David Schulner, screenwriter: ‘One vote prevented Trump from destroying the safety net of health care for the whole country. That’s when I saw how fragile our system is’

The screenwriter David Schulner, 52, walks the corridors of Vall d’Hebron hospital in Barcelona imagining plots for an episode he will never shoot. New Amsterdam ended in 2023, but every time he steps into a hospital he feels like he’s back on set because the series was filmed in real New York hospitals. And he thinks about “things we could have done better, and things that the science has changed,” he says in a room at the Barcelona public hospital complex. He speaks a few hours before giving a talk on how to use reality in medical fiction at the third International Congress on Health Communication.The son of a closet store owner and a schoolteacher, Schulner knew he would make a career of this when, as a child, he saw the musical Les Misérables. He wasn’t wrong. It would not be in theater, but he has spent decades developing hit series from Los Angeles. From 2018 to 2023 he was showrunner of New Amsterdam, a medical series that serves as a bridge between the soap-opera world of Grey’s Anatomy and the social horror of The Pitt; he is co-producer of Memory of a Killer —the recent thriller starring Patrick Dempsey (the handsome doctor from Grey’s Anatomy) and Michael Imperioli (Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos)— and is now writing Uncorked for Netflix, the next big project from Darren Star, creator of Beverly Hills, 90210, Sex and the City and Emily in Paris. Question. On New Amsterdam I learned what Duchenne muscular dystrophy is, and I believe I could intubate a stranger just from watching ER so much. Are people who think they’re doctors because of TV shows more annoying as a group?Answer. Yes, you are. And now everyone, before they go to their doctor’s appointment, they go on the internet, and they look up the symptoms or ask ChatGPT. Even my wife does it.Q. You probably don’t support that approach much.A. Of course not. New Amsterdam was based on the book about Dr. Eric Manheimer’s experiences at Bellevue Hospital in New York. We had two doctors on set and two doctors for the writers and a head nurse from that hospital advising us to stay true to surgeries and specific cases. Q. Your series conveyed the fragility of a healthcare system that is practically privatized.A. That’s the whole reason for the show. In 2016, Trump tried to dismantle Obamacare. He lost by one vote. One vote prevented him from destroying this safety net of health care for the whole country. That’s when I saw how fragile our health care system is. My conversations with Eric [Dr. Manheimer] made me understand that if you want to talk about people’s problems in the hospital, you have to talk about the problems outside the hospital that brought them there. If neighborhoods don’t have grocery stores selling fresh food, people will visit doctors more often.Q. With the series The Pitt the system isn’t just fragile, it’s disastrous.A. I would have liked to show more medical reality, but in my time people only wanted to know whether Max and Helen [two of the lead doctors] would end up together or not.Q. The world of TV series is no longer in its golden age, how do you feel about that?A. I am happy, but the industry is not happy. Ten years ago, every platform—Apple, Hulu, Peacock or Paramount—needed content to justify their existence. It was years of amazing growth for the TV industry.Q. What happened to make it slow down?A. The writers’ strike in 2023. And then the actors’ strike followed. And Wall Street went to those platforms and asked: “Where are your profits?” After those strikes, for almost a year no platform bought any projects. Now we’re in a period of contraction. The worst in 25 years. These are bad times.Q. It shows: you open the platforms and they’re full of reality shows and true crime.A. I hate it. The series I’m writing now, about a young female winemaker who’s very talented but very self-destructive and moves to Napa, California, is a comedy about the wonder of nature, about joy, friends and family. It’s my answer to true crime and all those detective shows investigating cases of murdered girls.Q. There’s a lot of murdered women and macho ranchers in Montana. New fiction is pretty essentialist about gender roles. Why is that?A. It’s Trump. Completely regressive.You cannot film in LA. It’s too expensive. New York is fully booked up. Where can you go? You can go to Toronto, you can go to Vancouver, or you can go to AtlantaQ. What happened to the great series about chaotic life in New York or other big cities? Now everything happens in Texas or Canada.A. one reason is tax credits. So you cannot film in L.A. It’s too expensive. New York is fully booked up. All the sound stages are full. You cannot make a new show in New York. Where can you go? You can go to Toronto, you can go to Vancouver, or you can go to Atlanta. And those places offer beautiful scenery. You have Eric Bana shooting Untamed, set in Yosemite, but that was Vancouver. It was very affordable.So when I write a show set in Los Angeles, or someone else writes a show set in Vancouver, they’re going to make the show set in Vancouver.Q. The success of a Canadian hockey series, Heated Rivalry, has led to a multiplication of shows about hockey teams. What do you think of this mimetic effect?A. It’s always been like that. When Lost exploded, everyone wanted to make their own Lost. It never works. Singular series like Widow’s Bay are the ones that break through. Where did they come from? From an original voice and an original idea.Q. Matt Damon said that at Netflix they force writers to state the plot three times in the script’s dialogue because people watch on their phones while the show plays in the background. Is that true?A. Netflix denied it. We have not experienced that. But again, we only have the first episode. We’ll see what our notes are as we go forward, but no, Netflix has been amazing.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition