As TV shows are shut down, with productions closed and series going into hiatus, medical dramas such as Fox’s The Resident, NBC’s New Amsterdam and ABC’s The Good Doctor, Grey’s Anatomy and its spinoff show Station 19 have decided to donate their surplus medical supplies from sets to real hospitals and locals in need.
“At Station 19 we were lucky enough to have about 300 of the coveted N95 masks which we donated to our local fire station — they were tremendously grateful,” the show’s executive producer Krista Vernoff, who also works on Grey’s Anatomy, told The Hollywood Reporter. When Station 19 heard that the City of Ontario, California’s fire department was out of masks and recycling the ones they had, the show decided to donate its stock in addition to giving masks to the Station 35 firehouse in Los Angeles' Los Feliz neighborhood. Grey’s Anatomy donated “backstock gowns and gloves” from its costume department, which it gave to local L.A. hospitals.
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Meanwhile, in Atlanta, The Resident’s creators and producers donated supplies to the nearby Grady Memorial Hospital. Showrunner Amy Holden Jones coordinated efforts once she was flagged by co-creators Hayley Schore and Dr. Roshan Sethi, who was her medical advisor for The Resident. In addition, Dr. Daniella Lamas, who co-wrote this season's finale, also notified Jones that they were “short of supplies at the best hospitals in the country.” This news moved the exec into action with the help of Dr. Sethi, who organized efforts alongside production manager David Hartley, who was on the grounds in Atlanta. “He got the email and drove in, opened up the locked stages and personally went through and collected all the materials,”Jones said of Hartley, who filled two trunks with gloves, gowns, masks, caps, shoe covers, scrubs, hair covers, lab coats and isolation gowns, among other items.
“It’s pretty appalling to think that our doctors and nurses at hospitals don’t have the proper protection — they’re facing these patients who are highly contagious without being protected,” Jones told THR of the urgent need for the two trunks filled with medical items taken from their closed production to Grady, where Dr. Karen Law posted a grateful message with a photo of the supplies on her personal Instagram page. “It was the very least we could do — doctors are our heroes on the show. It was very moving to us all that we could do anything because we all feel so powerless.”
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New Amsterdam’s showrunner David Schulner confirmed that the show donated “everything to Bellevue Hospital in NYC,” where the series is actually shot, following the shutdown of production. One of the show’s stars, Daniel Dae Kim, who plays a doctor who gets recruited to a new hospital to help patients — coincidentally — during a pandemic, revealed Thursday that he has been diagnosed with COVID-19 after production had shut down. “Every department, set decorators, costumes, props went through their storage units,” Schulner said after claiming to be asymptomatic while filming. “It’s being inspected by an NBC representative before being sent.”
The Good Doctor, which is based in Vancouver, pulled their medical stock — coordinated by executive producer Erin Gunn — to send to the local provincial Canadian government to distribute and use. “We are all overwhelmed with gratitude for our healthcare workers during this incredibly difficult time,” Vernoff added. “In addition to these donations, we are doing our part to help them by staying home.”
