NEW AMSTERDAM Post-Mortem: Ryan Eggold and Freema Agyeman Break Down the Big Sharpwin Moment

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the NEW AMSTERDAM season finale.]

After three seasons of will they/won’t they, NEW AMSTERDAM’s Max (Ryan Eggold) and Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) took a major step forward in their relationship.

The duo had a heart-to-heart while Max walked Sharpe home, but he faltered at her doorstep, opting to say goodnight. He left her, reconsidered, and ran back to her home and the would-be couple kissed.

“I was really excited to get to that turning point in the story, just because it has been so much fun to play with Freema over the years, and I love working with her so much,” Eggold told reporters in the video below. “And I just love whatever this thing is between Max and Sharpe has been sort of indefinable—some sort of gray area between friends and colleagues and something more. That tension has been building. When we build that tension forever and ever, ever, and [it gets to] season 10, you don’t know what’s happening, [and] it becomes frustrating…I think the story is turning at the moment that it ought to, that it feels like it should. It was a lot of fun to shoot.”

“With the Sharpwin moment, I remember saying, ‘I don’t envy the writers, because I wouldn’t know what to do with that,'” Agyeman added. “You can’t please everybody all the time, but I think they woven it exquisitely. From what I can feel and see, even the naysayers, that hated how long it has taken, are now saying, ‘Actually, had anything have happened sooner when his wife was alive or when he was bereaving, it just wouldn’t have been right.’ But then you leave it too long, and people get fed up…[for them to handle it] in the way they have done, I applaud.”

To get to that point, Eggold noted that Max had to take a big leap in that final sequence. “What was going through Max’s mind in that moment was, I think, regret, and just self-questioning,” Eggold said. “He’s had this lovely walk home with this woman that he’s clearly in love with, gets to the door, and you can come in or not…and just is afraid, as we all get in different moments, especially if we care about somebody. And [he] decides to play it safe and be a professional and be a nice guy, and just leave it alone and not go for it, not take the risk, and just leave it alone and go.”

“And then he’s standing there, looking at his past, this history, and just asking, ‘Am I gonna stay stuck in this moment of playing it safe and hanging on to what was and not moving forward, not taking a risk? Or, dammit, am I gonna go kiss this woman?'” he continued. “And he turns around and runs towards it, because it’s time; it’s past time. I think he’s wanted to do that for a long time, and he wasn’t able to for a number of reasons, including his own self-limitation and things. So I think it was just finally the decision to go for it: Do something you’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

The moment also came after Max went on a big emotional journey with his lost—and then found—wedding ring. Prior to going to Sharpe, he made the decision to take it off.

“I think you become accustomed to so much of the lifestyle or ritual or normalcy—the things that you get used to around that,” Eggold said. “So I think, certainly with your wife and having a kid with this person, and even though this person is gone, there’s a deep imprint on your soul, on your every day, on when you wake up, how you see things. And so even when you lose that person, I think there’s so much contending with who you are without this person now. And I think that ring has been this hanging on to the way it was and a sense of comfort, and all these things.”

“To now step out and and try to move on, I think it’s something that Georgia, his wife, who loved him, would have wanted for him,” he continued. “Not to stay stuck in the shadow of this relationship, but to move forward. I think it’s the right step for him. And I think, ultimately, it’s the only way he can be happy…it’s time for him to do that and it’s exciting to see him do that.”

“And to that point actually, I would add that our past is so makes up so much of who we are,” Agyeman added. “Even if you have been in any relationship, regardless of losing that person through death, that person might not be in your life anymore, but they have informed it in so many ways that I think any new relationship, we all encounter, it’s not starting from a brand new plain piece of paper; there’s already text and script on there. Our past very much is part of who we are, but we do have to find a way to metabolize that and also not have it prevent us from moving forward.”

“So I think their relationship will be very much, I would hope, knowing our writers, I don’t think you can completely forget what that person went through and what the person they lost meant to them and all that— that has to still play a part—but they have to find some navigate some new landscape,” she continued. “Maybe together.”

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• NEW AMSTERDAM Says Goodbye to a Series Regular
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• NEW AMSTERDAM’s Jocko Sims on Reynolds’ Return: ‘No One’s Safe’
• NEW AMSTERDAM’s Ryan Eggold on the Season 3 Premiere Twist: ‘We’re Not Invincible’
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• NEW AMSTERDAM’s Ryan Eggold Previews Max’s Search for a ‘Fundamental Kind of Change’ in Season 3
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