UNDER CONSTRUCTION
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New Amsterdam Staff
Max Goodwin
Dr. Max Goodwin
Played By: Ryan Eggold
The series protagonist, Dr. Goodwin is hired to be the new medical director of New Amsterdam and begins making drastic changes to the way the hospital operates. He is determined to change the entire medical system and is willing to do anything to help his patients. He contracts cancer in Season 1 which serves as his main conflict until Season 2.
- Catchphrase: "How can I help?", which are also the show's Arc Words.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: He will always try to do everything he can to help as many people as he can.
- Determinator: Max never gives up, on anything. At one point after he nearly collapses in the lobby while carting around a box of supplies, a nurse asks him if he needs a wheelchair. Cut to him using the wheelchair as a cart for the supplies.
- Genius Ditz: He is an extremely competent doctor that pays little attention to the parts of his job not immediately connected to patient care and is wildly impulsive, not always great at taking people's feelings into consideration before steamrolling them, so terrible a receptionist in the time he was waiting for his UK medical license to arrive that Sharpe fired him, and downright bad at managing his personal life.
- Good Is Not Soft: Max is a good man that cares about his patients' health and well being more than anything else. He will also threaten, blackmail, manipulate, and outright break laws in order to achieve his goals.
- Heroic RRoD: As his cancer progresses over the course of Season 1, he gets physically weaker and weaker and his condition is made worse by his refusal to stop working to the point where Sharpe has to force him to go home and stop working before he ends up killing himself.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: He begins the series with nurses concerned about all the people he fired when he was running a clinic in Chinatown.
- Innocently Insensitive: It's undeniable that Max always means well, but his missions of goodwill often step on more toes than what he's trying to fix already does.
- Married to the Job: His demanding job, workaholic nature, and insistence upon always going well beyond the job description, even when he has a pregnant wife and is dying of cancer, wreak havoc on his relationship with his wife and later daughter.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Goodwin, as medical director, comes in and completely shakes up the status quo at New Amsterdam, so much so that he fires all but one cardiac surgeon and many more senior staff immediately walk out because of the changes he makes.
- Ultimate Job Security: Despite completely upending the entire hospital on his first day and causing major disturbances in the system ranging from a boycott on a pharmaceutical company to outright socialism, Dr. Goodwin still manages to keep his job as medical director of New Amsterdam. Lampshaded by Goodwin when Dean Fulton attempted to fire him for firing the entire cardio-surgical department.
- Workaholic: So much so that Casey is shocked when he's not present, pointing out that "[Goodwin] is always here".
Helen Sharpe
Dr. Helen Sharpe
Played By: Freema Agyeman
Dr. Sharpe is an oncologist at New Amsterdam and Dr. Goodwin's right-hand woman. She's well known for appearing on TV in debates and interviews, raising money for the hospital and raising awareness of certain issues. She struggles with her relationship with Dr. Goodwin and can be an anchor to some of his more outlandish ideas.
- Casting Gag: This is not the first time Freema Agyeman has played someone with medical training.
- Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: A variation. Helen Sharpe begins the series as a media star who loves going on TV and traveling to conferences around the world to talk about medicine. She'd grown to dislike actually treating patients because it's so emotionally taxing and avoids it as much as possible. Max has to strong-arm her into practicing medicine again.
- The Lancer: Max's Deputy and closest friend and confidant at New Amsterdam.
- Maternally Challenged: Revealed as such after becoming the legal guardian of her niece Meena. Sharpe struggles to connect, and flip-flops between too controlling and too lenient.
- Parental Substitute: When she and Max become a couple, Helen becomes a mother figure for Luna. Max even teaches his daughter to call Helen "Mum".
Iggy Frome
Dr. Iggy Frome
Played By: Tyler Labine
Dr. Frome is the head of psychiatry at New Amsterdam. A lovable man full of jokes and empathy, he finds himself acting as a therapist to his co-workers on multiple occasions.
- Big Eater: He tries to eat healthy because he knows he can go overboard with junk food. Eventually gets deconstructed when it's revealed he's a compulsive overeater with body issues.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: He can't let any injustices go, a behavior heightened by Goodwin's arrival. He'll go all the way to help his patients, with various consequences.
- The episodes Preventable and This Is Not The End feature Iggy being charged with a formal complaint and investigation for violating doctor-patient boundaries by being too personal with his patients.
- Eventually deconstructed when another psychiatrist gently points out that his need to inject himself in sensitive situations to try and help are indicative of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
- In Season 2, Iggy suggests adopting another child, a choice that exasperates and frustrates his husband, Martin.
- Good Parents: Dr. Frome and his husband have adopted multiple children from Bangladesh and they all live happily in their cozy New York apartment with two dogs.
- It's All About Me: His Chronic Hero Syndrome is eventually diagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He's constantly trying to help others because he has a psychological need for the attention and adulation it brings him.
- Only Sane Man: He considers himself to be this in regards to the foster system. All the system wants him to do is to get troubled children calm enough so they can be placed with a foster family while he knows that there's a good chance that the children will be abused and be sent back to him in worse shape.
- Straight Gay: He has a husband at home.
- Those Two Guys: Drs. Frome and Kapoor often get paired together both because their specialties (psychiatry and neurology, respectively) are related and because their diametrically opposed personalities mean they play well off of one another.
Lauren Bloom
Dr. Lauren Bloom
Played By: Janet Montgomery
Dr. Bloom runs the emergency room at New Amsterdam. She's a sarcastic woman who battles drug addiction and often pushes people away.
- Addled Addict: Gets addicted to Adderal to manage the stress of running the ER and eventually has to go to rehab to get herself off of it.
- Alcoholic Parent: Her mother was a severe alcoholic, and as a child, she was often forced to deal with the consequences of her mother's drinking. When she was old enough to go to college, she fled all the way to Washington to get away.
- Fatal Flaw: Unsurprisingly for an addict, Bloom sucks at keeping balance in her life. She's either all in or all out.
- Hypocrite: When a group of senior citizens is admitted for STDs that have been circulating in their retirement community, she takes it upon herself to teach them the importance of condom use. Given that she's had two abortions in her life (one around the time the series began), she's clearly not practicing what she preaches.
- Informed Judaism: Her religion isn't discussed until she suddenly blurts out that her father used to take her out for whitefish after synagogue.
- Platonic Life-Partners: With Casey, and all but invoked in 3.12 "Things Fall Apart" when Bloom, admitted to the hospital with serious injuries from the chemical spill in the ED, tearfully admits to him that she can't do this work without him. He immediately reneges on his earlier-stated plans to take a job at a different hospital.
- Workaholic: So dedicated to her job that she didn't take any vacation at all for years and her coworkers were shocked to see her not there.
Vijay Kapoor
Dr. Vijay Kapoor
Played By: Anupam Kher
Dr. Kapoor is the head of Neurology at New Amsterdam. He's an Indian immigrant trying to repair his relationship with his son Rohan. He's close friends with Iggy Frome and can seem absent-minded.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He appears absent-minded and overly cautious, but he's actually a top-notch diagnostician.
- Foil: Dr. Kapoor is this to Dr. Goodwin. While Goodwin wants to immediately start treating patients for the symptoms they exhibit, Kapoor advocates a more methodical approach to diagnose the root cause of the symptoms, pointing out that quick treatments can oftentimes only serve to mask the underlying cause and result in death.
- Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: The cold open to "14 Years, 2 Months, 8 Days" tracks the titular time frame and sees Kapoor going from a full head of hair and beard to his current bald head and mustache.
- Put on a Bus: Kapoor departs New Amsterdam after his battle with COVID severely damaged his heart.
- Those Two Guys: Drs. Frome and Kapoor often get paired together both because their specialties (psychiatry and neurology, respectively) are related and because their diametrically opposed personalities mean they play well off of one another.
Floyd Reynolds
Dr. Floyd Reynolds
Played By: Jocko Sims
Dr. Reynolds is the new head of the cardiology department, he was originally fired by Max along with the whole department. Max re-hired and promoted him on the same day.
- A Father to His Men: Becomes very protective of his staff.
- Black and Nerdy: He completely geeks out over medical equipment and happily recalls how his mother used to buy him all the books he wanted each birthday.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: He gets plenty of attention for his looks.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Implied to have one when it's revealed he was previously arrested.
Casey Acosta
Casey Acosta
Played By: Alejandro Hernandez
A nurse in the Emergency Department, and a good friend of Bloom's.
- The Big Guy: He's not actually all that big (a shade under 6 foot), but regularly appearing with much shorter actors (Janet Montgomery as Bloom at 5'6" is probably the next tallest cast member among ED regulars) makes him appear this way, as does his "spear" tackle of a drug-addled patient assaulting Nurse Brunstetter (played by the 5'0" Em Grosland) in 3.4 "This Is All I Need."
- Nice Guy: He's great with colleagues and patients alike.
Evie Garrison
Evie Garrison
Played By: Margot Bingham
A member of New Amsterdam's legal team. Reynolds' girlfriend, later fiancée.
- The Smart Girl: She's very good at her job, eventually getting an offer to lead her own team.
Dora
Dora
Played By: Zabryna Guevara
Max's assistant, forever chasing him down for one task or another.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Sadly to the point she ends up leaving.
- Put on a Bus: Between seasons one and two. There's a throwaway line about her taking a desk job with regular hours, and thus won't be back at New Amsterdam. She does make two guest appearances in season 3 as per that job, though.
- Servile Snarker: She copes with the stress her boss puts her through with heaping doses of snark.
Agnes Kao
Dr. Agnes Kao
Played By: Christine Chang
One of Kapoor's interns.- Plucky Girl: To Kapoor's more serious and dour attitude.
Michael Duke
Michael Duke
Played By: Ian Duff
The brightest intern in the cardiology department.- Ditzy Genius: He is seen as this because despite his skills he suffers from poor attendance.
- Oh, Crap!: He realizes he missed something in his diagnosis, sure enough the patient returns in a worse state.
- The Usurper: He tells Reynolds in the future, he wants his job.
Valentina Castro
Dr. Valentina Castro
Played By: Ana Villafane
Max's new oncologist, she runs her own cancer clinical trial.- The Rival: In many ways she is this to Sharpe, as they had a poor history and are now co-chairs.
Zach Ligon
Dr. Zach Ligon
Played By: JJ Feild
One of the physical therapists of the hospital, and the one mostly responsible for Bloom's case.- Blatant Lies: He eventually admits he lied to Bloom about her missing pill.
- Break the Haughty: His relationship with Bloom seem to have a mutual aspect of this.
- Broken Ace: A brilliant doctor but struggling with his own problems.
- Cynical Mentor: When Bloom asks him to essentially act as her sponsor, he says he will be this.
- Dr. Jerk: He's like this with Bloom, there is no mention of this with regular patients.
- Functional Addict: Bloom didn't even know he was one until she sees him in a meeting.
- Smug Snake: After Bloom makes it clear she doesn't want him coddling her.
Other Characters
Karen Brantley
Karen Brantley
Played By: Debra Monk
- The Alleged Boss: Max is supposed to answer to her, but he has a habit of Take a Third Option whenever she asks him to do something unpleasant.
- Lady in a Power Suit: She is almost always dressed for a meeting.
- Sour Supporter: She likes many of Max's changes, but expect her to initially be against them.
- The Usurper: She was the one who got the board to replace Fulton.
Akash Panthaki
Dr. Akash Panthaki
Played By: Sendhil Ramamurthy
The head of an experimental cancer clinic trial and formerly Sharpe's boyfriend.- Famed In-Story: He apparently has a lot of TV appearances.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Given he’s played by Sendhil Ramanurthy.
Fulton
Dean Fulton
Played By: Ron Rifkin
The former Dean of Medicine, he was the one who hired Max.- Broken Pedestal: After Max finds out he once covered a doctor's malpractice and left a patient crippled.
- Cool Old Guy: Despite his years, he proves himself still a capable doctor.
Georgia Goodwin
Georgia Goodwin
Played By: Lisa O Hare
Max's wife and the mother of Luna.- Death by Irony: After narrowly surviving her daughter's home birth, Georgia dies on route to the hospital when her ambulance gets in an accident.
- Lost Lenore: Becomes this after her death.
Leyla Shinwari
Leyla Shinwari
Played By: Shiva Kalaiselvan
Leyla Shinwari is a trained doctor and was one in Pakistan but since moving to the United States is having to retrain there before she can practice again. She is Lauren Bloom's girlfriend and lives with her.