SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “9:00 a.m.,” Episode 3, Season 2 of “The Pitt,” now streaming on HBO Max.
When storyline conversations began for Season 2 of “The Pitt,” star and executive producer Noah Wyle and executive producers R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells knew they wanted to honor the Jewish and Muslim communities in Pittsburgh, nearly eight years after the October 2018 terrorist attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue, which killed 11, and injured six.
During the third episode, “9:00 a.m.,” Wyle’s Dr. Robinavitch helps treat a Jewish patient (played by Irina Dubova) who burned herself after being startled by fireworks. She later admits she has PTSD from the gunshots she heard at the synagogue during the mass shooting.
“That being such a significant event in the city of Pittsburgh, it seemed like a wonderful opportunity,” says Wyle, who also wrote the episode. “When I started researching it, the aspects of it that moved me the most were the community outcry afterward from the Muslim community and the solidarity with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh working together to grieve and mourn the loss. It was the most underreported aspect of the story, and perhaps the most hopeful moving forward.”
The patient, Yana, goes out of her way to bring up that it was the Muslim community who funded the funerals of those killed during the hate crime, thanking Nurse Perlah Alawi (Amielynn Abellera).
“You can’t do a medical show, set in Pittsburgh, with a Jewish doctor without addressing that,” adds Gemmill. “It felt like a very important story to tell. There are important elements of that that hadn’t been told, or hadn’t really made the news cycle. The fact that the Muslim community came together and paid for all the funerals, that’s the kind of information that needed to be out there. We wanted to tell that part of the story, and address the story itself.”
Wyle notes that Robby’s “lack of faith and desire to perhaps, have some faith” was touched upon during Season 1 — and a thread they wanted to further explore and was something he wanted to dive further into.
“We don’t talk about Robby’s parents at all, but we do reference that he was raised by his grandparents. And Yana is a grandmother, so she’s a very familiar energy to Robby,” Wyle says. “Their interaction allows you to see a degree of relaxation and familiarity that you rarely ever see him share with anybody else, because there’s such a cultural affinity, sense of humor, sarcasm, cynicism. All of that is shared and because his guard is down with her, when she pokes holes in his trip and questions whether or not this is a midlife crisis or a cry for help, it’s the first in a series of of earthquakes that he experiences that begin to make him question his resolve.”
