Spoiler alert: This article contains details about the show’s season finale as well as Season 3.
If fans of The Pitt are wondering whether Noah Wyle’s character will go on his fateful motorcycle trip, return next season, or somehow do both, the show’s Emmy-winning star and executive producer has put those questions to rest.
“Yes to both,” Wyle said during a PaleyFest LA panel for the award-winning HBO Max series at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday night.
The Emmy-winning actor — who last week received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — was joined on the panel by Emmy-winning actress Katherine LaNasa, fellow castmate Taylor Dearden, and Emmy-winning creator and executive producer R. Scott Gemmill. Joanna Robinson of The Ringer moderated the discussion following a screening of the Season 2 finale, which is scheduled to air on April 16.
On the panel, Wyle addressed Ayesha Harris, who plays Dr. Parker Ellis, becoming a series regular, saying, “she might be coming to day shift” but did not discuss the surprise exit of Supriya Ganesh, who plays senior resident Dr. Samira Mohan in Season 2.
But before the Q&A, Wyle did comment on Ganesh leaving telling Variety, “It’s an inevitability that’s going to happen every season with this show because as writers we’re hard pressed to figure out what a lapse of time we can have and keep most of the ensemble together realistically. Emergency rooms have a high revolving door. As always, we try to bring in new characters or promote from within as we go through these cast changes and try to keep the storylines fresh, but obviously Supriya has been a huge part of our show since the beginning. Dr. Mohan is a beloved character, and I love playing with her and working with Supriya, and we wish her all the best in her next endeavors, and we’re going to miss her.”
In the finale, after confrontations with his colleagues, including Abbot (Shawn Hatosy), Langdon (Patrick Ball) and Dana about needing to get help with his own mental health issues, Wyle’s Dr. Michael “Robby” Rabinavitch finds himself in a hospital room with the crying newborn Baby Jane Doe from the first episode, trying to calm her down.
“He’s in there with another innocent, who he can tell his secrets to, who will never divulge them,” Wyle explained. “But I think that’s the moment, as he’s imparting this hopeful wish for this baby. Why wouldn’t he wish that for himself? That’s the beginning of his road, right?”
Gemmill says that was the plan all along for the show, but he admitted that he hadn’t considered a key detail.
“You can only shoot babies for, like, 20 minutes, so the first baby you’re going to see is really, like, four or five babies,” he explained. “And those babies, we can’t use at the end of the season because they’ll be 10 months older, and that baby was, like, at craft services having a smoke. We went through a lot of babies. It’s easy for me to say, ‘Oh, and Robby holds a baby.’”
The season finale also delved into the revelation about Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi’s (Sepideh Moafi) health, prompting Robby to issue his own ultimatum about her revealing her diagnosis to the administration. Wyle said that push-and-pull dynamic was exciting for him as both an actor and writer.
“She was a terrific character to bring in as a potential threat,” Wyle said. “It’s a relationship that kept going positive and negative all season long. Just when you think they’re getting on the same page, something would happen.”
The award-dominating series, whose second season kicked off Jan. 8, is no stranger to realistically gory moments, and the season finale had some audience members turning their heads away.
The cast members praised the special effects makeup team, who transformed an actress whose character is in labor and in distress.
“Eight weeks ahead of shooting, we have to do a full-body scan and mold,” Wyle said. “Everything from her neck down that went out horizontal on the hospital bed was the prosthetic.”
“It’s real, it’s not CGI,” added Dearden, who plays Dr. Melissa King. “I feel like people watch, and just assume that it’s CGI, but they don’t realize, no, they build everything for us.”
“They’re like little wizards,” said LaNasa, who plays charge nurse Dana Evans.
That wizardry isn’t only reserved for the trauma patients. The doctors and nurses get makeup, too, albeit much less of it, as their emotionally grueling shift comes to a close at the end of each season.
“I just gave up,” LaNasa said about how tired she looked in the season’s last episodes. “I’m like a corpse.”
“I used to play a lot of glamorous characters, but it’s actually really freeing, to be honest with you,” she added. “It’s been really freeing to do this part with no glamour and no real wardrobe and nothing. It really allows the best work to come through.”
Dearden said the makeup department “just stopped putting on concealer.” “We are absolutely that tired looking, and that tired,” she added.
The show has cast a variety of guest actors who’ve played doctors on previous series, including Geoffrey Owens from The Cosby Show, and the actors shared which performers they’d like to see play doctors on The Pitt.
“Oh, you know, George Clooney,” LaNasa said of Wyle’s former ER co-star.
“Alan Alda,” Wyle added.
Looking ahead to Season 3, which will take place in November, several months after Season 2’s July 4 date, Gemmill reassured audiences, saying, “It’s going to be not as long a gap as the last time.”
“I’m going to just take these people and follow them into their next shift,” he said. “Follow them on their personal journeys as they go about their lives, and we get to know them, and each year we’ll get to know a little bit more about them. Hopefully, it’ll be as exciting as we’ve done the last couple seasons.”
Wyle added that each season has had its own theme, and Season 3 will be no different.
“The thesis of Season 1 is the doctor is the patient,” he said. “Season 2, doctors don’t make very good patients. Season 3, doctors benefit from being patients.”
