'Nurse Jackie' Showrunner on Dark Ending: It's 'Authentic and Controversial'
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Clyde Phillips also shares his vision of what possibly happens to Edie Falco's Jackie Peyton after the series finale.

AceShowbiz - "Nurse Jackie" is officially out of work after the series finale aired on Sunday, June 28. In the episode titled "I Say a Little Prayer", [SPOILER ALERT!] Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) gave her friends and the show's fans a scare as she went unconscious in the bathroom stall after she snorted a patient's heroin while the hospital's staff were celebrating the closure of All Saint's Hospital. She, however, opened her eyes in the final moment.

Showrunner/executive producer Clyde Phillips spoke to several outlets about the dark ending. "We wanted the ending to be authentic and controversial, and for the finale to continue to be part of the conversation," he told EW.

He added in an interview with E! Online, "One of the words to describe how we want people to feel about this show is compassion. Compassion for storytelling, compassion for the character of Jackie Peyton and compassion for this horrible disease that she has. And indeed it is a disease."

Confirming that Jackie did overdose, Phillips left it to viewers to conclude whether the titular character died or is alive. "I think you could legitimately answer that question either way," he told USA Today, before praising Falco's acting, "My personal sense is that she's alive. Can you imagine Edie lying on the floor and giving you just enough to put the question mark in your head? It's extraordinary acting."

Phillips called drug addiction "a ferocious disease" with a "dismantling of trust. And in storytelling, there needs to be consequences." Thus, when asked what happens next for Jackie if she's still alive, he said, "If she's still alive she's still screwed, because her way of life as she knows it is now over." He added, "If she's alive, she's certainly going to lose her job. She's either going to get clean or not. I mean, she's a drug addict. There really is no knowing what she will do. You don't get cured of being an addict; you just stop using for as long as you can."

Phillips went on sharing that there was an alternate ending that they planned earlier in the season, and it was so tragic. He detailed the alternated ending, "[The alternate ending] was Tony Shalhoub's character plugs in his e-cig to recharge it, and because the hospital is in such terrible shape, it catches fire. The hospital starts burning."

"Raven, who is the heroin addict, is handcuffed to the bed. Everybody starts wheeling patients out and running out and the fire gets worse and worse and they're outside and they look in and realize they don't have Raven. So Jackie runs back in because all souls are worth saving. She runs back into the hospital and it's falling around her and she can't physically save him because he's handcuffed to a bed. The roof falls on him and people are screaming at her to come out."

Phillips continued, "We see the ER collapse and then we cut to an alley and that window [in the basement] getting something thrown through it and Jackie comes through that window head first at ground level, almost like a birth. And she sees her friends and colleagues on the sidewalk to her left and starts running down the alley and then stops halfway and turns around and runs the other way and merges with the uptown traffic of humanity and anonymity."

Phillips said they "realized we weren't ending on character. We weren't ending on Jackie Peyton. We weren't ending on consequence, so as we realized that we turned the boat around a little bit."

Of Jackie's fiance Eddie (Paul Schulze) who's facing a big consequence for helping cover Jackie's bad deeds, Phillips commented, "Eddie has loved Jackie since day one. He falls on his sword to protect her. Eddie's thought process is, 'I love this woman and I'll do anything for her.' "

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