Chicago Med might have said goodbye to a couple of original cast members last season (Brian Tee and Nick Gehlfuss), but the ED is getting help from some new blood this year.
The Wilds‘ Sophia Ali has joined the cast in the recurring role of Dr. Zola Ahmad, TV Insider has learned. In order to help her patients, Zola often acts impulsively in ways the hospital doesn’t approve of. She will be introduced in the second episode of the season, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us,” airing January 24. Check out photos of her above and below.
George Burns Jr/NBC
Executive producers Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider previously teased this new resident. “She’s someone who will cause a lot of headaches for the Chief of the ED, Archer [Steven Weber],” Schneider shared. “She will overstep. She’s impulsive.”
That’s not all that Archer will be dealing with. Also coming up in Zola’s first episode, a woman from his past returns and threatens his transplant surgery. He’d been hesitant about accepting his son’s kidney — Sean (Luigi Sottile) is now sober and can donate — in the premiere. Plus, Crockett (Dominic Rains) clashes with Med’s new eager first-year resident, and Charles (Oliver Platt) works to repair his relationship with Ripley (Luke Mitchell).
Ripley is the other new doctor in the ED, and the attending has a history with Charles that the premiere began to unpack; he thinks the Head of Psychiatry overmedicated, then essentially abandoned him when he treated him when he was young. “The whole thing has forced Charles to look back on things he did as a psychiatrist years ago and to do some soul searching,” Schneider shared.
And they’ll all be dealing with the hospital under its new management. “The hospital now has new owners, kind of a business consortium, and down the line that will prove to be a headache for [Sharon, played by S. Epatha Merkerson] in some ways,” the EP teased.
Chicago Med, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
