This article contains lithe spoilers about plot points of The Pitt season two, premiering in January.The first thing I see are the scrubs, waiting fo
This article contains lithe spoilers about plot points of The Pitt season two, premiering in January.
The first thing I see are the scrubs, waiting for me on the golf cart. I’ve just checked into the Warner Bros. lot, site of the immersive 18,000-square-foot set for The Pitt, HBO Max’s Emmy-nominated medical drama. Currently in production on season two, the show favors a comprehensive, 360-degree filmmaking style, wherein crew members or background actors might find themselves accidentally passing through a shot. Anyone hanging around for the day must blend in so as not to disrupt the flow. We drive from the WB gate to the production offices, where I change, then head to stage 22 and walk inside. It’s a scorching day in Burbank, but the California sun fades like a distant memory as the frigid AC and fluorescent lighting of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center take instant effect.
The rich realism is palpable, but one reason why The Pitt has caught on so strongly. The 15-episode first season, which aired this past winter and depicted an especially disordered day inside the hospital (with each episode covering about an hour), evolved into a streaming phenomenon, ranking among the top shows on Nielsen’s ratings charts and cultivating a rabid online fanbase. Starring ER’s Noah Wyle as a senior attending physician grieving the loss of his mentor, The Pitt recalled beloved medical dramas of a past TV era while forging boldly ahead, poignantly speaking to the perilous state of American healthcare post-Covid and spotlighting both the everyday heroism and the human flaws of the medical workers keeping the system afloat.
Created by R. Scott Gemmill, the show is up for 13 Emmys, including for best drama and best actor (Wyle), a major achievement that was celebrated by the cast and crew while they’d just started getting to work on season two—which will be set approximately 10 months after season one, over Fourth of July weekend. In other words, they went back to work under very different circumstances. “Last season, I came in with about a month’s notice, moved to America for the first time, had no idea what was going on,” says Shabana Azeez, who plays the wide-eyed medical student Dr. Javadi. “So this time, people looked familiar. Maybe they looked prettier to me because I loved them already.”
“Will the show have enough dramatic engine and built-in aggregate tension—and will the characters be just as gripping as what we gave the audiences last year? I hope so,” Wyle tells me from The Pitt’s waiting-room set, which is empty for the day. “You can’t do a major catastrophe every season without it feeling like a hospital is not plotted in reality. Hopefully, it’s the characters, the interactions, the behaviors, the nobility—the quotidian detail of the show that people really responded to.”
Inside this hospital, I’m first shuffled into video village. Typically on a set, this means going to a faraway room where crew members watch takes and give notes over headsets. Not here—it’s a makeshift system going from zone to zone (whichever is both unoccupied and safely out of the filming range), with the director John Cameron, writer Cynthia Adarkwa, and others crammed together. A “rate your pain” chart and a masking policy sign hover above us, lest we forget this room is usually used for fictional patient evaluations. They’re early in the process of shooting episode four, beginning the day with a long dialogue scene, the cameras roving between simultaneous conversations. The Pitt moves brisk, but you also see the actors taking advantage of the authenticity of their space. Their movements are fluid from take to take.
“The set is the secret hero,” says Katherine LaNasa, a longtime character actor who was just nominated for her first Emmy for her portrayal of the indefatigable Nurse Dana. “It’s why the acting seems so good. You can actually really live in it.”
It’s almost torture to be a fan of The Pitt and watch a juicy scene like this out of context. At one point, Dana asks Wyle’s Dr. Robby if he’d like to pull Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) out of triage to support him out. “We are doing just fine without him,” Robby replies. This should pique any regular viewer’s interest, since season one ended with Robby refusing to forgive Langdon after discovering the newborn doctor had stolen doses of lorazepam and Librium. Season two takes place both on Langdon’s first day out of rehab and, Wyle tells me, on Robby’s last day at the hospital before taking a lengthy break.
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