“The Pitt” captured the hearts of audiences with its gritty and authentic portrayal of American healthcare workers five years after the COVID outbreak. When the chaos of the emergency room brings forth a personal tragedy for senior attending physician Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle), the mission statement of the Max medical drama comes into impressive focus.
The 15-episode series follows a team of doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals through an eventful shift at a Pittsburgh trauma center in real time. While most medical shows would lean into rare diseases or romantic plotlines to add drama to the proceedings, the team behind “The Pitt” leaned into a verité approach to its storytelling and filming — a move that has given the show a rare stamp of approval from the medical community.
“The idea for the show was really to have this immersive feeling with the camera, we are a part of the team in the ER and we’re following them through this journey,” director of photography Johanna Coelho told TheWrap in a new installment of How I Did It, presented by Max.
Knowing the team’s mission from the start, production designer Nina Ruscio said she designed the show’s Los Angeles set — a sprawling emergency room setup with everything, except running water — to provide 360-degree views around the main room and more intimate spaces to allow the camera to follow the action documentary-style.
The first 10 installments immersed viewers into a more typical day in the ER, dropping breadcrumbs to a potential catastrophe to come. By Episode 13, a nearby mass shooting has sent the hospital into disarray with an avalanche of injured patients coming in for treatment. Things take a turn for the worse when Robby’s stepson Jake (Taj Speights) and girlfriend Leah arrive with injuries of their own — and Leah is quickly circling the drain.
“He can’t save his stepson’s girlfriend. Probably the only healthy relationship in his life is going to be jeopardized by not being able to save this girl,” Wyle said recalling the heartwrenching episode. “He knows that everybody else is right, and he knows that this is a futile exercise, but he can’t quite admit it to himself.”
In filming the sequence, Coelho’s team opted to switch camera lenses to spotlight the moment Robby realizes there’s nothing left to do for Leah. And there’s little time for Robby to process the loss before he has to tell Jake the news — a difficult conversation all medical professionals face, though rarely for their own loved ones — which Wyle said he approached by letting his scene partner take the lead.
“I just remember trying to be as simple and clear, and put all my attention on him and take all my cues and behavior off of what I felt like I needed to shore him up and make sure that he was going to be as OK as possible,” Wyle added. “Taj is such a beautiful actor, I really can’t take any credit for that scene — because it’s really his scene — and we’d earned out of all of that chaos this one quiet moment to have this one devastating conversation.”
That commitment to realism paid off, as “The Pitt” was quickly renewed for a second season, and boasted impressive audience growth to reach an average of 10 million viewers globally per episode. But that success has not steered them off the show’s initial mission.
“People really identify with these characters and where they are emotionally. So all we really have to do is say, ‘Where are they now? How do they feel now?’ And we’re in the ballpark,” Wyle said.
“It almost feels like we’re also hospital staff. We come back for another day of work,” Ruscio added. “There’ll be successes, there’ll be failures, but we will do our absolute best.”
“The Pitt” is now streaming on Max.
