It’s never easy being the new kid at school — not to mention the new boss on The Pitt. And Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) doesn’t have it easy. She’s got big shoes to fill, taking over for the immensely popular Dr. Micheal “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle). And though she clearly has some impressive medical skills, her attempts to introduce AI into the ED is met with a fair share of resistance and skepticism — especially when the whole hospital is forced to go offline.
And then there’s the matter of the secret she’s been keeping — those momentary lapses that, as Dr. Robby spied, turned out to be seizures, which she confessed to him in the season finale. But though she approached him seeking his medical advice, he instead lashed out — threatening to report her instead: “You’ve got until Monday to let the administration know, or I will.”
Here, Moafi reveals what it was like for her to join the hit show in its second season, why she decided to confide in Dr. Robby, and what it means for her future.
Gold Derby: That’s quite a first day on the job for Dr. Al-Hashimi.
Sepideh Moafi: It’s intense. It’s really intense. First days are always intimidating and rough, but I don’t think she could have predicted how rough it would get.
What was it like for you joining this show in its second season?
As actors, there are certain things that we get for free, and then there are things that we have to work for. Obviously, I had to work for the medicine I had no knowledge of, of what it meant, or any of the information that I learned from my research process and from our medical advisors. But the stuff that I did get for free was showing up on my first day. It’s a well-established culture — this almost living organism, this ecosystem that is moving, and it’s flawed, but it’s running itself and I was a new character. I was the only new main character coming into the world, both in the world of fiction and the the real world.
Sepideh Moafi, Gerran Howell, Shabana Azeez, and Irene Choi Warrick Page/MAX
And so I took all of her nerves and anxiety and I used it. I used it as an actor. I used it as the character. I know how to make friends with my fear and use it, because it’s really just a surge of energy and abundance of feeling, and when you have some place to put that energy and focus, which is the work in this case, I feel pretty good. I feel confident. I really throw myself into any role that I’m doing, any project I’m working on. So I had done rigorous prep, and Dr. Al-Hashimi has had the same experience. She’s prepped herself, she’s done her homework. She knows what she’s walking into. So in ways, we’re walking on parallel paths, and that made it kind of easier.
It’s always hard coming in someplace new, especially when you’re coming in as the boss. But she really has that quiet confidence. There was that patient where she did that procedure, and at the end, she admitted she had never done it before.
You know that procedure was crazy, because I talked to a lot of doctors, and many of them hadn’t had to do that procedure. That’s like a last resort procedure if you can’t get an airway. I think that procedure represents so much of her character. It’s like she is ready for anything, and her level of preparation, her level of competence is just through the roof. And so throw anything at her, and she is ready because she has studied it inside and out.
Noah Wyle and Sepideh MoafiWarwick Page/HBO
In the beginning of the show, you see how she doesn’t really understand personal space with Dr. Robby. And she kind of gets her nose in there and that’s really because she feels she’s so absorbed in in everything that she does, and wants to get in there headfirst. That’s been her approach to medicine, and her approach in her life with everything that she does. I really love that moment, and it was written in the script that it was her first time delivering it, but it was important for me to play against her nerves. And I think there’s a moment in the beginning where you see her breathe, get herself collected in order to start. But once she’s in, she’s in.
We also learn that she’s been keeping a secret. When did you find out? How long had you known?
I learned in the last stage of the audition process. I had an initial self-tape that went into the callback, which was over Zoom, and then they flew me to L.A. from New York for a test and a chemistry read with Noah. And at each step of the process, they added a scene. And then there was a scene about her condition, a temporal lobe epilepsy in the last phase. That scene was very different from what we saw on Episode 15. It was a very casual conversation between her and Dr. Robby. And then when I read Episode 1, when I was cast, I was 99.9% sure that that’s why that episode ends with her staring at the baby. I confirmed with the writers and with Scott and John and Noah and they said, “Yes, this is what we’re playing with, and at some point later in the season, probably at the end, we’ll have a reveal.” It was just about working my way backwards from there, because it’s subtle. It’s subtle, and the condition is subtle. And you don’t want to play the drama.
Noah Wyle and Sepideh MoafiWarrick Page/HBO Max
I love the fact that it stirred so much conversation and speculation of people thinking Baby Jane Doe is her kid. Or she’s had trauma from the war zone she’s worked in, and all these different theories. And I love that, because we’re in this moment where we’re so divided and we’re stuck behind our screens, and it’s this opportunity to create and stir speculation and conversation and people expressing their different POVs, and that’s really satisfying for me as the actor.
Subtlety was key for that, because you don’t want the audience to know, and the condition itself, throughout my research process, talking to epileptologists and doctors who have treated kids with absent seizures, which show up similar to the temporal lobe seizures, it’s something that is pretty much undetectable, unless you know what’s happening to the person. There was a moment in Episode 7, where she feels it coming up, with what’s called an aura, where it feels almost like a déjà vu. Some people report tasting metal in their mouth. So there’s this moment before I excuse myself in talking to Jackson Davis’s parents, and I go to the bathroom and call my neurologist, where I feel something coming up, which is why I leave. All these little things are so fun as the actor, because you explore them so fully, and then you hide them.
That’s what we do in life. It takes a lot for us to blow up and to fully emote in the ways that we want to feel, especially in professional environments, which is what makes the last episode and having her putting her guard down and revealing more of herself so satisfying, because you kept it bottled up for so long, and that is so hard to play, you know, to not show and be very strategic about how you present yourself and how people see you.
Why do you think she decided to confide in Dr. Robby? They’d really been at loggerheads the whole season. She’d been trying to build a relationship with him, but he’s going through his own PTSD journey, he’s been going after women, especially women of color, and yet she chooses to open up to him from a professional point of view.
There are a couple reasons. Number one, she hasn’t had a seizure for a couple years now. Basically, she’s tried a bunch of different treatments, like the ablation therapy, which is basically a laser that targets the scar tissue on your brain on your temporal lobe, and destroys it, and this is the part of the brain that that causes the seizures. So that worked for a long, extended period of time, and then they started up again, because our brains are so smart, they know how to change and morph. And in this case, the seizures came back and so she’s feeling rattled, destabilized, confused, and she can’t get in touch with her neurologist. Despite their differences, she recognizes Dr. Robby’s talent, his skill, his rigor, his breadth of experience and knowledge, and admires that in him. They speak the same language of medicine, but they’re different dialects. And so she presents this case to him, in part because she wants his medical expertise. She sees him seeing her.
Noah Wyle and Sepideh MoafiWarrick Page/HBO
So there’s this strange alternate reality where I think these two characters could be running the best hospital in the country, because that friction is actually quite generative. And they could be a dream team. But I think ego gets in the way, particularly from Dr. Robby’s point of view. I think she takes this to him, because they’ve spent the entire day butting heads and it seems like they’re at an impasse on a personal level, and I think it’s an attempt to reveal part of herself to get closer to him and share these wounded parts of herself, and in hopes of appealing to the wounded parts in him, and maybe this is a meeting point for us. But his response is a nightmare.
It’s not the reaction she wanted or expected.
Certainly not, but it makes for good drama. It’s just really sad because it’s everything I think that she’s feared in her life, ever since this started at age 5. If people really see me, then they’ll know how incapable I am, they’ll know how incompetent I am, they’ll know how unlovable I am. All these things that every person has, these wounds, this emotional scar tissue from our youth and we carry this as if it’s a truth throughout our lives. And we spend our lives guarding this wound and then it hardens and calcifies and then it becomes a truth, and then we find all reasons for why it’s true. She spent her life thinking that if I reveal myself, to put it simply I won’t be accepted, and I won’t be lovable, and I’ll lose everything I’ve worked so hard for. And he is proving her right.
I’m not making excuses for him, but she’s not entirely aware of his terrible day, either — his fight with Dana, Duke’s diagnosis. Where does she go from here?
I just want to acknowledge what you just said, because I think that something The Pitt does beautifully is an exploration of compassion, really, because we see these characters jump to conclusions with each other and as the audience, we have more time with them. In tighter shots, where we get to really see what’s happening beneath their eyes, in their minds, where other characters don’t see them from across the hospital, or they see them in a trauma room or and so it’s important to remember not to take everything personally. But it’s really hard when the stakes are so high. And there was a line that he had at the top of Episode 15, I think they cut it, where he made a joke after Dr Al-Hashimi revealed all of this to him, and she’s just shocked, and he says, “Sorry, I’ve had a really bad day.” And she says, “Haven’t we all?” And I love that moment. I love that exchange, because he’s right. He’s had a real f–king horrible day. So has she, and we’ve seen all of them horrible, horrible experiences throughout the day and it’s just a reminder for all of us that we’re always carrying something. I love that part of The Pitt that it humanizes every struggle and every bad behavior and every judgment that we have. It dismantles it and humanizes it.
Sepideh Moafi, Shawn Hatosy, and Noah Wyle
To answer your question about where does she go from here, there’s this saying that I try to live by: “I’ll let it spoil my dinner but not my breakfast.” Or, “I’ll let it spoil my breakfast but not my dinner.” I think in this case, she’s going to let it spoil her week, because this is pretty heavy. And again, it goes back to not only what it reveals about herself and her story about her condition, but just this impossible system, this impossible medical industrial complex, the healthcare system, which is unraveling, but also that sexism and patriarchy. “You didn’t report Langdon for a felony, and I’ve gotten from a professional medical professional, a neurologist, the OK to work with double coverage.” And double coverage, by the way, is the norm. There’s usually more than one attending at hospitals, and so for him to say, “Nope, you’re gone,” is like, who is this helping? I’ve proven myself all day, regardless of whether or not you like me. You see where I’m coming from. You see the quality of care I deliver and how much I care about our residents. You’ve seen me in action, and yet you want to take it all away from me. So I think this will affect her moving forward. I don’t know how they’re writing the next season. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know that for me, living inside of this character, it’s definitely going to trigger some trust issues, and it’s going to affect how she’s ever able to respect Dr. Robby, not only for how he’s handled her, but how he handled the whole Langdon situation, for sure.
That’s been a big conversation this season, how he’s been targeting women, especially women of color.
Yes, for sure. Hats off to the writers for going there with this. I think a lot of this is just unexamined biases that we all carry. We haven’t gone into AI yet, but one of the dangers of AI is the algorithmic biases. There are ways in which we can use it for the betterment of medicine, but there are a lot of dangers. It’s a slippery slope and we can’t even get over our own human biases and algorithms are designed by what is available of humanity. So if you’re scraping the internet and you are collecting data from what human beings have put out there, then it’s going to contain these unexamined biases that exist, whether it’s about women or ethnic minorities, or minority groups in general, marginalized communities, power, who deserves care. I think that Dr. Robby is suffering from a little bit of that, his own old-school way of relating and giving tough love, and maybe knowing that women in medicine have it harder, and trying to make them step up in a way that’s very kind of old-school.
Sepideh Mofai and Patrick BallWarrick Page/HBO Max
I come from an opera background, I would hear stories even before my time of the way that teachers were very harsh. I myself had a teacher that was similar to Whiplash, that movie where it’s tough love — if you really want this, then grow the f–k up and step the f–k up or get out. If you can’t do better than everyone else, then leave. So I think that there’s some of that in Dr. Robby, too, of maybe the abuse that he’s gotten from his mentors, and how that abuse translates to his teaching style or methodology, or the way that he relates. And unfortunately, women have been on the other end of it this season.
Do you think he goes on his sabbatical? Do you think he comes back?
I don’t know. I think there’s a world where he goes on his sabbatical and cuts it short because he’s wracked with guilt. I think there’s a world where I think something turned in him, and maybe he’s lost his way, he’s lost his path, and he’s willing to give it all up. I haven’t watched the scene with the baby yet, but I think something about that scene signals that it’s a bit of a death and a rebirth, maybe that there’s something inside of him that has died this season, and we thought maybe it would be him taking his own life, but something is also reborn.
And that’s what Baby Jane Doe represents is this new beginning that we don’t know where we came from, we don’t know where we’re going, but that is the cycle and pattern of life and this universe, really. It’s just constant cycles of death and rebirth.
What do you want for Dr. Al-Hashimi? Who can she turn to after she has that big, cathartic cry in the car?
There is Dr. Mel King and Dr. Samira Mohan, they have that pre-existing relationship and connection from the VA. Dr. Abbott, they click right away. But there was a piece of that car scene that I learned was cut. It was a moment where she drives and she stops and she makes a decision to call her ex-husband. She says, “Hey, can you watch our son tonight. I’m having some car trouble.” And he says, “Sure. What’s going on?” She says, “Nothing. I’m just dealing with it now. I’m just getting off work, just some car trouble.” And he says, “Are you OK? Do you want me to come pick you up?”
And that moment of that gesture, the way he extends himself, that kindness is exactly what she needs in this moment. And that was when she starts to crumble, and she quickly gets off the phone with him so he can’t hear it and then has her breakdown. But I think that moment also taught me a lot about where she is, that she needs to be alone right now, because this hasn’t only triggered her own trauma from her life in this condition, it’s also triggered her relationship to trust. She needs to spend some time working on herself and her worthiness outside of achievements and work. I think she has to confront that and find her own self-worth outside of her expertise, and her identity as a doctor.
So I think that there will be some inevitable soul searching, because she’s not the kind that’ll allow it to break her down completely. She has to find herself and reinvent herself in some way.
