Dr. Marcus Andrews hasn’t just forfeited his job as president of St. Bonaventure Hospital on ABC’s The Good Doctor. He’s leaving San Jose behind entirely.
As TVLine was first to report, original cast member (and U.S. Senate hopeful) Hill Harper exited the medical drama ahead of its seventh and final season. He was one of four remaining series regulars from The Good Doctor Season 1, including leading man Freddie Highmore (who stars as Dr. Shaun Murphy), Richard Schiff (who played Shaun’s surrogate father, Dr. Aaron Glassman) and Chuku Modu (who reprized his role as Dr. Jared Kalu midway through Season 6).
The Season 6 finale sets the stage for Harper’s exit, having Dr. Andrews resigned as president — but it wasn’t Tuesday’s Season 7 premiere that his whereabouts were revealed.
Early into the episode, Nurse Dalisay Villanueva (played by recurring guest star Elfina Luk) approximately chief of surgery Dr. Audrey Lim (series regular Christina Chang) with an update on Andrews:
Villaneuva: Marcus sends greetings from Spain.
Lim: Oh! I thought he was at a meditation retreat in Vietnam?
Villaneuva: He was… and now he’s walking the Camino de Santiago.
The Good Doctor Season 7, Episode 1: “Baby, Baby, Baby”
So, why have Andrews packed up and left his longtime home in California? “Since he got divorced, Andrews has been juggling a lot [at the hospital] and trying to find a fit for himself,” executive producer Liz Friedman tells TVLine. “He was involved with Salen — that, obviously, was not meant to be — and he had a relationship with Villanueva, but I think the job has been very subsuming for him. To have him take a moment, having stepped down, to go and find himself, seemed like the right thing for the character.”
Official word of Harper’s departure came four months after he announced his candidacy. He is running for political office in the state of Michigan, where he will challenge Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin for the seat currently held by outgoing senator Debbie Stabenow.
“Hill Harper feels strongly that there is a crisis in American democracy — too often, government only works for the rich and powerful while the rest of us struggle to find a voice,” Harper’s campaign correspondent told TVLine in November. “Hill is dedicating his efforts full time to fix that, and he’s running for the U.S. Senate as an active union member to give working people more of a voice in Congress.”
Friedman, meanwhile, fully backs Harper’s decision to leave the show and run for office. “I think it’s phenomenal that he is willing to get himself involved and be of service,” she says.
Harper is a lawyer-turned-actor who graduated from Brown University (with Latin honors) and Harvard Law. Prior to The Good Doctor, he starred as Dr. Sheldon Hawkes on the long-running CBS procedural CSI: NY, which ran for nine seasons and ended in 2013.
