This doc can’t stand the sight of blood
Ryan Eggold stars in the first breakout hit of the fall season
“How can I help you?”
Ryan Eggold gets asked that a lot nowadays. And it’s not because he’s shopping for shoes. That’s the signature line of his character Dr. Max Goodwin on the medical drama New Amsterdam.
“I’ve been hearing people say that and it’s really exciting when someone comes up and greets you with that. We’ve only had a few shows air and people seem to be noticing,” says Eggold in an interview.
The 34-year-old Californian is riding high as the star of the first big breakout hit of the fall season. New Amsterdam is not only the most watched new show in Canada.
As of last week it was the fourth most watched show in the country, behind Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon and The Good Doctor.
Its rank on the Top 5 is a phenomenal start for a rookie series — and it was also the first drama ordered to a full season by NBC. In Canada, the show airs Tues-
days on Global. New Amsterdam is based on the memoirs of Dr. Eric Manheimer’s Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital, which chronicles his15 years as medical director at the New York institution where the series is also partially shot.
“He’s not the kind of medical director that sits behind a desk and answers the phone. He’s on the ground talking to patients asking how he can help.
He’s not being a bureaucrat, he’s being a healer,” says Eggold. “And I think people are loving that message that people should come first.”
The premiere of the show is frenetic, moving from one crisis to the next, even as the main character Goodwin is battling his own troubled marriage and impending birth of a child while fighting cancer. In the premiere episode, in scenes that stretch credulity, the idealistic Goodwin fires all the heart surgeons in his first meeting because they have prioritized billing over patients, leaving the hospital without any cardiac care. And he cavalierly gets rid of the waiting room, while also introducing healthy food choices in the cafeteria.
“It does move fast and we’re hoping to find that balance,” says Eggold. “You can have too fast and I think we’ve settled in at the right pace; you don’t want to go so fast that you are tripping over yourself. But I think what he was doing was pretty ballsy.”
In some ways, the pacing resembles Eggold’s last show The Blacklist, and spinoff Blacklist: Redemption, where he played undercover operative Tom Keen alongside James Spader, Famke Janssen and Megan Boone. That character (spoiler alert) was shockingly killed off in the last season, paving the way for Eggold’s starring role in New Amsterdam.
But before that, Eggold is perhaps best remembered as English literature teacher Ryan Matthews in the CW reboot of 90210. He was recently also on the big screen in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman.
His new series stars Freema Agyeman, Janet Montgomery, Jocko Sims, Anupam Kher and Tyler Labine. Medical dramas with a positive spin have had a bit of a comeback this season, particularly in the wake of ABC’s The Good Doctor. NBC also has Chicago Medwhile Fox is countering with The Resident.
“It’s been a little crazy. The day after I shot the scene where I died on The Blacklist I’m on the set of BlacKkKlansman. Such a crazy transition. It was like, ‘Wait a sec. Where am I?’ And it’s been pretty much like that ever since.”
Despite the fact that he is playing a medical director as superhero, Eggold’s Kryptonite has always been the fact that he can’t stand the sight of blood. Not great if you are constantly in a hospital setting.
“I’m a little squeamish. The inner workings of the human body are terrifying for me,” he says. “The prosthetics they use are incredibly realistic. They’re cutting hearts and pieces of lungs. And they’re playing videos of actual surgeries. But I really can’t watch that stuff.”
One thing he does hope is that Americans can see the value in universal health care.
“I think the message of the show is that we shouldn’t be treating health care solely as an opportunity to make money,” he says. “We shouldn’t be monetizing the operations that people desperately need, although of course money has to be involved. I think hopefully in our country we will find some version of that and catching up to the rest of the world in giving people that right to have access to the medical care they deserve.”