San Jose St. Bonaventure is admitting two new med students this week — and TVLine has your exclusive first look.
As previously reported, The Good Doctor Season 7, Episode 2 (ABC, Tuesday at 10/9c) will introduce Kayla Cromer (Everything’s Gonna Be Okay) and Wavyy Jonez (Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G.) as doctors-in-training Charlie and Dom. The former is eager to scrub in alongside Dr. Murphy; the latter is eager for his surgical rotation to be over.
“Charlie brings this huge amount of enthusiasm and excitement,” co-showrunner Liz Friedman tells TVLine. “She really idolizes Shaun, and that’s such a fun dynamic. You’ve met your hero. Now, what are you going to learn from your hero? How is that going to work out?”
Dom, too, is a “really fun character,” Friedman previews. “He’s a former football player who has no interest at all in being a surgeon. That’s what’s interesting about med students: You do rotations in all areas of medicine, whether you want to go into that area or not. Dom comes into surgery going, ‘I just have to check the box and get this over with,’ and he is going to discover a real challenge that he didn’t expect, with some pretty funny results.”
Whereas previous seasons of The Good Doctor have introduced new surgical residents, who have already completed medical school — first with Drs. Jordan Allen and Asher Wolke in Season 4, then with Drs. Danny Perez and Danni Powell in Season 6 — the powers that be wanted to see what drama they could mine from less experienced scrubs.
“How little med students know when they walk in is just phenomenal,” Feldman says. Beginning with Episode 2, the final season will explore how those in more senior positions deal with total rookies — or, to be more specific, “who looks at them and goes, ‘I remember when I was like that, they have such potential,’ and who looks at them and goes, ‘Just get them out of my way!’”
Watch as Shaun and Park meet Charlie and Dom for the first time in the exclusive video above, then keep scrolling to learn more about The Good Doctor’s new cast members.
KAYLA CROMER IS CHARLIE
Kayla Cromer plays Charlotte “Charlie” Lukaitis, “a third-year medical student who’s excited both for this rotation and the chance to work with her hero, Dr. Shaun Murphy,” according to the official character breakdown. “Like Shaun, she has Autism Spectrum Disorder, and she has idolized him since she first saw the viral video of him saving a boy’s life at the San Jose airport. Empowered and energetic, her passion for surgery may only be matched by her love for Taylor Swift.”
ABC notes that Cromer was the first person with autism to play an autistic character in a series-regular role on American television when she was cast as Matilda in the Freeform comedy Everything’s Gonna Be Okay. She also voices Twyla, the shy autistic daughter of the Boogeyman, in Nickelodeon’s animated series Monster High.
WAVYY JONEZ IS DOM
Wavyy Jonez plays fellow third-year med student Dominick “Dom” Hubank. The character is described as “a gentle giant who was hoping this surgical rotation was just a box to check on his way to become the family doctor in his underserved community. But this former football player learns he isn’t as tough as he appears when he faints at the sight of blood. Too big to fail, Dom must overcome his newly discovered hemophobia, and will need his peer and friend Charlie to do so.”
Jonez got his big break when he was tapped to play Biggie Smalls in the USA Network limited series Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. Additional TV credits include Apple TV+’s Dickinson, Hulu’s Reprisal and Wu-Tang: An American Saga, and NBC’s Young Rock.
Cromer and Jonez will first appear in The Good Doctor Season 7, Episode 2, “Skin in the Game,” written by Garrett Lerner and Nathalie Touboul, and directed by series star Freddie Highmore. The episode will also feature special guest star Peter Jacobson, reuniting him with House creator David Shore.
