‘New Amsterdam’s Tyler Labine Teases A ‘Bumpy Reentry’ For Max After Veronica’s Shakeup
‘New Amsterdam’ is going to look very different after Veronica laid down the law. HL spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Tyler Labine about the aftermath of the resistance reveal, how Iggy handles his demotion, and more.
Veronica Fuentes laid down the hammer on many of the doctors and nurses on New Amsterdam. She demoted Iggy while doctors like Bloom were fired from the hospital. Max has returned from London to take Veronica down, but it’s not going to be a simple task for Max.
HollywoodLife got EXCLUSIVE scoop from Tyler Labine about the repercussions of the resistance. Even though he’s been demoted, Tyler thinks this will “light a fire” under Iggy to “come back full force.” He also admitted that he doesn’t think Veronica was in the wrong for taking Iggy down a few notches. Read our latest season 4 Q&A below:
In the last episode, Veronica demoted Iggy, and he’s no longer head of his department because of his participation in the resistance. How is he going to be handling this demotion going forward?
Tyler Labine: I mean, it was everybody, right? We all got ratted out. I think the headline here is Reynolds, you rat. But Iggy was already very tentatively taking patients on. I’m going to say something controversial here: Veronica is not wrong. She’s not wrong. He was not behaving like the chair of the department, so I think that his ego is hurt. It is going to affect his day-to-day, but I think it’s going to light a fire under his butt, and he’s going to come back full force because she’s not wrong. Veronica’s not always wrong.
Reynolds was the one to reveal the resistance to Veronica. Does Iggy hold a grudge against Reynolds for telling Veronica?
Tyler Labine: I think it’s more Iggy tends to look at people more from a macro lens, you know what I mean? Like, I think he can step back and be like, “Okay, what was the issue? What actually was happening here for Reynolds?” But even in the scene when Veronica does her evil deed on everybody, he has to sort of awkwardly excuse himself from the room. I made sure to add a moment in there where I was looking at him with more curiosity than anger. I think that’s sort of the Iggy stance. What led you to this place? And maybe it wasn’t a terrible thing. It seems terrible, but he was really trying to do the right thing. He’s a good man. He’s a good human being and was didn’t want to endanger people and their lives. I think there’s going to be a lot of egos hurt, but the Dam Fam is strong. The Dam Fam runs deep. I think everyone will realize pretty quickly that it was not some nefarious plot.
It wasn’t a betrayal, per se. Reynolds was trying to do the right thing.
Tyler Labine: We’d all been betrayed already. Reynolds was feeling very pressured and didn’t know what to do and felt like the hospital was falling apart, and there was no one there to help him. He had to make a really big decision. And we have to ask ourselves, Max might have made the same decision. It wasn’t necessarily a good thing, this resistance.
A lot of people were let go, including Bloom. What is the atmosphere like at the hospital when we pick up in the aftermath of Veronica’s discovery?
Tyler Labine: It’s a bit of a bummer. For a season that was coined the “finding joy” season, there’s not a lot of joy at this moment. But we always have to remember that the road to joy is not joyful, right? It’s pretty bumpy. The mood is tense, and when we get back, everyone has been taken down a peg or two. Fuentes has not. She’s riding high. So that’s the vibe when we come back.
Max is back now. Does Iggy think Max has what it takes to restore order?
Tyler Labine: What I love about this is that from the get-go, there has been this savior complex. The audience is like, “We love Max.” And we do, but this time, he’s really not going to be able to just come in and save the day. It’s not going to be that easy. Namely, because all of us had to make peace with letting him and Helen go and did what we had to do to be like, okay, that part of our lives is over. He comes back and it’s like, you can’t expect people to just jump back on board with you immediately. They’ve altered their lives to move forward in a way that works for them. So in some ways, coming back is like a detriment. That’s hard to readapt, so I think there’s going to be some bumpy reentry for Max, to say the least.
We initially looked at Veronica as just the prime antagonist on New Amsterdam, but she does have her valid points. I do think she ultimately wants what is best for the hospital, she just has a different way of going about it than Max. Do you think people’s opinions of Veronica will change?
Tyler Labine: That’s a good question. I mean, we definitely have been showing the kind of origin story of Fuentes in this next episode. I think that helps to remind people that no one’s just a villain. No one just straight up wakes up in the morning and twirls their mustache and decides they’re going to go and be a villain. She was shaped by this system. This system that the show is about, it’s very broken. I think we’re going to see more and more behind the curtain of Fuentes. I don’t know where that’s going. We may end up liking her. I don’t know. She may end up flipping the script on us a bit, but it is great that the show has a villain. She’s so good at being a villain. People hate her. Michelle Forbes is the most lovely human being. She’s just really good at being a bad guy.