Gwen. We’ve seen different sides of that dynamic recently, such as with Gwen’s kid. What’s coming up there?
We’ll see. That’s still up in the air. But evidently she’s in some trouble … Goodwin is really going to be supportive. It’s an interesting dynamic between these two women, and they’ve set it up so beautifully for her to fail.
We saw Goodwin and Bert kind of working their way back to one another, but it’s also bittersweet because of CeCe’s role in it.
We’ll be seeing more of Bert, which is fun. It’s sad to see what happened with CeCe. It was a great character, and Paula [Newsome] was a great actor work with.
What I loved about all of that was how you got to see the relationship between Daniel Charles and Sharon Goodwin, the fact that these two have known each other for years, they’re supportive of one another. I love their relationship. It’s really good to see older folk with their friendships and that history. They can almost finish each other’s sentences, they’ve known each other that long.
(Liz Sisson/NBC)
Speaking of supporting other characters, we saw Sharon supporting Maggie this season.
I think that’s a great storyline. Maggie’s character has been through a lot of changes, and again, that’s another friendship that Goodwin is really supportive of and again, people doing things for the right reasons but doing them the wrong way. Where she feels like she has to protect Maggie, she also has to reprimand her for some of the things she’s doing.
It’s one of the great things I love about Goodwin is that she deals with these people straight from the heart, but she also has the business of medicine to deal with and running this hospital, so she has to really make sure that everyone is doing what they can do to save a patient or to save themselves but within the boundaries, and when the boundaries are broken, she has to figure out, “how am I going to deal with it?” You rarely see her break the rules, but she does.
Are we going to get any Goodwin-centric episodes and follow her day?
I hope so. There are a couple episodes we’ve already shot that will give Goodwin a run for her money. There’s one episode that’s coming up where there’s domestic abuse involved and it’s what she and the doctors do to help this woman that really crosses the line. That’s going to be an interesting episode.
Chicago Med, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC
