As we prepare for the 32nd Actor Awards presented by SAG-AFTRA, Backstage is breaking down this year’s film and television ensemble nominees for your consideration.
Main cast: Shabana Azeez‚ Patrick Ball‚ Isa Briones‚ Taylor Dearden‚ Fiona Dourif‚ Supriya Ganesh‚ Gerran Howell‚ Tracy Ifeachor‚ Katherine LaNasa‚ and Noah Wyle
Casting by: Erica Berger and Cathy Sandrich Gelfond
Created by: R. Scott Gemmill
Distributed by: HBO Max
“The Pitt” makes the case that the emergency room is a living organism, with every person essential to its function. The same can be said of the show’s cast, whose calibration ensures each actor is elevating the whole.
Noah Wyle, an executive producer, gives a deeply human performance as Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the attending physician who keeps the department moving while battling memories of trauma (he lost his mentor during the pandemic). By his side is Katherine LaNasa’s no-nonsense charge nurse, Dana Evans, who can weather a punch from a patient and get right back to work. Fiona Dourif’s Cassie McKay and Tracy Ifeachor’s Heather Collins both hide personal struggles while maintaining professional composure.
Even the less practiced doctors feel authentic: Shabana Azeez is sweetly nervous as the brilliant med student Victoria Javadi; Isa Briones is caustically cocky as Trinity Santos; and poor Gerran Howell’s Dennis Whitaker endures an endless stream of bodily fluids like a champ. Each actor gives their character a sharp specificity—whether it’s Taylor Dearden’s Mel King rapping to hype herself up, Patrick Ball’s Frank Langdon pleading for his job after a misstep, or Supriya Ganesh’s Samira Mohan displaying tense competence.
The result is a collection of very human characters with real flaws but also lots of compassion. You never want to end up in an emergency room, but if you had to, you’d want it to be this one.