Warning: Working in an emergency room may be hazardous to your health. Grueling hours, painful conversations and stressful conditions are among the challenges that impact the hearts and minds of the health-care workers that staff ERs across America. None of those stressors are sugarcoated in The Pitt, the hit HBO Max medical procedural that scored 13 Emmy nominations for its freshman season.
“The focus was always on the mental health of the people that are in these jobs,” Pitt star Noah Wyle told the audience at the HBO Max Emmy Nominee Celebration on Sunday. “That was the thesis of Season 1: to say that the fragility of our [health-care] system is commensurate with the fragility of the practitioners — and that if we support them and respect them, we would all be better off.”
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Shawn Hatosy, Katherine LaNasa, and Wyle attend the HBO Max Emmy Nominee Celebration on Aug. 17David Jon/Getty Images for HBO Max
Wyle added that mental health would continue to be part of the show’s story in Season 2, which picks up 10 months after his alter ego Dr. “Robby” Robinavitch and the rest of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s ER team have dealt with the fallout of the mass casualty shooting that dominated the last four episodes. “Everybody is more advanced in their careers and have their own personal pressures to bear,” the actor — who received a nod for Best Drama Actor — teased. “Our job is to stay true to that.”
Wyle put his own mental health on the line during The Pitt‘s first year — so much so that his wife encouraged him to take a much-needed beach vacation in between seasons. “Actors are kind of masochists, so don’t feel bad for us,” he joked. “These are self-inflicted wounds we put on ourselves and sometimes the happier we are, the more miserable we are! I was so invested in telling that story last year and I wanted to pace it out and have it pop in a way that would be cathartic, not just for audiences and for the character, but also for me.”
Wyle’s Pitt costars Katherine LaNasa and Shawn Hatosy — who are in contention for Best Drama Supporting Actress and Best Drama Guest Actor, respectively — had their own approaches to handling the specific demands of a fast-paced medical procedural. “The regular cast did a couple week of boot camp,” Hatosy said. “I came into this a week before [shooting] and it really became an exercise in being present. That helped me get out of the way of thinking too much.”
“One of the things that’s hilarious and hard is all the prosthetics,” noted LaNasa. “You have to make sure all of the actors are comfortable and deliver these really meaningful performances, but that they’re also going to be OK with whatever has to be done to them!”
LaNasa also provided a hint of where her character, trauma nurse Dana Evans, might be following the Season 2 time jump — a top concern of fans given that the season finale ended with her potentially leaving the ER for good. “She’s a little bit different coming back,” the actress revealed. “She’s starting in a different place. To be honest with you, I’m terrified of not going a good job! I look at the scripts and try to play the scenes for what they’re worth.”
Behind the scenes, creator and showrunner R. Scott Gemmill stays focused on delivering human stories about individuals who do superhuman things under difficult circumstances. “We try and make sure all the stories have an emotional element,” he said. “he medicine is very important, obviously … but at the end of the day, it’s really about the human connections between the doctors and the nurses, and the characters who come in as patients.”
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