The 2023 TV schedule is a lot lighter on medical dramas than usual, but Transplant is making its long-awaited return to NBC. The third season premiere will finally pay off on the cliffhangers than ended Season 2, including the seemingly final departure of Dr. Jed Bishop (John Hannah) from York Memorial to save Bash’s job.Season 3 will reveal a Battlestar Galactica alum is stepping up as his replacement, and showrunner Joseph Kay spoke with CinemaBlend about the new cast member from BSG fame!
Bash and Bishop were dealing with a malpractice issue throughout Season 2, and each tried to sacrifice their career to save the other’s. Bishop ultimately fell on the sword, and their relationship came full circle in the same episode that he left York Memorial. It seems that Season 3 isn’t going to undo that particular twist to bring former series regular John Hannah back, as Battlestar Galactica alum Rekha Sharma joins the cast as Dr. Neeta Devi.
When I spoke with the Transplant showrunner ahead of Season 3, I noted that many likely know Sharma as Tory Foster from BSG and asked what she brings to the show as John Hannah’s replacement. Joseph Kay dropped some details, saying:
First of all, Rekha is amazing. She’s a lovely actor with a great presence and a great human being. John Hannah-slash-Dr. Bishop had this immediate sort of everybody’s dad kind of feeling about him, and Rekha brings a totally different energy. She has a very warm heart-on-her-sleeve kind of energy that she brings. Her character comes with an agenda, but a kind of humanist all-accompanying agenda. She’s also an outsider, so she has this sort of dynamic collection of bringing change, wanting to make a difference, but not in the typical villain-slash-antagonist way. She comes with an energy of change, but you kind of want to like her. Both the character and the actor are unafraid of sort of fumbling forward into mistakes.
If you watch the recap of the end of Transplant Season 2 for a refresher, you’ll get an idea of what exactly Dr. Devi could be facing in York’s emergency department. On top of Bishop having to leave, Theo was stranded in a life-or-death situation in the Canadian wilderness, June was dealing with the pressure of her chief resident position on top of a family tragedy, and Bash and Mags may have been out of excuses to avoid romance. Dr. Devi is stepping into what could be a tricky situation, as Joseph Kay continued:
Dr. Devi gets this job as the chief of an emergency department in a big city and a big Level 1 trauma center, having not done the job before. She has a background in public policy and hospital medicine and other things. Because she has a reputation and is well known in her field, she gets this opportunity, but she doesn’t have the on-the-ground experience, so she’s got a lot to learn. And when it comes to marrying policy ideas or social ideas or hospital ideas with putting them in practice, she’s going to make mistakes, and I would say about Rekha that she really embraced the vulnerability of that, and wasn’t afraid as an actor to lean into it, which was kind of remarkable.
It remains to be seen whether Dr. Devi’s transition into York’s ED will be smoother than when Dr. Novak joined the team in Season 2, but it’s already clear that she’ll be a very different kind of character than Dr. Bishop. Of course, John Hannah was still part of the cast when Novak debuted last season, which won’t be the case with Rekha Sharma. The showrunner explained a way that the two different approaches will affect the other characters:
So it’s a very different energy than John’s and really interesting, and it destabilized our cast and our core characters; relationships to their workplace and to their professions in ways that was really fun to write to.
The wait to see Rekha Sharm as Dr. Devi is nearly over, as Transplant returns for Season 3 on Thursday, October 12 at 9 p.m. ET. The showrunner also confirmed that there is a brief time jump from the end of Season 2 to the beginning of the Season 3, and fans will “have three answers to those questions” about Dr. Bishop, Theo, and Bash and Mags by the end of the premiere. For a refresher on what happened in Season 2, check out the recap below:
While there’s a lot on the way with Season 3 of the medical drama, you can also go on a blast to the past. If you want to revisit some earlier days of Transplant as well, you can find the first two seasons streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.