Transplant Creator Joseph Kay Talks Big Changes in Season 3 [Interview]

“We were really interested in that story,” Kay explained. “Bash’s story is always an identity story, and both the practical steps of becoming a citizen and the emotional steps of becoming a citizen created a lot of fertile drama for us. First of all, it’s not something you have seen dramatized that much, the different stages that are involved in it. And it let us access him in ways we hadn’t in the past.”

“He’s always been a character who’s kind of caught between worlds. Is he Syrian or is he Canadian? Is he a doctor? Is he not a doctor?” Kay said. “He’s also kind of a really introspective person in his head. He’s asking himself who he is all the time. And the citizenship story lets him do that in a really active way.”

On Bash and Mags

Of course, another interesting change for Bash this season revolves around Mags. At the end of Transplant Season 2, we’re left with a cliffhanger that has us asking if Bash and Mags finally got together.

“You learn pretty early in Season 3 that they did,” Kay confirmed. “We were really interested in having written the version of the show over two seasons where it’s kind of a will they/won’t they, sort of like a quiet chemistry and friction, which was great and that we love. We just, the whole time kept saying, what would these two look like as a couple?”

“Because they have this chemistry, they have this friction, they challenge each other. So we invest in that and fully lean into it. It’s not like a one-episode-and-done sort of story,” he continued.

“There’s highs and lows, there’s fun and there’s conflict. And as writers, for us, it yielded just access to these people that we don’t think we would’ve had otherwise. We feel like it let us explore truth of Bash, the vulnerability of Bash, and of Mags, that we just wouldn’t have gotten had we not done it.”

Theo and the helicopter crash

There’s another cliffhanger at the end of Transplant Season 2, and it’s one with even higher stakes. Theo is involved in a helicopter crash. The good news is that we know he survives, though Season 3 shows that the incident has had a major impact on him.

“Theo is a guy who has lost sight of who he is. It’s something that begins early, mid-Season 1, and he kind of makes a decision that ends up destabilizing his marriage and the sort of career trajectory that he picked in his life over Season 1. Season 2 kind of falls apart and he loses sight of himself and the helicopter crash,” Kay explained.

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“He’s trying different things in an attempt to figure out where and if he went wrong and the helicopter crash. A., it was just exciting, but B., it’s a way to get Theo wondering if he’s being karmically punished by the world,” Kay said. So that was one reason we did it. Another reason is that, in a lot of ways, Transplant is a show about trauma and isn’t afraid to sort of explore it.”

“What happens to Theo allows us to do it in real-time when Theo survives the crash. A little bit of time has elapsed when the season begins, but he’s still kind of in active post-traumatic stress. And that’s affecting him in ways that he doesn’t now understand. His senses are heightened and he’s making decisions that he wouldn’t make if this didn’t happen,” Kay said.

“So basically, this guy who’s lost sight of himself, we’re just trying to get him raw and into a position where maybe eventually he can start seeing himself more clearly again.”

Major changes in June’s life and career

“One of the ways that she interests us and that we kind admire [about] her as writers is that she’s always asking herself what she considers her flaws to be and trying to improve them. And I mean, obviously, she wants to be the best surgeon she can be and she’s always out to do that. But she also wishes she was more open, and more vulnerable, and better with people. She knows that she’s guarded.

“We’ve seen her over two seasons take steps, and we’ve learned about why she’s like that,” Kay said. “She does two things to really try to get on top of that. One is taking in her stepsister who she doesn’t know how to kind of deal with this young woman. And it challenges her and kind of forces her to be emotional in ways she’s not comfortable with,” Kay said.

“There’s a lot of interesting drama and fun to be had in that storyline. And then the other one is in what she chooses at work. She throws her lot in with Dr. Novak, who runs the trauma OR in our emergency department. The trauma OR is kind of a really cutting-edge tool. It’s an operating room in an emergency department. It’s a thing that exists, but you don’t see it that much.”

While that’s a challenge for June in her career, Kay said the bigger challenge for June is working with Dr. Novak. While June knows she’s not great with people, Novak is even worse.

“It puts her in the position not only to have to deal with him, but to be the kind of front-facing, patient-facing person in that relationship,” Kay explained.

“She’s out there to sort of see her blind spots, and it challenges her and it gives us more access to her. And one thing that it did do for us as writers is to really invest in that kind of workplace relationship between June and Novak. It’s platonic. They challenge each other. They’re fun and interesting together, and it’s something that surprised us and that we ended up investing in quite a bit over the course of the season.”

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If that weren’t enough reason to be excited about Transplant Season 3, NBCUniversal also has a new partnership with the American Red Cross to mark the occasion.

NBCUniversal is partnering with the American Red Cross for a series of blood drives in key cities this October. Branded blood drives will take place Oct. 7-21 at various locations in Baltimore, Dallas, Detroit, Nashville, and Norfolk, Va. The blood drives will include 18 Red Cross donation center sites across the five markets.

As part of the blood drives, donors will receive branded T-shirts and dash tumblers and will be able to watch a preview of the series.