It’s my day to not give a sh-t about spoilers, so we’re talking about casting for The Pitt’s upcoming third season, which some people might consider a spoiler, so you have been warned!
Late Thursday, after I wrapped the site going into a long holiday weekend, news broke that Supriya Ganesh, who plays Dr. Samira Mohan, will exit The Pitt after season two. There are still two episodes remaining in season two, though filming for season three begins in another month or so, which probably prompted the early casting announcement—people are about to notice Ganesh is not involved with season three. At the same they announced Ganesh’s exit from the show, it was also announced that Ayesha Harris, who plays cool night shift resident Dr. Parker Ellis, will be promoted to series regular in season three.
This is the second time a main cast member has left The Pitt, following Tracy Ifeachor in season one, and it is the second time a woman of color is leaving the show. With Ifeachor’s exit, there were rumors of behind-the-scenes discord between Ifeachor and the rest of the cast and crew, with suggestions of homophobia and speculation that Ifeachor, who is involved with an evangelical megachurch in England, didn’t like her character being prominent in pro-abortion storylines. Notably, nothing has ever been confirmed about that speculation. Ifeachor’s exit, as with Ganesh’s, was chalked up to a creatively driven decision as their characters’ time in the pit had come to and end. The fictional PTMC in the show is a teaching hospital, people will always be completing their education and moving on.
The burning ember behind the smoke of Ifeachor’s exit, though, is that her character, Dr. Heather Collins, left the pit before the mass casualty incident and never returned. Dr. Langdon also left the pit early, but he came back for the MCI. But Collins was completely written out before the season even ended, which does sort of look like a deliberate decision to end friction on set.
This is not the case with Supriya Ganesh, as there has been no speculation about conflicts, and more importantly, Mohan is part of a long-gestating arc about Dr. Robby’s failures as a mentor in the pit. Mohan has had a horrible day, Robby is constantly verbally and emotionally abusing her, and we have previously established in season one that Robby, played by Noah Wyle, has huge blindspots when it comes to women and bias. He is markedly a poorer mentor to the women under his charge than the men, and in fact, Dr. Collins warned him during season one that his constant berating of Mohan was undermining an otherwise talented doctor’s confidence (a similar scene with Dr. Abbot was cut from season one).
The Pitt has been setting up a conflict between Mohan and Robby for two seasons, and it feels like they have been building toward a specific climax with Robby and Mohan all along. I hope it’s Mohan going out in a blaze of glory, reading Robby for filth and exposing his sh-t mentorship toward women, especially women of color, but some fans are speculating that the suicidal ideation haunting other characters, including Robby, might manifest in Mohan. I certainly hope not, let’s hope for a brighter ending for a fan favorite character.
Regardless of intention, though, The Pitt has a perception problem. Two main actors have exited the cast, and both times it has been a woman of color. I believe someone involved with the show is fully cognizant of the problematic optics, too, because of the way they announced Ayesha Harris’s promotion at the same time. Like “look, we don’t have a problem with women of color, we’re promoting Dr. Ellis!”, but that just makes it look like they think all women of color are interchangeable. (This is not a knock on Harris, Ellis is super fun and I look forward to seeing more of her.)
Two things can be true: they have been setting up Mohan’s exit—due to Robby’s egregiously bad leadership—for two seasons, and The Pitt has an intrinsic narrative problem that these character exits expose. So much of the show is about biases and blindspots, but I wonder if the writers’ room has introspected on their own biases. Maybe they should ask why the characters who leave are always women of color.
Yes, the show has a built-in reason for actors to exit every year, and if The Pitt runs for a long time, popular actors/characters leaving the show will become an annual ritual. I am enjoying the hell out of Joy Kwon, played by Irene Choi, this season, but I don’t think we’re going to see her again, given her stated intention to go into a different field of medicine. Characters leaving The Pitt will happen every year, that is a feature not a bug.
But the writers and producers need to ask themselves if writing off two women of color in a row might be something they need to think about. Dr. Langdon is repeating his final year of residency, if the show does another big time jump for season three, it is conceivable we will not see him again, as he, too, could move on from PTMC. But will he? Or will there be a convenient excuse for Langdon to stick around another year?
Mohan is a popular character, fans are understandably disappointed we will not get more of her going forward, which is, to an extent, something the show will always contend with, given the nature of its ensemble design. But maybe the creatives behind the show should ask themselves why THIS writing for THESE characters. The pit sucks so bad as a workplace, truthfully, anyone could leave at any time for a variety of narratively believable reasons. So why is it that those “creatively driven decisions” keep getting made for women of color and no one else?
How Mohan ultimately exits the narrative might make this an easier pill to swallow, but in the meantime, it might not hurt The Pitt’s writers to sit with these decisions, because the perception right now is that women of color are disposable to the show, and I truly do not believe that is the case. But they’re not showing us anything different, and as The Pitt constantly reiterates through its storytelling, actions matter. So far, The Pitt is doing a pretty good impression of Dr. Robby—blind to internalized bias and claiming superiority through intent, not action.
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Photo credits: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock for WIF
