‘New Amsterdam’s Freema Agyeman & Jocko Sims on Max’s Impact on Helen & Reynolds
New Amsterdam started with a major change at the hospital with Max (Ryan Eggold) coming on board as its new medical director, and another big turn may be in store for at least one of the characters after recent Season 2 episodes.
For example, Reynolds (Jocko Sims) told Evie (Margot Bingham) that he’d move with her to San Francisco. (She’s been considering a job offer there.) Sims wouldn’t say if his character is actually leaving or not when TV Insider caught up with him and Freema Agyeman at an NBC press junket.
However, his character had just been stabbed during an inmate riot at the hospital when he made that decision. That “isn’t a bad reason to consider stepping to the west coast,” Sims pointed out.
Speaking of heat-of-the-moment decisions, Agyeman’s Helen was prevented from making one herself because of the distraction that same incident at the hospital provided her. She had just been stripped of her titles as deputy medical director and co-chair of the oncology department.
And after that, Helen is trying to figure out what’s next. She’s “coasting a little bit, treading water maybe a little bit right now,” Agyeman previewed.
One thing’s for sure: Helen wouldn’t still be at New Amsterdam if Max hadn’t come on board. “She would be Dr. Helen. She would be off doing her thing for sure,” Agyeman said. “She only came back because she saw the impact that his actions had, which were probably different to that of the five medical directors previously. Something had changed, and she felt that and wanted to ride that out.”
Reynolds, on the other hand, would still be there. “The cool thing about Reynolds and why Max kept him around is because he didn’t try to do surgeries to make money. He put the patients first,” Sims shared. And that’s what Reynolds would have continued to do, no matter who the medical director was.
New Amsterdam, Tuesdays, 10/9c, NBC