'New Amsterdam' Cast Member Promoted to Series Regular for Season 5
The last season of New Amsterdam will feature more of Dr. Elizabeth Wilder. Sandra Mae Frank was promoted to series regular for Season 5, TVLine confirmed Tuesday. Frank joined the medical drama during its fourth season in a recurring capacity.
In the Season 4 premiere, Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) interviewed Wilder, a deaf surgeon, to replace Dr. Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) as the titular hospital's new medical director. Wilder decided against taking the job but still joined the New Amsterdam staff as Chief of Oncology. She appeared in 12 of Season 4's 22 episodes.
The Season 4 finale, "I'll Be Your Shelter," airs on NBC Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET and finds the cast dealing with a weather crisis just as Max and Helen are about to tie the knot. In the May 17 episode, "Castles Made of Sand," Helen was on a plane from London to New York, so fans will have to tune in to see if she makes it to the wedding on time.
"Obviously, no one was planning for this hurricane to hit. It was coming for the Carolinas and then changes directions pretty abruptly," New Amsterdam executive producer David Schulner told TVLine. "So that's really where everyone finds themselves, having to worry about something that, literally and figuratively, was not on their radar hours before."
New Amsterdam was created by Schulner and is inspired by Eric Manheimer's book Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital. The show has been a big hit for NBC since premiering in September 2018. In January 2020, the network picked up the show for three seasons. In March, NBC said the fifth season will be its last and will run 13 episodes. Schulner told TVLine the Season 4 finale was already written when he heard Season 5 would be the show's last.
"The finale is more reflective of [Episode] 401 than anything having to do with Season 5. You end where you begin," he said. "And so we wanted 401 to kind of set up this trajectory for Max and Sharpe, and this is clearly where it was leading to." Schulner also teased a big cliffhanger, as "cliffhangers are something that we obviously love to do, and love to give our audience that kind of anticipation for next season, so you can definitely expect something."
Frank's other credits include Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Daybreak, Reverse Polarity, and Switched at Birth. The actress is deaf in real life, and she hopes to be an inspiration for the deaf and hearing communities. "The real-world situations in schools, hospitals outside in any environment to really apply that for themselves as well not to just say, 'Oh, this is a cool thing that I saw on TV,' but to actually hire people in real life," she told NBC. New Amsterdam is available to stream on Hulu and Peacock.