Courtesy of Netflix
SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major spoilers from “Pulse,” now streaming on Netflix.
The relationship between emergency department residents Danielle “Danny” Simms (Willa Fitzgerald) and Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell) was always going to be the lifeblood of Netflix’s “Pulse.”
Over the course of 10 episodes, the new Miami-set medical drama — which is the streamer’s first English-language foray into the genre — delves into the gendered complications of a workplace romance between a male superior (fourth-year Chief Resident and incoming attending Phillips) and a female subordinate (third-year Simms).
After an emotional, mutual declaration of “I love you” at Maguire Medical Center’s residents’ retreat spiralled into a blowout fight over the consequences of disclosing their year-long relationship, Danny, at the suggestion of her fellow physician sister Harper (Jessy Yates), reported Phillips for sexual harassment. With a hurricane barreling toward Miami, emergency department and surgery chief Natalie Cruz (Justina Machado) decided to keep Phillips temporarily on shift but made Danny the interim chief resident — a controversial move that only intensified the scrutiny around the nature of the exes’ relationship.
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Colin Woodell and Willa FitzgeraldCourtesy of Netflix
Following the hurricane, which lasted three episodes, Danny and Phillips were left to grapple with their conflicting interpretations of their romance. Phillips had made the first move but genuinely believed that Danny willingly consented to their relationship. Danny, on the other hand, had clearly fallen for Phillips, but she was always worried that she would one day be accused of “sleeping her way to the top,” because Phillips was both her boss and the son of the top donors of their hospital. In the end, Danny realizes that HR can’t give her what she is really still after — an apology from Phillips for putting her in that position of having to choose between him and her career — and she drops the claim.
But after getting into a physical altercation with the father of a young patient, Danny finds herself at risk of losing her job, largely due to growing pressure from Phillips’ family. Once he finds out, Phillips decides to break the NDA he had signed at his last hospital in order to protect Danny. Before formally apologizing to her, Phillips tells Danny about how the stringent demands of Dr. Broussard, who visited Maguire in Episode 4, led him to nick a vessel during an outpatient procedure on a 20-year-old man named Julio, and Phillips’ parents then covered up his fatal mistake. The admission is the most honest Phillips has been with anyone since transferring to Maguire a year ago, and it opens the door to a potential reunion with Danny, who will now have to navigate working again with — and for — the first man she truly loved.
In a wide-ranging chat with Variety, showrunners Zoe Robyn and Carlton Cuse break down their approach to developing Danny and Phillips’ juicy relationship, and tease what they have planned for the former lovebirds and the rest of their colleagues in a potential second season.
Zoe, this is the first series on which you have served as creator and showrunner — and you certainly know the procedural format well, having worked on “Hawaii Five-0,” but a medical drama is a different kind of beast. Where did the idea for “Pulse” first come from, and what specifically did you want to accomplish with this new take on the genre?
Zoe Robyn: I honestly never set out to write a medical show. I really wanted to write this story about Danny and Phillips’ relationship — two people in a relationship with a power dynamic — and the idea really came from a personal situation that I was in at the time that was very much like the situation Danny finds herself in. I was using the story and her character to explore my feelings — my fears, anxieties and frustrations — about the situation. I felt like it was a relationship dynamic that I hadn’t really seen yet.
What we’ve always set out to accomplish with the Danny and Phillips relationship is that it’s this very authentic look at a relationship between two people at work that isn’t black and white, that has a lot of gray and a lot of nuance. There is love, but there’s also this sense that Phillips is putting her in a very bad situation. I think the rest of the show — setting it in an ER where there’s these life-and-death stakes, during a hurricane, during a lockdown, with an unexpected promotion — all of those things were meant to put more pressure on Danny and be an outward manifestation of how she’s feeling inside. So the medical came second, but created this really amazing textured environment for this relationship to be set against.
