Mumbai, Jul 15 (IANS): Actor Freddie Highmore has opened up about how much research work went into his role in the upcoming fourth season of "The Good Doctor".

In the American medical drama television series, Highmore stars as Shaun Murphy, a young autistic savant surgical resident at the fictional San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital.

"For playing a role with autism, I think the research was incredibly important. Probably the most important thing of all when researching this part, was making sure that we portrayed autism as authentically as possible," Highmore said.

He added: "In terms of that research, we have a consultant who's on board the show full time and there are people in my life that I know who have autism. And documentaries, books, pieces of literature that David Shore and I would share back and forth as we tried to come up with this character of Shaun."

Talking about his character, he said: "At the same time, we were aware that Shaun was never going to be able to represent everyone who is on the spectrum. He is his own individual, and we're telling his own individual story, and so we kind of focused on that as well."

He shared about the "unexpected return" of Dr. Melendez, played by Nicholas Gonzalez, in the first two episodes of season four. Highmore said it felt "right emotionally".

What makes this season so different from others, Highmore said: "This season was also different from others. It was new for me because I have to use the iPad now. I was very used to my hard copy script. I really enjoyed getting the script and sort of flipping through it and writing my notes on it."

He added: "And now with the pandemic I've become all modern, especially because one of the many protocols that we have on set is trying to limit the amount of paper that is shared, and, people handing things to each other, and so, that is the result of that."

"The Good Doctor" season 4 airs on Colors Infinity.