[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Pulse.]

Summary

In the Netflix series ‘Pulse,’ Dr. Danny Simms faces unresolved relationship tension amidst a potential promotion.

The medical drama series explores the gray areas of imperfect choices and human complexity.

The inclusion of an impending hurricane in Miami intensifies the drama and illuminates character interactions.

The Netflix medical drama Pulse is set in Miami’s busiest Level 1 Trauma Center, where third-year resident Dr. Danny Simms (Willa Fitzgerald) finds herself in the position of being considered for a promotion that is only possible because she’s responsible for Chief Resident Dr. Xander Phillips’ (Colin Woodell) suspension. With a pending hurricane looming, Danny and Phillips have to continue working together while the tension from their unresolved relationship issues is at an all-time high, leaving them both to reconsider decisions they’ve made in the past and what they’d like their future to be.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Fitzgerald discussed why she was so compelled by the story Pulse was telling, the imperfect life choices we all make, whether it’s more challenging to look or sound like a doctor, Danny’s complex family dynamic, adding in a hurricane to all the other drama, getting intimate for shower scenes, the friendship between Danny and Sam (Jessie T. Usher), and what the events of the finale could mean for a possible Season 2.
Willa Fitzgerald Is Enjoying the Puzzle That Is Her Imperfect ‘Pulse’ Character

“There was just so much humanity in the script, and I was really drawn to that.”

Collider: What made this TV series stand out for you? What was the potential you saw in this?
WILLA FITZGERALD: The first thing that I ever read from the script and the character was the monologue that Danny gives to the coach in the hospital room about her sister. I read the sides before I read the script, just because I was on a plane and I was like, “Let’s see what this is.” Just from that piece of dialogue alone, I was like, “Whoa, there’s a lot going on here and there are a lot of puzzles to solve in this character and understanding who she is and how she is perfectly suited to being an emergency room doctor and how all of those things that make her great at her job are also the things that sabotage her in her own life.” That’s always really exciting to me, when I see a character on the page where there’s as much in between the lines as there is in them.
I was really compelled, after talking to Zoe [Robyn] and Carlton [Cuse], by how committed they were to telling a story that lived in a gray area and that really allowed the audience to explore all sides of their feelings about the situation that we see unfold in this first season. I think it’s really cool when a show gives an audience that much agency to decide how they want to interpret what’s happened. All of us make imperfect choices and do things that are motivated by a whole range of past and current experiences. We do our best with the information that we have, but we make decisions that are problematic all the time. There was just so much humanity in the script, and I was really drawn to that.
Does it feel like there’s a bit of freedom in the fact that she doesn’t even really fully know who she is. She’s made this decision, but she seems to be unsure about why she made the decision that she made. Does it feel like there is more room to grow, in that sense?
FITZGERALD: To come to Danny’s defense a little bit, I don’t think I’ve ever been super coherent about any decision I’ve made in my life. That’s a huge decision. All of us make decisions, and then come to understand them in new ways after the decision is made, especially when it comes to decisions that are so intensely emotionally charged and stick their finger in all our pain points. It’s really hard to have distance from that at the time it’s happening to you. The work of life is understanding why we make those choices. We get to see the character really come to more deeply understand the decision she’s made and, in a lot of ways, realize why it was an essential decision for her to make.

8:53

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Is it more challenging to sound like a doctor or to convincingly look like a doctor with patients?
FITZGERALD: That’s so funny. Honestly, I feel like the medical side of this show was so fun and so easy compared to the rest of the show for me. I truly am such a nerd. I’ve loved medical shows for a lot of my life. I’m a huge fan of early Grey’s Anatomy and House. And so, getting to play a doctor on TV, it was so exciting for me to get to learn as much as I did, doing the show. I’m such a hungry learner and I got to go to an actual hospital and shadow a doctor and see how they interface with patients and listen to them use all the medical terminology that I was also learning at the same time. We had fantastic medical advisors on set with us, every single day, as well as other people who would come in if we had a particularly big scene. We were just so supported. I feel like the only thing that I really knew that I had to do was, if I had a hard word, like cricothyrotomy, I would just have to say it in the shower, over and over and over again, for a couple of days, just to make sure that when I said it, it sounded like I’d said it 17,000 times by that point. I always looked forward to the days with the medical stuff like, “Oh, this will be fun.”
Shadowing a Real Doctor Helped Willa Fitzgerald Better Understand Her ‘Pulse’ Character

“It really did illuminate a lot of things about the character and about the show for me.”

Image via Netflix

When you’re shadowing a doctor, did you know whether you’d be queasy or not going into that experience?
FITZGERALD: I was actually really scared to go and shadow a doctor, just because I was afraid I was going to see something that was going to scar me for life. And I did see some pretty gnarly things come in. I was actually shocked by my ability to be chill. There was a guy who came in that had cut both of his arms and he was bleeding out through his arteries, which was intensely graphic. It’s one of those weird things where your brain just turns off and goes, “It can’t be real,” and you just move through it. That was definitely wild. I also learned that Hepatitis C can live on surfaces for an ungodly number of days. Everyone at the hospital was like, “Just don’t touch anything.”
It was a great privilege to also get to go do that. We all have in our brain, from watching shows, what it’s like to work in an emergency room and from our experiences of being a patient in a hospital. Most of us have some sort of experience there. But it was really different, and it really did illuminate a lot of things about the character and about the show for me, by getting to actually go and be there in person and getting to see how much of what doctors do is a job while they’re at work. The utter professionalism and the skill and speed with which the doctor and the residents who I shadowed worked, was really impressive. I don’t think that’s something I would have clocked if I’d also been a patient in the hospital, but being outside of it, it was really interesting.
Your character has a very complicated family dynamic. She loves her sister, but her sister is in a wheelchair because of their father. And she’s keeping a relationship going with him, but your character is really just fed up with him and doesn’t want much to do with him. What was it like to explore all of that, on top of everything else that you’re doing?
FITZGERALD: We got so lucky in getting Chris Mulkey to be our dad. I really adored working with him. It was one of those magic casting moments where, from the moment that I met him, it just really made sense to me. It all just clarified itself. It’s really special to get to have that part of the story within the arc of the story between Phillips and Danny that we were also telling. The ways that we interact in romantic relationships are always a product of the world that we grew up in and the home life that we grew up in. There’s so much that we learn about Danny in seeing her dynamic at home, that just illuminates the stakes of the romantic relationship that she’s in at work and further complicates our understanding of how she interacts with her job. It’s really special to get to have that in the season.
Does it feel like she’s also constantly fighting to protect her sister while also just letting her sister be the very capable adult and doctor that she knows she is?
FITZGERALD: Totally. Being an older sister, your entire job, as a child onward, is to keep your siblings alive. There’s a lot of pressure and self-imposed responsibility that older siblings grow up understanding. I can’t imagine how complicated it is to then work with your sibling, every day, in a high-pressure environment. It’s a mess. She’s having a hard time, but that’s life.

2:50

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Pulse | Official Trailer | Netflix

While the staff of Miami’s busiest Level 1 Trauma Center navigate medical emergencies, young ER doctor Danny Simms is unexpectedly promoted to Chief Resident amidst the fallout of her own provocative romantic relationship. Pulse premieres April 3, only on Netflix.

This series would also not be in an emergency room in Miami if it didn’t somehow involve a hurricane. What was it like to add that to things and to figure out how to raise the intensity even further?
FITZGERALD: Carlton Cuse is the king of hurricanes at hospitals. I knew that it was going to be done in a really cool way and also in an actual, real way. We’re living in a warming environment with climate change, in which natural disasters are only increasing, as we’ve already seen at the beginning of this year. The hospital system has so many diverse pressures that are not being addressed, and that’s one of them. It’s a really great way to start off this season that is also incredibly real. Seeing the ways that everyone interacts with that situation also tells you a lot about those characters. It’s also always interesting when you get to have a lot of people stuck in space together. It’s a real pressure cooker of a way to begin.
This is also not the first time that you’ve played a character who shares an intimate moment in a shower scene.
FITZGERALD: That’s true!
In this series, it’s the first time we see your characters together in that way. How challenging is it to shoot a scene like that, where you have to deliver dialogue, it has to contain everything it needs to, you’re trying to have this moment, but you’re in a shower and that’s not great for audio. What was it like to figure all of that out?
FITZGERALD: I think we actually got really lucky because I don’t think we did any ADR for that scene. Kudos to the sound team. One of my favorite parts of the show was the arc of all the flashbacks that we get to see. I thought it was really cool, the way in which, in particular, with the shower scene, we visit it twice. We see it once at the beginning of the season, and then we see it with more context in the middle of the season. I feel like that was a really cool way to introduce what has happened, and then to complicate your understanding of what has happened. I love working with Colin [Woodell]. As we took the journey of the arc of all these flashbacks, which we shot in parallel order, it was really cool to get to see how deep that relationship goes because I think it’s incredibly deep.
You also have the relationship with Danny and Sam (Jessie T. Usher), and there are some feelings involved there, at least on his end. Do you see that as a love triangle, or is that something that you don’t feel is really at that level?
FITZGERALD: In a lot of ways, Sam is Danny’s only friend. That is something that she would be hard-pressed to put in a precarious situation by getting any romantic feelings involved. Danny keeps her circle very tight, and to risk losing that friendship is not something that she really is willing to do, especially one that is a one-for-one relationship.
The ‘Pulse’ Finale Shake-Ups Could Lead to Interesting Possibilities for Season 2

“They’ve left it in a good spot to go a lot of different directions.”

Image via Netflix

By the end of the season, things have been shaken up in a way that will affect everything and everyone in a possible second season. How did you feel about the way everything was left at the end of the season, and what would you be most interested in seeing in a Season 2?
FITZGERALD: I love the last episode. It does a lot of really satisfying things for the audience. I love the final moment that we got to have with Danny, as she floats in the ocean. That moment, for her, is a commitment to surrender to the situation that she’s made and that she’s found herself in now. I think it’s a real good payoff, after a season in which she’s gripping at everything, trying to hold things together. I’m fascinated to see what would happen for them in a Season 2 because there are a tremendous amount of directions that it could go in. I don’t think we’re necessarily going to see Danny just suddenly free and easy and breezy. I hope for a couple of episodes maybe that could be her reality. But I think they’ve left it in a good spot to go a lot of different directions.

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Pulse

Release Date

April 3, 2025

Network

Netflix

Directors

Kate Dennis

Pulse is available to stream on Netflix. Check out the trailer: