Malcolm-Jamal Warner Would ‘Jump’ at Opportunity to Play AJ Again

The Resident may have ended in January 2023, but if you ask us, we’d love to see a revival, stat! And we’re not the only ones.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who starred as Dr. AJ Austin (in three episodes of the first season, then full-time starting with the second until the series ended with the sixth), can currently be seen recurring on 9-1-1 as a travel nurse—he’s back in a hospital!—who is first introduced in the burn unit. But as is revealed, he shares a tragic history with Captain Bobby Nash (Peter Krause): He was badly burned and his wife died in the fire that Bobby accidentally caused all those years ago that also claimed the lives of his family. And when TV Insider recently caught up with Warner about that arc, we had to ask if he’d want to return to AJ in any capacity if given the chance.

“AJ was probably my favorite role, definitely top three. And The Resident was really one of my favorite gigs for a host of reasons, and I think I can fairly say this about some of the other cast members, if not all of them, one of the greatest joys of coming to work was getting to work with each other,” he shared. “We really loved and love each other to the extent that I think we would all jump at an opportunity to get back together and work again on camera. We see each other off camera, so that would be a no brainer for us.”

The Resident, like other shows have (Suits, S.W.A.T., New Amsterdam), is finding success now that it is streaming on Netflix. It ran for six season on Fox, and news of the cancellation came three months after the finale aired. That last episode of Season 6 did feel like a series finale, and that was intentional, showrunner Andrew Chapman told us.

“Given that we really don’t know and didn’t know whether this was going to be a series finale, creator Amy Holden Jones and I really thought hard about how we would construct storylines that would give closure to the season, but if it had to be a series finale, would give our audience and our fans some closure to the whole series, too,” he explained.

Would you want to see more from The Resident in some form? What did you think of the series? Let us know in the comments section, below.