‘The Good Doctor’ Freddie Highmore Speaks out About Lea and Shaun’s ‘Exciting’ Future

The Good Doctor quickly became a hit after premiering on ABC in the fall of 2017, making a star out of its lead actor, Freddie Highmore.

Highmore portrays the titular good doctor on the show, Dr. Shaun Murphy, an autistic surgical resident who spends the majority of the series’ first season proving his worth. He also struck up a friendship with his former neighbor Lea (Paige Spara), who left town in the series’ midseason premiere.

Spara has since been confirmed to be returning as a series regular during Season 2, giving fans hope for a relationship between the two characters.

During the latest episode of Entertainment Weekly‘s Chasing Emmy podcast, Highmore shared that fans can expect to see more of Shaun and Lea together in the show’s upcoming episodes.

“Absolutely, yes we can,” he said. “It’s funny because actors can usually just rely on the excuse that they have no idea what’s coming, so they don’t have to give any teases about what’s happening in season 2. But I’m actually in the middle of being in the writers’ room, so I know lots of what’s going to happen with Lea and Shaun, and all of it is exciting, but” — yes, here’s that but we were dreading — “I can’t reveal any of it.”

In addition to starring on the show, Highmore is now serving as a writer on the drama, which will begin shooting its second season at the end of June. Until then, the actor said he has been focusing “on being as helpful as I possibly can be to the brilliant writers [on the show].”

The 26-year-old added that The Good Doctor creator David Shore “has taken me under his wing and let me write an episode this second season, and direct one, too.”

Highmore told Vulture that being in the writers’ room for The Good Doctor reminds him of college, “holed away at night, working. I get that joy now from writing a little bit.” The actor enrolled in Cambridge University in 2010, majoring in in Arabic and Spanish.

He also found his way to the writers’ room on a previous project, A&E’s Bates Motel, which saw him play the troubled Norman Bates, originally made famous in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

As far as his role on The Good Doctor, Highmore acknowledged that Shaun has impacted not only the audience but the actor who plays him as well.

“Shaun has probably made us a little less cynical or brings out a more optimistic side and view of life, and I think he’s made me a better person,” he shared.

Photo Credit: ABC