‘New Amsterdam’ Series Finale: Exec Producer Peter Horton Says “It’s A Mystery As To Why It Was Canceled”
18.01.2023 - 07:35
/ deadline.com
SPOILER ALERT! This story contains plots points from the series finale of New Amsterdam.
So long, good doctors of New Amsterdam: The drama about an old public hospital from creator/executive producer David Schulner, director/executive producer Peter Horton and Universal Television ended its five-season run Tuesday on NBC. Launched in 2018, the series was inspired by the book Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital by Eric Manheimer.
Here, Schulner and Horton reflect on what they did and didn’t do in the final episode, and why they think its way too early to wrap up the drama that stars Ryan Eggold, Janet Montgomery, Jocko Sims, Tyler Labine, Debra Monk, Matthew Jeffers, and Sandra Mae Frank.
DEADLINE Did you have a checklist going into the finale with things that you wanted to include, like a chainsaw accident?
PETER HORTON Yes, that was the whole basis for the episode. We thought chainsaws, what can we do with chainsaws?
DAVID SCHULNER We only thought about our core cast. How do we honor those characters that we’ve come to know and love over five years?
DEADLINE Did you know how this was going to end from the very beginning? Had you been imagining this ending for a while, that you’d come full circle with ‘how can I help you?’
SCHULNER We knew the ending would have to come out of the beginning, just because that’s good storytelling. So we definitely went back to the pilot to find where these characters started and what would be a satisfying yet surprising conclusion.
DEADLINE Did you talk for a while about killing off Max (Eggold) to cancer?
SCHULNER It felt a little too easy. And ER did it with Dr. Green. There are many shows that came before us. We just wanted to avoid any duplication.
HORTON And