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‘The Pitt’s Shawn Hatosy Explains How Abbot’s “Unexpected” Arrival Shakes Up This Season
Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers up to The Pitt Season 2 Episode 7.
With HBO’s The Pitt now returned for Season 2, the latest shift for the doctors and nurses working in the emergency department of the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center just got even more complicated. This week’s episode, “1:00 P.M.,” reveals the real reason behind Westbridge Hospital’s “Code Black,” which has resulted in all of their patients being diverted to PTMC: hospitals are being hit with a cyberattack, and to avoid the same fate, The Pitt has to go offline.
Before that happens, however, the seventh hour of R. Scott Gemmill, John Wells, and Noah Wyle‘s medical drama finally welcomes in a familiar face in the form of Shawn Hatosy‘s Dr. Jack Abbot, who rolls in with a SWAT team seemingly just in time to help the ER buckle down for the worst. With the hospital’s CEO going above Dr. Robby (Wyle) to fill in Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) on what’s going on, will that only add to the tension that’s been brewing between them since the beginning of the shift? Ahead of The Pitt‘s return, Collider had the opportunity to speak with the show’s creators and cast alike about some of Season 2’s most pivotal moments over the first six episodes, including Hatosy and Moafi. Below, the co-stars discuss Abbot’s unexpected entrance in Season 2, why Robby and Al-Hashimi’s conflict is a joy to play, which Season 1 moment Hatosy still feels did Abbot dirty, and more.
COLLIDER: Shawn, what can you tee up for us about Abbot and what we can look forward to when he finally rolls in this season?
SHAWN HATOSY: Well, when we last left Abbot, he was up on the roof with Robby, talking him off the ledge. He says at the end of that season, “My therapist says I find comfort in the darkness.” He tries to tell Robby that maybe he should talk to a therapist, so I think as we come into Season 2, we’re definitely going to be checking in on that to make sure that the toll that this job is taking on Robby isn’t going to be too much.
That’s one of Abbot’s focuses. The other thing is he comes in in a very unexpected way. He actually moonlights on a SWAT team. They often use a doctor on SWAT teams in case something goes wrong, who is qualified to carry a gun. So something wild happens, and he has to come in, and that’s how he shows up in fatigues. That’s where he meets the great new attending physician, Dr. Al-Hashimi.
Sepideh Moafi Reveals What She Enjoys About Going Head-to-Head With Noah Wyle in ‘The Pitt’ Season 2
“You’re used to calling the shots, both of us, with our respective backgrounds.”
To tie this all into Robby, we know at the beginning of Season 2 that he is set to be taking a sabbatical. It sounds like a much-needed one. Dr. Al-Hashimi is intended to be his replacement, stepping in, but there’s been a bit of overlap. She’s there, he’s there, and we immediately see that these two have very different leadership styles. There is that initial rockiness of who should take the lead and with which med students, and who should be stepping back. Sepideh, I wanted to ask you about what you enjoyed about getting to go through those bumpy moments with Noah [Wyle] at the beginning of the season.
SEPIDEH MOAFI: Oh my gosh, those moments are so delicious where we’re talking over each other or finishing each other’s sentences, not on purpose. It’s so fun as the actor to play, and as the character, it’s a bit jarring, because you’re used to having the leadership role. You’re used to calling the shots, both of us, with our respective backgrounds. Now it’s two people in leadership positions, and one, as I think you mentioned, has a very different approach to medicine.
Dr. Al-Hashimi represents the more modern approach, the modernization of medicine, and Dr. Robby is the more traditional, sort of old-school approach. So sometimes, they clash, these two different approaches and personalities. He’s not used to having somebody else there who calls the shots and who’s in charge. She’s, as a woman in any profession, used to male counterparts being a bit cutting or condescending at times, but she takes it in stride and knows that they are both really good at their jobs. They just have different ins into medicine.
Ultimately, there is some harmony. They do harmonize together — though there is a lot of dissonance, too, throughout the season. But just for us as actors, Noah [Wyle] and I playing these scenes, it’s so much fun because it requires such radical presence and aliveness and really listening to each other and trying to hold back in certain moments and then other moments just letting loose. So, it’s been quite a journey, and I’m excited for people to experience that journey.
‘The Pitt’s Noah Wyle Reacts to That Heartbreaking Patient Death: “It’s a Funeral With a Clock”
Wyle also teases whether the tension between Robby and Langdon will eventually boil over by the end of this shift.
One quote that Dr. Al-Hashimi has in this season that really stuck out to me and felt like almost an unofficial mantra for this character and who she is is when you have the line of “Just because you know it’s broken doesn’t mean you stop trying.” [She’s] talking about a lot of the failures of the modern healthcare system and the places where maybe the hospital isn’t as well-equipped to handle certain issues. Do you feel like that is what sums her up in her approach to medicine? “I understand that the system I’m working in isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop looking for ways to try and fix it, even if they’re small fixes here and there”?
MOAFI: Absolutely. I think if there were a few lines that were at her core, her foundation, that would be one of them. I would take it a step further and say it’s not that she thinks the system is not perfect. She knows it’s a broken system, which is why she’s finding alternative ways, different modalities of reorganizing, reshaping, and advancing medicine. At the beginning, as you saw, there was an introduction where she’s talking about using AI or using technology in order to implement some of these changes. Not for novelty’s sake, but in order to improve patient-centered care and medicine, in order to relieve some of the burden that these physicians carry every day, the emotional weight, the bandwidth. There’s always too much need in the hospitals and not enough time, and we are all human.
The whole idea with her approach to AI is that you are able to delegate some of this responsibility, able to offload some of this admin charting. I think it’s something like 28% of a physician’s time is spent at the patient’s bedside. The other 72% is spent charting or doing admin work. So, if we’re able to relieve some of that pressure, some of that workload, with the strict supervision of the physicians, of the nurses, then this could be beneficial for everyone. The idea is not to have technology take over, but to relieve some of the burden. You have to fixate on the light. You have to hold this myopic approach to healing, and where can we find little glimmers of hope that’ll keep us going? So, like you said, this is a constitutional part of who she is, this idea that just because something isn’t working or it’s broken, it doesn’t mean that you stop the fight.
For the Record, Shawn Hatosy Has Great Hand-Eye Coordination (Even if ‘The Pitt’ Season 1 Did Him Dirty)
“I just want to state for the record that I am an amazing athlete.”
Shawn, one of my favorite moments from last season is the moment where everybody circles up outside the hospital, has some beers in the park, and it’s nice to see the doctors and the nurses getting a chance to take a break from the craziness of the shift. Is there anything along those lines that we can look forward to in Season 2, potentially a little bit of downtime?
HATOSY: I think so. And I just want to say that when they throw Abbot the beer, and he doesn’t catch it, that was scripted. I’m a stellar athlete, and I just want everybody to know that there was a line when he drops it that said, “Now you know why I didn’t become a surgeon,” and they cut that line. So it just makes Abbot look clumsy and not athletic, and I just want to state for the record that I am an amazing athlete. I just want you to know that.
MOAFI: Shawn has trauma from that moment. It’s still affecting him.
HATOSY: I do think there is a moment of everybody coming together.
But just so that we have it on the record: great hand-eye coordination from Shawn Hatosy.
HATOSY: Can you please just let this be the headline of the article?
We’re going to clear some things up.
HATOSY: How are they going to leave an actor hanging like that? Cut out the line, and then just make him look clumsy. Who does that?