Karen Brantley (Debra Monk), Chairman of the Board of Directors at New Amsterdam Medical Center, had a knee jerk reaction to the news, and she left the party and immediately phoned Veronica Fuentes (Michelle Forbes) to step in as the new Medical Director. Veronica’s first business chore on arriving was to hit up every department to find out where changes, i.e., cuts, could be made, so by the time her identity was revealed to the staff, it was too late for them to try to sway her opinion. Now, Max is struggling with the new fiscal reality at the hospital as Karen told him that in the three weeks he has remained, he and Veronica have to agree on anything to put it into effect, but it is clear that Veronica is just biding her time until Max is gone and she undoes everything he worked so hard to accomplish when it came to humanizing New Amsterdam. Parade.com spoke to Forbes about her new role as someone fans of the series are already loving to hate about why it was important to her to take on the role of such an unpopular character.
You tend to play a lot of authoritative, strong women, which is what Veronica seems like after seeing the two episodes. What made her different enough, though, that you said, “I’m going to play this type of woman again?”
I think it was the debate that we’re all watching unfold in this storyline of idealism versus pragmatism and how that plays out within this structure of a public hospital during these times. All of our public institutions, our public post offices, our public schools, our public hospitals, our public libraries, how do they continue to operate in a world that is more corporatized, when we’re in the late stages of capitalism and we’re living in a monopolistic world? What kind of person does it take to keep institutions alive? That, to me, was a really important question. It’s probably one of the most important questions we have in our country right now. I wanted to be a part of that. And I did see some room for a little bit of humor or what have you, but mostly I was interested in the overall discussion of these two opposing ideologies.
Why was Veronica the first call that Karen Brantley made? Do they have a back story together?
Sure, they know each other from conferences, and they probably worked together at some hospital in the past. All these people know each other from conferences and what have you. I think Veronica has a very solid reputation for being a fixer. If things are going off the rails, you call Veronica. Her reputation is extremely solid. I guess once Karen saw that not only was the hospital not doing great financially to begin with, hemorrhaging finances, and not operating at its best, and now her medical director and one of her doctors is leaving, so she’s in quite a bind and she’s got to call in the person who’s going to get it fixed.
And yet when Karen called her, didn’t she say, “I need your help.” And so, in my mind, Karen has this plan to get Max not to leave by bringing in this woman that is the antithesis of everything he would want in somebody who would replace him.
Could very well be. Absolutely. But I don’t think Veronica would be in on that. I don’t think Veronica would waste her time with a game like that. So, Karen may be playing her, absolutely.
We know that you said Karen and Veronica knew each other from conferences and they may have worked together, and we do know that she worked with Max somewhere. Do you know what that background is?
That will be revealed down the line, so I’m going to tease that and say that it will be revealed down the line. Sorry to be so cryptic.
How much will Veronica be shaking things up as the new medical director?
She’s got some rattles and she’s going to use them. If you’ve ever renovated a house, sometimes you have to take it down to its nuts and bolts and you have to remove the walls and the ceilings to reinstall a better version. That’s how she’s looking at it. She feels like she needs to strip it down to its bare bones and resurrect it. None of it is personal in her eyes. Everything is a number to her. It’s all about getting the job done and everything is a number.
When you take down a house in order for it to be considered a rebuild as opposed to a new build, you have to leave at least one wall standing, right? So, is there something that she will leave standing?
Oh, I’m sure there’s a part of the commissary or something.
She hit every single department and found something to be improved.
That is indeed her job. She has to go in with a surgeon’s scalpel, no pun intended, and find out what the problem is and fix it. Again, in her eyes, it is all about pragmatism. She doesn’t have a grudge against anyone there, there is no grudge, there is no punishment, it is just about the bottom line and doing the math.
For you personally is it fun to play this take-no-prisoners character? It’s something that maybe you don’t do in your real life, and you get to leave all that on the set.
I’ll tell you this hasn’t been fun for me in that regard. I think it’s been important for me to really sit down and meditate on the overall question. But she’s kind of my greatest fear about what’s happening in the world. As you know, I’ve played a lot of not very nice people or villains. But either they’ve been fantastical, or it’s something that doesn’t quite hit home. She hasn’t been fun to play, because although I understand her argument, it’s an argument that makes sense in the moment but it is lacking in all humanity and all empathy. What I’m so grateful that I get to do in this industry is to explore things that I wouldn’t normally explore, that are outside of my comfort zone, outside of my ideology, and step into other people’s shoes to try to understand what they’re thinking, how do they sleep at night. Unfortunately, I think she sleeps just fine and that kind of unnerves me.
Veronica gets to say hurtful things like, “I’ve never replaced a successful medical director.”
I will say, in her defense in that moment, she was just giving him a bit of truth. She didn’t mean to hurt. It is a harsh thing to say but, again, she didn’t mean to hurt him. His idealism is profound, and I would personally me, the actor, would gravitate more toward somebody like Max than Veronica, obviously. And the fact that he never gives up hope is, I think, a beacon and a north star to everyone during these very bleak and dark times. If you only govern from pure idealism and you lose everything then what was the point? There is some validity to her argument. It’s somewhere in between. I would move it more toward him, but they’re somewhere in between. His idealism is going to drown the hospital, is drowning the hospital. Under her pragmatism and her reign of terror, the hospital may still stay standing, but at what cost? This is the moral dilemma that I wanted to explore and what drew me to the show. New Amsterdam airs Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Next, Check Out Our Complete Diagnosis for New Amsterdam Season 4!
