Related: Complete Coverage of TCA Winter Press Tour
Pasadena, Calif. — Nurse Jackie will start her final shift on April 12 but don’t expect a happy ending.
“I’m a believer in authentic endings,” said executive producer Clyde Phillips Monday during the TCA winter press tour. “And I think the ending of this season is as authentic as it can possibly be and you’ll be satisfied."
Phillips originally had an alternate ending in mind.
“We were going to burn the hospital down,” he said, explaining that as they began working on the final season the idea changed.
The EP was joined onstage by actors Edie Falco, Merritt Wever, Paul Schulze, Dominic Fumusa and Stephen Wallem.
Nurse Jackie follows Jackie Peyton, played by Falco, a nurse who struggles with addiction.
The decision that the seventh season of Nurse Jackie would be its last came in September, and Phillips said that though they could have continued with the show “it made sense in a way” to end the series.
“We had told the up and down story of addiction and of trust and of love and of consequence and of the shrapnel that the drug addict has inflicted upon her colleagues and her family and her friends in about as many ways as we possibly could,” said Phillips.
Other highlights from the panel included:
—Falco addressed the changing landscape of television. “I just know the stuff that I’ve been watching lately has been on something like Amazon Prime, where I used to go to get my toilet paper. I just know things are changing rapidly.”
—Phillips fielded a question as to whether he would do a show on a broadcast network. “If I were to do a network show it would have to be a limited run show. I think that in doing 22 episodes a year, the storytelling and the show itself suffers.”
Falco added that she agreed with a lot of what Clyde said but did say that she is attracted to great storytelling.
—Phillips joined Nurse Jackie on the heels of having worked on Dexter. He said of the switch: “It was definitely a learning curve. I made some mistakes along the way and made some really good decisions along the way.”
—Falco said that she doesn’t know what she will do after Nurse Jackie. “The beautiful thing is that I have absolutely no idea. And that seems to have worked for me that I have no plans.”
