The Good Doctor has ended after seven successful seasons on ABC, leaving behind a bittersweet feeling for Freddie Highmore, who played the exceptional surgeon Shaun Murphy on the show. People, in an exclusive story from the Vancouver set of the beloved medical drama, reports how the British actor feels about bidding farewell to the life he lived on screen since the show’s premiere in 2017.
“It’s funny looking back at the seven years, and I think it’s going to be so hard to say goodbye to this,” Highmore, 32, says, referring to the cast and crew. “We’ve gone through so much together. COVID came in the middle of filming, and so I think that especially forced us to bond together. We were the only people that any of us were seeing outside of an immediate family for a good couple of years, and so I think when you go through those things with people, it obviously brings you closer.”
Here’s what Highmore said of The Good Doctor’s ending back in March. Feel free to compare for yourself if the esteemed on-screen doctors words aligned with the show’s finale episode that aired on May 21.
‘It’s Going To Be A Surprising Ending’ said Freddie Highmore of The Good Doctor season finale
“It’s going to be a surprising ending but also an ending that I think is all good finales do: remind us of the beginning and tie together this journey that Shaun and all of our characters have been on,” Highmore told People during his March conversation with the publication. “It will feel like in some ways we’ve come full circle, but at the same time see our characters off into the future.”
Now that the finale episode has aired and there will be no more The Good Doctor on the screens, with many of you having already bid farewell to the show by binging the last episode, we wish there was a way for you to let us know if everything Highmore said above held true or not.
The actor is particularly proud of his character, Shaun, and how the show portrayed it on screen
Throughout the seven seasons of the show, The Good Doctor chronicled the ups and downs of Highmore’s character Shaun’s life, portraying the nuances of a person with autism in a highly competitive and equally complicated healthcare space.
“That’s been the thing that’s most, and has always been, most important to me in playing the role,” Highmore says. “If there is anything I hope the show has done, I hope that in some small, tiny little way, it has helped challenge stereotypes, change people’s perceptions about autism. That would be the thing that certainly makes me most proud, and that was always our aim and intention.”
“He is so hopeful and optimistic,” the actor says of his on-screen character, adding, “I feel that’s what people have connected with about him, that he sees a good in people, that he reminds you, that even when we’re different — we’re all actually more the same than different — and I think hopefully he’s imbued me with, hopefully, he’s made me a better person.”
