Freddie Highmore was front-and-center on Sunday for a panel for his upcoming ABC series The Good Doctor, as part of the Television Critics Association summer tour held in Beverly Hills, California at the famed Beverly Hilton hotel.
Highmore, 25, plays the feature role of Dr. Shaun Murphy, who iMDb describes as a ‘young surgeon with autism and Savant syndrome [who’s] recruited into the pediatric surgical unit of a prestigious hospital.’
Highmore said he hopes to shatter people’s perceptions on autism in the groundbreaking role.
‘What we are trying to do is moving away from perhaps the stereotypical versions of people with autism that have been shown on television and in certain movies in the past,’ the London-born actor said on the panel, Deadline reported.
He said that ‘the number one’ misconception about autistic people in previous depictions is ‘that they are somehow devoid of emotion, that they don’t experience as broad a range of emotions as neurotypical people do – and of course, that’s complete nonsense.’
Highmore, who’s best known for his portrayal of Norman Bates on the A&E’s Bates Motel, joked of the juxtaposition between playing the Psycho predator and a healer.
‘It’s nice to save people after years of killing them,’ he said.
Others to appear alongside Highmore on the panel included executive producers David Shore and Daniel Dae Kim, and castmates Hill Harper, Antonia Thomas and Nicholas Gonzalez.
Shore said that the show put in ample preparation to tackle the topic matter, noting that Highmore’s role on the show is not intended to put a face on autism.
‘We saw a lot of doctors, we consulted with people, we’ve got people on the spectrum who we’re working with,’ Shore said. ‘But he is a specific character, he’s not there to represent autism, he’s there to represent Dr. Shaun Murphy.’
Kim said that he ‘loved the message of’ the Korean version of the program that hit the air in 2013, and felt it would be a crossover hit.
‘It was a very familiar genre to American audiences in that it’s a medical show; that was the impetus for me to try and bring it over,’ he said.
