“With more than three decades of acting experience under his belt, Néstor Carbonell (best known for roles on LOST, BATES MOTEL, and THE MORNING SHOW) has broadened out his creative endeavors to directing in recent years. (In addition to stepping behind the camera on BATES, he’s also helmed episodes of THE GOOD DOCTOR and RISE.)

After directing “Seed Money,” a season 4 episode of NEW AMSTERDAM, Carbonell was invited to return to the show—and was assigned the wildly ambitious “All Night Long.” (In the episode, the storytelling tracked individual characters, piecing together a very bad night, as a number of the doctors seemingly hit rock bottom and went MIA.)

Here, Carbonell talks about directing the hour and collaborating with the cast…

How did you come to direct this specific episode?
I had such a great time working on the first episode. I went into it not knowing anyone, but it was just such an extraordinary experience to work on the show. Every department—the cast, the writers, the entire crew. They’re not only just incredibly professional and talented, but they’re truly a joy to work with. Every show should run like this, in my mind, because it really was such a phenomenal experience. [Laughs.]

The episodes are ambitious, but I had such a good time and, thankfully, there was room in the back nine, at that time, for I think one or two slots. They were kind enough to give me a slot and it happened to be this particular episode, the first of the two-parter.

I didn’t realize how ambitious it was going to be, but I’m always up for for a crazy challenge, and it certainly proved to be that. You’ve seen the episode: there’s a lot of set pieces, a lot of locations, stunts, and things that I thought, “Hm, not sure how I’m going to shoot that, but I guess I’ll figure it out when I get there.” There’s a lot of these intangibles. I knew I had to do quite a bit of CGI, which I hadn’t done much of. It was going to be a phenomenal opportunity to learn, as well, which it always is. Any opportunity, particularly more so as a director now, for me it is an opportunity just to continue to grow. So I was just thrilled when I got the call.
e are the kinds of fun and crazy challenges we had. But everybody was so dialed in that, thankfully, we’re able to execute everything.”