The Blacklist’s Ryan Eggold Leads New Medical Drama Pilot For NBC
‘The Blacklist’ star Ryan Eggold is trading his spycraft in for medical skills as he takes the lead role in a new medical drama for NBC it has been announced.
Written by David Schulner (‘Emerald City’, ‘Do No Harm’, ‘The Event’) the show is based on the memoir ‘Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital’ by the former medical director at NYC’s Bellevue Hospital, Dr Eric Manheimer.
Eggold plays Max Hollander, a man driven to the point of exhausting himself and everyone around him including his wife, who recently separated from him. He is a doctor specialising in internal medicine and has been hired as Medical Director at the hospital. He is determined to do whatever it takes to restore to the place to its former glory or get kicked out trying.
The rest of the cast also has some familiar faces in it. Former ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Sense8’ star Freema Agyeman is set to play the hospital’s lead physician, Dr Hana Sharpe, although she has spent more time recently making tv appearances to “big up” the hospital than actually practised medicine. She’s joined by another ‘Sense8’ alumnus Anupam Kher (‘The Big Sick’), who is playing Dr Anil Kapoor. He’s the oldest doctor in the hospital, and knows things need to change there, but doesn’t feel he needs to change with them. Janet Montgomery (‘This Is Us’, ‘Salem’) takes the female lead as Dr Laura Bloom, an attending ER doctor who is spreading herself too thin by moonlighting to make more money.
Ryan Eggold played Tom Keen in ‘The Blacklist’, and ‘The Blacklist: Redemption’. When the spin-off series was cancelled after one season, he returned for the first half of Season 5.
The as-yet-untitled character-driven medical drama was previously known as ‘Bellevue’, but then Anna Paquin’s new Canadian crime drama used the name, so they needed to come up with a new title. Kate Dennis (‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, ‘I’m Dying Up Here’, ‘GLOW’) is set to direct the pilot.
As this is only at the pilot stage there is no guarantee it’ll go to series, but we’ll let you know when we hear more.
