Doctor Who star Freema Agyeman is back in her medical scrubs! She takes one of the lead roles in Amazon Prime’s new hospital drama New Amsterdam
Amazon Prime will become the UK home for the NBC drama New Amsterdam next week, when it premieres next Friday. The medical drama, set in one the United States’ oldest and most dysfunctional hospitals, casts former Doctor Who star Freema Agyeman as Dr. Helen Sharpe, head of the Oncology Department. It’s a role which sees her butt heads with the lead character, firebrand maverick Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold). Throughout the first season, it’s not just their professional differences that strain their relationship since Sharpe also knows the personal secret Goodwin is keeping from the rest of the staff.
Agyeman has kept busy since leaving the TARDIS and the role of Martha Jones behind her. She appeared in six seasons of Chris Chibnall’s Law & Order: UK as Junior Crown Prosecutor Alesha Phillips (alongside Peter Davison’s Crown Prosecutor Henry Sharpe and Bradley Walsh’s Detective Sergeant Ronnie Brooks). Following that she was one of the stars of the Sex and the City prequel The Carrie Diaries. She also starred in Netflix’s cult favourite Sense8 which featured Sylvester McCoy as the Old Man of Hoy.
With the end of Sense8, Agyeman has quickly moved on to her new role as Dr. Helen Sharpe in New Amsterdam. While her stint on Doctor Who introduced Martha first as a medical student, in New Amsterdam she’s gone up in the pretend-doctor world to play one of the senior department heads of a major hospital. As the second lead on a major American network show averaging 6.4m viewers a week, and tipped to be renewed for a second season, it also represents one of her most high profile roles yet.
New Amsterdam
Dr. Max Goodwin is brilliant, charming — and the new medical director at America’s oldest public hospital. While he’s set on tearing down the bureaucracy to provide exceptional care, the doctors and staff are not so sure. They’ve heard this before, and no one else has delivered on those promises. Not taking no for an answer, Max disrupts the status quo and proves he will stop at nothing to breathe new life into this understaffed, underfunded and underappreciated hospital — the only one in the world capable of treating Ebola patients, prisoners from Rikers Island and the President of the United States all under one roof — and return it to the glory that put it on the map. Inspired by Bellevue in New York City.
New Amsterdam premieres in the UK on Amazon Prime on the 8th of February, 2019
