‘SkyMed’s Morgan Holmstrom On Crystal & Jeremy’s Future & The Show’s Dedication To Diversity
‘SkyMed’ star Morgan Holmstrom spoke EXCLUSIVELY about her hopes for season 2, Crystal and Jeremy’s complicated relationship, and showcasing indigenous characters on TV.
SkyMed is unlike any medical show you’ve seen before. The Paramount+ series follows the highs and lows of nurses and pilots flying air ambulances in remote Northern Canada. This crew has to make high-stakes medical rescues and stay alert, all while 20,000 feet in the air. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Morgan Holmstrom, who plays Crystal, about why she was drawn to the series.
“For one, it’s very different. I grew up loving medical shows, too. I watched House, and I watched Grey’s. I watched kind of all of them, especially with my dad, growing up,” Morgan said. “I already had a love for these shows. When I read it, initially, I was like, oh, it’s a medical show but in the air. That has its own sorts of cool challenges, and it makes it very unique, so I was already very intrigued by that. When I read Crystal, she was just this super strong, badass nurse who just kind of lives up north and takes the nursing world by the reins. She’s kind of that veteran nurse. I really liked that about her. I really liked that she was strong and confident and just a badass indigenous woman.”
In addition to the professional lives of these characters, SkyMed also explores their personal lives. Crystal has a complicated (and sometimes romantic) relationship with her childhood friend Jeremy. Morgan weighed in about how she feels things were left between Crystal and Jeremy at the end of the first season.
“I feel like it was coming,” Morgan admitted. “I do think that there’s a lot to play with for a season 2 if they renewed that relationship because they have so much history with each other. They really were each other’s childhood best friends, and I think that having those types of people in your life, it comes with all of the highs and all of the lows. We’ll see what happens.”
She pointed out that both Crystal and Jeremy have some “growing up to do” before they should circle back to anything romantic. “Even though Crystal may not admit that I feel like she has some growing up to do. Jeremy definitely has his own growing up to do. So maybe in the future, it could work out. We’ll see,” she teased.
Crystal’s friendship with fellow co-worker Hayley is one of the highlights of the series. Crystal is by Hayley’s side as she gets a mastectomy in the first season. “When I first started talking with Julie [Puckrin], who was the showrunner and wrote the show, she really wanted to emphasize that female friendship and have that theme throughout the show that these are two women that are going to lean on each other and have each other’s backs,” Morgan told HollywoodLife.
One of the many aspects of SkyMed that is so unique is how it brings indigenous characters like Crystal to the forefront. The magnitude of the representation is not lost on Morgan. “It’s so important to understand that if you have someone reflected onscreen that looks like you, it means everything. I know that from myself. I’m Métis and Filipina and that’s something I never saw onscreen,” Morgan said.
Crystal and Jeremy speak Nêhiyawêwin, the Cree language, at certain points in the show. Morgan pointed out that Crystal was written as a Cree-Métis woman. “We had an elder on set, and we had knowledge keepers to help us learn that language,” Morgan revealed. “We got our recordings, and we were able to practice so we had a lot of support in that way for learning language because it’s not the language that I’ve learned.”
Morgan praised her showrunners and the writing team for their inclusiveness. “I have to give props to them because they had someone in the writing room for every single person, any sort of community that you saw, whether that’s the queer community, whether that’s the indigenous community, South Asian community, whoever it is, there was someone that could speak to that experience. I think that’s so crucial in film to have someone that can speak to that for those people,” Morgan noted. SkyMed season 1 is now available on Paramount+.