New ‘Chicago Med’ Boss on Season 10’s High-Octane Opener and Bringing People Back From the Past
For the One Chicago family of shows that flank NBC’s primetime hours on Wednesday nights, change is a common occurrence for long-running series Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D.
Yet, going into its 10th season, Chicago Med not only finds itself forging forward with only three of its original castmembers — Marlyne Barrett, Oliver Platt and S. Epatha Merkerson — but also bringing in a new showrunner, Allen MacDonald, who is charged with giving the veteran Dick Wolf series a new jolt of energy that longtime viewers may have to adjust to.
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With MacDonald at the helm of Chicago Med, the new season introduces new characters, while saying goodbye to others. Ahead of the season 10 premiere, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Chicago Med’s new boss to talk about some of the show’s new arcs, those who are leaving, the introduction of two major new characters and the showrunner’s promise of a major “high-octane” season opener.
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You are taking the helm of Chicago Med, but you have worked on a very popular show about the medical profession before. You worked on ER?
I did work on ER, but I was only an assistant. I started as a research assistant to the researcher, and then that turned into a writers assistant gig where I worked for two of the writers. And, that was it. I was in the writers’ department, so I definitely saw how the show was done; how it was written and made. And that’s a huge inspiration for me on this job, because I used to sit there and read all the scripts as they came in. I used to get go to the set and I saw how they broke the stories, and as an assistant researcher, I would literally — no one does this anymore — but I would go through the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post and cut articles out that were possible medical stories. And I talked to nurses to get stories.
So, now as the new showrunner for Chicago Med, what will your spin be? What will be new, what will stay the same? How will you keep the viewer who has spent years glued to this show engaged while offering your take?
Nine seasons to be exact, right? I hadn’t watched the show before I started interviewing to have this job. And so, I had to sit down and watch 176 episodes of Chicago Med, which I loved doing. I loved immersing myself into the world, I ate and slept a little bit in between here and there, but it was a great experience.
This show, from the beginning, has always had extremely strong emotionally based character-oriented storytelling, and that’s something I have always endeavored to do myself as a writer, and it’s the kind of show I like to watch. The previous showrunners — Andy [Schneider] and Diane [Frolov] — did a spectacular job building such an organic, full world of interesting characters. I mean, it really feels lifted and aligned. And as the new showrunner, to answer your question, that’s something I’m just going to build off of moving forward. I very much want to continue the emotional storytelling. I love inserting humor, and sometimes gallows humor, because things are so serious. And I believe that people really do that to deal with disease or sickness, or just challenges in life in general.
As a writer, I love humor in dramatic scripts because it’s not like a sitcom where it’s joke, joke, joke. Although sitcoms are great, and the best ones do reveal character in their jokes, I like humor on a show like Chicago Med when it reveals character and it makes you laugh, not just because it’s a joke and it’s funny but because it feels something about the character. And it also shows something recognizably human about that character that the audience can relate to. Where they laugh because they’re like, “Oh my God, that painful moment? I’ve been through that.” They laugh because if they don’t, they’ll start crying.
Let’s talk about the cast turnover. My understanding is that only three of the original castmembers remain on the show.
As far as the cast turnover, I think that isn’t specific to this show. I think you will see something similar on P.D. and Fire, in that you still have some of the top-billed actors in the cast with the show — like Taylor Kinney on Fire or Jason Beghe on Chicago P.D. I think there’s been an equal amount of turnover, and I think those things don’t happen because of the show; I think they happen because of the actors’ contracts and sometimes they want different challenges, and they want to try different things. But one of the things I felt watching the early seasons of the show is that I fell in love with the original cast. I fell in love with the current cast, but I missed the original cast. And one of the unique opportunities of this One Chicago world is that you can bring these older characters back and have them come through the ED again, and see them interact with the new characters that we’ve created for this season and catch them up with the relationships they have with people that are still on the show. So, nothing is set in stone, but I’m very much interested in bringing back characters from the past.
Getting into the new season, one story arc that resonates heavily with viewers is the relationship between Dr. Dean Archer (Steven Weber) and his son, Sean (Luigi Sottile). Both continued to have a contentious relationship even after Sean donated his kidney to his ill father last season.
It’s a storyline that we definitely continue. In the first batch of episodes, you will see Sean and Archer’s girlfriend, Margo [Isabel Thompson], very quickly. So, we will be dealing with that, moving forward, probably not on the scale that they did last season, but we will see those characters.
Now that Sharon Goodwin’s (S. Epatha Merkerson) ex-husband Bert (Gregory Alan Williams) is in the assisted living facility with Alzheimer’s disease, how will her relationship evolve with Dr. Dennis Washington (John Earl Jelks)?
That was a very emotionally successful story last season. I was very moved by that, and Alzheimer’s disease is something I have in my family, as we speak, and in the past. It is a very hard thing to capture emotionally correctly, and I thought the show did a tremendous job of that last season. But I also thought it was a complete story. And so, as far as in season 10, we won’t be telling Bert’s Alzheimer story moving forward. I feel like that story is over, but what it does allow Goodwin is a bit of a sad one but a new beginning. It allows her a little more freedom to pursue her relationship with Dr. Dennis Washington, and that’s what we’ll be watching this season — that relationship, the trajectory of it and the challenges.
Goodwin is also going to be dealing with some issues, as she usually does, but on a much more suspenseful level at the hospital. She’s going to, because of budget cuts, have to let a lot of people go, and some of those people do not take it well, and she has to kind of deal with the fallout of that.
Let’s talk about the season opener, which is about a commuter ship accident. Is that correct?
Yes, the season opener, “Sink or Swim,” which I wrote, the backdrop of the whole episode is that a commuter ship has been struck by a smaller vessel and it took on water so quickly, and it capsized right near Navy Pier. That trapped a lot of people in the hull; threw a lot of people in the water with minor injuries; and then a lot of people have to fight their way out and suffer burns and injuries. And all those injured, casualties are brought to Gaffney [Chicago Medical Center]. And so, it’s kind of a high-octane, suspenseful or fast-paced episode of Chicago Med. It’s a mass casualty event, which you know the show has done in the past, several times, but it had been a while since they’d done one; so, I was like “Well, what a great way to open the season.”
What can you tell us about the new characters?
I would love to. We have two. The first one is Dr. Caitlin Lennox, and she is played by Sarah Ramos, who was most recently on The Bear, among other things. She was also on Parenthood on NBC for quite a long time. The thing that about Lennox, she’s not a soft, cuddly character. Goodwin has brought her in to help run the emergency department because a nearby hospital has run out of financial resources and closes down. And Goodwin knows we’re going to absorb the overflow. There’s just so many more people and patients coming in that she wants Archer [Steven Weber] to have a little help. But Archer doesn’t feel like he needs any help — there’s a spoiler right there.
One of the reasons I brought Lennox in is to be a foil to Archer, because my favorite Archer is cranky, angry, sarcastic, pissed-off Archer. And he obviously has a more gentle empathetic side, but this season I want to see a little more of the raw side. Because he gets pissed because he feels emotional about things, because he does care. And the thing about Lennox is that she cares, but she’s more about efficiency.
The other character is Dr. John Frost (Darren Barnet), who was the pediatrician who works at that hospital that’s about to close. In the season premiere, he comes in with a little girl who is having speech difficulties because of a possible neurological issue. And she needs an MRI; this is time-sensitive. Frost brings her to Gaffney to get this MRI, because his hospital has sold their MRI. So, he brings this girl in and he meets Maggie (Marlyne Barrett), and Dr. Frost is very good looking, if you’ve ever seen a picture of Darren Barnet; he’s very charming. He knows that and he uses that to get what he wants, to get the best care for his patients. But the first person he runs into is Maggie Lockwood, and she is like, “I know what you’re doing and you need to back off a little bit because, I’ll let you watch.” But it’s really fun watching them together, and they have a lot of scenes together in the first episode. I just love those two together!
And the reason that Frost became a pediatrician is because he didn’t feel protected by his parents, and he didn’t feel they did right by him; so at a certain point, in his young adulthood, he cut them off. And then he had to just, in a scrappy style, put himself through medical school and become a pediatrician. I don’t know how conscious he is that he becomes a pediatrician to protect kids the way he was not protected. He will certainly become conscious of it during this season, I will tell you that.
If we could put one big bow on the theme of season 10, what would be written on it?
Wow! No one has ever asked me that. But the answer is “Loneliness.” Combating loneliness. And that sounds a little depressing. But it is actually really hopeful in the way that we play it. And specifically, that’s something Dr. Charles (played by Oliver Platt) is going to be struggling with a little bit this season, and that’s a little bit of a spoiler right there. So, it’s loneliness, combating loneliness and learning to let other people in when you’ve been hurt. I won’t pretend that it is a theme that hasn’t been done before, but it’s always going to feel unique when you specify it to certain characters. And I think the way that the writing staff and I are planning to play that out is a very emotional and hopeful theme for the season.
Chicago Med premieres Wednesday, Sept. 25, at 8 p.m. on NBC, with new episodes at that time each week.
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