NEW AMSTERDAM Bosses Address Using Old Footage of Freema Agyeman and Preview the ‘Origin Story’ Series Finale
January 13, 2023 by Marisa Roffman
NEW AMSTERDAM — “Death is the Rule. Life is the Exception” Episode 410 — Pictured: (l-r) Freema Agyeman as Dr. Helen Sharpe, Ryan Eggold as Dr. Max Goodwin — (Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/NBC)
NEW AMSTERDAM vet Freema Agyeman, who played Helen Sharpe for the first four seasons of the medical drama, returned to the show for the January 3 hour, “Falling,” but there was a bit of production magic at work—the series used old, previously unseen, footage of Agyeman.
However, the original plan was for Agyeman to reprise her character as the show came to a close with new material.
“We originally wanted to save Freema’s return for the finale,” NEW AMSTERDAM executive producer David Schulner tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “We were really close to having the stars align and everything work out with that. And then it didn’t happen. So we’re like, shoot, because we had already committed to using this footage for episode 11.”
“What’s interesting was, we knew if Max and Sharpe had a conversation about their past, their future, what happened at the altar, and then Max made the decision to go to Wilder, it’s not a very heroic decision,” he continues. “The heroic decision is to go to Wilder without knowing why it happened. Why she left him at the altar, why she blew up their relationship. That’s the heroic decision: To say, ‘I choose you, without knowing why this other thing happened.’ Like, I’m taking the leap into my future instead of going back to the past. So we knew we didn’t want there to be a conversation between them. But we knew he still had to make a choice.”
In the episode, Max (Ryan Eggold) stood outside of a bar where Helen was waiting to meet him, before opting to go to Wilder (Sandra Mae Frank) and kick off their relationship. “It just worked out perfectly that we had this piece of footage of Freema waiting for someone at this bar and it provided us the perfect moment for it to be about Max,” Schulner says. “For Max to look at his past, and then decide to go toward his future. And then Freema being in the finale, we were hoping it would work out, but the stars didn’t align.”
“It’s also self-preservation for him,” adds executive producer Peter Horton. “To go into that and try and figure that out, and try and come to terms with it, peace with it, by going back into the pain of what happened is not self-care.”
NEW AMSTERDAM — “How Can I Help” Episode 513 — Pictured: (l-r) — (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/NBC)
As for the finale itself, “How Can I Help?”—the second hour of a two-episode block airing on Tuesday, January 17 at 9/8c—”It’s an origin story,” Schulner previews. “It’s about the origin of everyone’s moment of inspiration of when they wanted to be a doctor. So it’s about everyone’s past. It’s obviously about the present day, being with the characters we know and love, and then there’s also a little bit of the future in there.”
NEW AMSTERDAM, Series Finale, 9/8c, NBC
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Just saying that in terms of storyline it was actually very coward of him not entering into that bar, especially if you consider he didn’t even had any kind of relationship with Wilder yet and all the things Helen did for him before leaving, not to mention the promises they’ve both made to each other. He herd she saying “All I ever done I did for you” and “Losing me is impossible ” so it’s really hard buying the story without digging in to this “motives” that we’re never mentioned. There is absolutely nothing heroic about that. If anyone would marathon the serie would definitely get way to lost at the 5th season, cause no character made any sense. Really. Someone explain what happened there, cause it’s not possible that a single actor absence could create this much lack of coherency to the all season. It seems the balance was lost and the sense is missing since 4×22. Anyway, it use to be great. I don’t think I will watch the last episodes so I can still keep my dreaming final in my mind and move on without hating anybody…