‘Sullivan’s Crossing’ Boss Explains Why Show’s Love Triangle Is Different

Sullivan’s Crossing is a place to heal and reconnect on the romantic drama airing Wednesdays on The CW. And that’s just what neurosurgeon Maggie (Morgan Kohan) needs to do after her business partner is indicted for fraud and she’s charged with negligence.

Back home, she’s reunited with her estranged father Sully (Scott Patterson), plus she meets the mysterious Cal (Chad Michael Murray). And sure, sparks are flying, but she does have a boyfriend (Allan Hawco’s Andrew). TV Insider turned to Sullivan’s Crossing showrunner and executive producer Roma Roth to find out what’s in store on the show based on Robyn Carr’s books.

How is being back at Sullivan’s Crossing causing Maggie to look at herself differently and choices she’s made, who she is, who is and isn’t in her life?

Roma Roth: She’s been gone for many years, and she has spent a life focused on growing up in the city with a different father and building and revolving her world around expectations that other father had for her and what her mother had planned for her. She has drifted away from who she once was when she was growing up at the Crossing, and when she comes back to the Crossing, she’s trying to figure out who she is again.

Maggie and Sully’s relationship is so complicated, and they have a lot of work to do to rebuild. How are they going to go about doing that? What are the first steps they each need to take?

Neither one of them really understands how they feel about the other one. They’re both carrying around baggage from their past, and to start their relationship off, they haven’t seen each other for many years, so they kind of need to do a little dance around each other first and kind of get to know each other. [That’s] the first step. Both Sully and Maggie have pushed down their feelings over the past, which are being reawakened as they are reintroduced to each other, so those feelings are now coming back to the surface. They have to try and reconcile themselves with those feelings.

How is having Maggie back affecting Sully in ways that he may be hiding?

Sully has an interesting past. We will start to peel the onion slowly over the course of the season and eventually will reveal that he’s keeping close to the vest that he’s kind of ignored. We’ll start to see more about what the backstory is with Sully and Maggie as the season develops.

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Who are each of them leaning on as they’re trying to rebuild this relationship?

We have this wonderful indigenous cast, Tom Jackson and Andrea Menard, who play Frank and Edna. Edna is kind of like an auntie, pseudo-mother for Maggie. She’s somebody who’s very maternal and supportive and warm, as opposed to Maggie’s real mother, who could barely boil an egg and who had more social climbing in what she wanted to do with her life versus living in a campground. Frank is also kind of like a second father, grandfatherly maybe even, type for Maggie. Both of them are her touchstones at Sullivan’s Crossing in addition to Sydney [Lindura], who was her childhood best friend [and is now] her confidant. And then Frank and Edna are also Sully’s confidants as well; they’ve been friends for years.

Cal’s the mystery man right now. What can you share about his past and how you’re going about revealing more about that?

Well, it wouldn’t be a mystery if I revealed anything about his past. [Laughs] We wanted intentionally to make him mysterious, and he starts to become more of a central figure as you progress in the episodes, which I’m sure everybody in America will be excited to hear. But we wanted to make sure that he was mysterious enough that Maggie is attracted to this man but also is fighting her attraction towards him. We don’t really know much about who he is, where he came from, why he’s there — these are all things that are going to be revealed over the course of the season.

So we’ll have the majority of answers about him by the end of Season 1?

You will.

What did you want to do with Maggie and Cal’s dynamic this early on in the series? And how did you approach their first meeting?

For any good romance drama show to work, you need a meet-cute at the beginning of the season; usually a meet-cute is two people not liking each other very much. And because you want the characters to be able to have an arc and growth and unrequited love is kind of the key for a good romance drama, we want to keep them apart but still have the audience aware that they’re longing for each other or that they’re interested in each other. So we start off where they’re not in a great place and then we start to have them kind of appreciate who they each are, start building a friendship, and then you’ll have to see what happens over the course of the season.

What will it take for the two of them to open up to each other?

They are going to go through a lot of experiences together – some will be a little bit more action-driven, others will be more emotional-driven — that will help to pull these two together.

Michael Tompkins/Fremantle

And there’s the matter of Maggie’s boyfriend. What makes this love triangle different from others?

Andrew is somebody who embodies Maggie’s world and expectations of who she is in the city life that she’s kind of designed for herself. Cal, who is somebody who’s now staying at the campground, is more in line with, I think, who she once was. The dynamic is interesting because Andrew’s not in Sullivan’s Crossing all the time, but we have to keep him a viable love interest. So we have some hurdles that our lead has to overcome and that keep pulling her back into Boston, where Andrew is. There’s a geography difference, [whereas] I think in most shows, you would have the love triangle all in the same location.

When I spoke with Chad recently, he said that Sullivan’s Crossing is a place of healing. How are we going to see that play out for Maggie call and Sully this season?

It’s a place of healing and support and community. It doesn’t mean that they’re all going to get resolved in Season 1 because we hope that our audience will be coming for many, many seasons. I think that Sullivan’s Crossing is, by its nature, this beautiful, gorgeous Nova Scotia landscape. It’s being in nature, reconnecting with the earth and the world we live in, both metaphorically and physically.

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Looking at Maggie and Sydney’s relationship, who’s going to need to lean on the other more as the season progresses? It’s Maggie now, but will that change?

I think both of them need each other, and they go on parallel journeys which kind of echo each other. We wanted to make sure that all of our characters that we’re creating aren’t just there to support the lead story arc. Each one of them has their own journey that they have to go on. In fact, everybody in Sullivan’s Crossing has a journey, an emotional journey that they’re going on and learning life lessons. And so Sydney is there for Maggie, but Maggie is also equally there for her friend Sydney.

What can you say about Sydney’s arc?

Sydney came to Sullivan’s Crossing from New York, where she was a model, and she has decided to make Sullivan’s Crossing her home, but she has not reconciled her past yet, which we will find out in ongoing seasons.

What can you tease about how Season 1 ends to set up Season 2?

All I can say is it ends with a big bang, and you will be wanting to turn your television back on for Season 2 to figure out where we end up.

Sullivan’s Crossing Productions Inc.

Is that an emotional bang? Life or death?

It ends on a ginormous cliffhanger, which will have you on the edge of your seat.

Sullivan’s Crossing, Wednesdays, 8/7c, The CW