Emmy Nominees Cathy Sandrich Gelfond & Erica Berger on Casting the Scrappy Young Doctors of “The Pitt”

When The Pitt started streaming on HBO Max in January, the influx of intense young actors just kept coming. ER star Noah Wyle anchors the medical drama as the cracked tower of strength, Doctor Michael “Robby” Rabinovitch; nearly all the other characters on his fractious emergency room team are portrayed by relatively unknown talents delivering performances that are, by turns, wrenching and highly technical.

The Pitt, which earned 13 Emmy nominations, filled its ranks with actors picked by casting directors Cathy Sandrich Gelfond and Erica Berger. After working together on Mayor of Kingstown, they combed the country for actors unburdened by celebrity baggage. “We were trying pretty hard not to have well-known faces because we didn’t want anyone to be taken out of where we are in the story,” Gelfond explains. “We wanted the audience to feel like we’re in the grit and the grime and the blood.”

Speaking from Los Angeles, where The Pitt is filmed, Gelfond and Berger unpack the vetting process that led to the stacked cast of newcomers, as well as the veteran actress, Emmy nominee Katherine LaNasa, whose audition reduced the casting directors to tears.

The sheer scale of The Pitt—more than 300 speaking parts plus the core ensemble surrounding Noah Wyle—must have been daunting for you.

Cathy: The pilot was really mind-boggling. I barely knew which way was up.

How did you go about matching all these relatively unknown actors to roles that seem tailor-made for them?

Cathy: When Erica and I read the script, it was beautifully written and the parts were really well defined, which clued us in on the vision of who we were trying to find. And everyone—network, studio, producers—all agreed that we didn’t need names. We had Noah. We were going to cast the show like a play. It was really exciting to find these untouched gems and give them parts.

Focusing on the young doctors, Isa Briones seems like she was born to play the super-opinionated Dr. Santos. Where did you find her?

Cathy: Isa lives in L.A., but she happened to be on Broadway doing [Tony-winning musical] Hadestown with her father [Jon Briones].

Erica: We had to snag her in between performances, but sometimes magic happens, and you go, “There she is!”

Cathy: One of the things was that was great is that we got to hire a lot of theater actors and kids out of training programs. But it took a lot of searching. A lot

Dr. Whittaker from Nebraska is portrayed very convincingly by the Welsh actor Gerron Howell. How did he get on your radar?

Cathy: I saw him in [2019 miniseries] Catch 22 and really loved him. A lot of people we know saw him on the British detective series Ludwig.

Erica: He sent us a self-tape, and something clicked.

Cathy: We were stunned at how good his [American] accent was. It was flawless. But we had to make sure we could deal with visas. That can be complicated because of timing, so we weren’t really concentrating much on people in England, but Gerran was just so good.

Fiona Dourif as Cassie McKay has a complicated personal life – she’s forced to wear an ankle monitor at work. Had you worked with her before?

Erica: I’ve been a big Fiona fan for years, just from reading her for various things, bringing her in to guest star here and there. But when you love someone, you just keep trying until you find the right part for them, so for me, casting Fiona was really exciting.

Taylor Dearden, in the role of Dr. Melissa King, embodies empathy. How did you spot her?

Erica: Our amazing associate, Seth Caskey, saw her tape first and brought Taylor to our attention.

Cathy: And I enjoyed her performance in American Vandal, where she played someone completely different from Taylor. I did not know she was Bryan Cranston and Robin Dearden’s daughter until after we sent her to the [producer] guys. We just liked her.

Patrick Ball plays troubled Dr. Langdon. People might think of him as being the George-Clooney-in-ER equivalent for The Pitt. Surely Patrick Ball appeared in many shows before The Pitt?

Cathy: He hasn’t, actually. Patrick came out of Yale [Drama School], kicked around in New York for quite a while, and did one guest star in Law & Order. We were both surprised that he hadn’t worked a lot more.

What struck you about his self-tape audition?

Erica: I remember watching it in my office, pausing the tape, peeking my head into Cathy’s office, and saying, “You’ve got to have a look at this guy.”

Cathy: Then Patrick came in and read with Noah. We just felt there was something deeper…

Erica: A deeper connection to the material and a deeper understanding of what his character’s probably going through. I think that came across in his performance.

Cathy: Then you find out his father’s a paramedic and his mother’s an ER nurse.

Cathy: Some of our actors, like Fiona, Taylor, and Supriya [Ganesh], were all [cast] in our first sessions, but we didn’t find Patrick until the very end.

Why is that?

Erica: We saw so many actors who were immensely talented and handsome and could handle the dialogue, but even though you can’t quite put your finger on it, something wasn’t 100 percent correct until he walked through the door, and it’s this woo woo thing: “That’s what was missing.”

Then you have a veteran performer in Katherine LaNasa, who earned an Emmy nomination for playing the wise nurse, Dana.

Cathy: I met Kathy a million years ago when she first came to town. It’s always fun to take someone you know and see them just knock it out of the park.

Erica: Katherine’s audition scene was mainly about being this powerful confident person in charge of the nurses. But then, as we were narrowing down, [showrunner R.] Scott [Gemmill] added this scene where Dana gets punched by an angry patient, so we reached back out to Katherine’s team: “Would you mind maybe doing one more?” And when we saw her do that scene, we all cried. If I’m being honest, that one really got me.

You guys spent several months putting together the ensemble with the producers. Did you get to attend that initial table read when all The Pitt cast members gathered for the first time?

Cathy: We were there, as was the studio, as was the network. It was done in a little theater space at Warner Brothers, and all of us on the casting team were knocked out. You could see relationships already forming, because they had been to this bootcamp run by [writer/executive producer] Doctor Joe Sachs. They were proud of being able to intubate. So cute!

Was it useful to have Noah Wyle on board from the beginning?

Erica: A plus, because then we had a starting point. We know him, we know his energy, and as an executive producer, he was giving us input.

Cathy: Noah’s a remarkable leader. Just as Doctor Robby in The Pitt welcomes all the young doctors in the pilot episode, he did that for every member of the cast, showing them tricks he learned along the way and shepherding them through the process.

Cathy: It’s a special experience for all our actors, even the one-day guest stars and background players. Everything comes out of Noah’s mission statement, which is that on The Pitt, everybody is important, top to bottom. This is a team.

As the season progresses, the “team” expands exponentially with dozens of guest actors appearing in one or two episodes to play patients facing dramatic emergencies. Was it challenging to find so many strong actors for these smaller roles?

Cathy: We spread a wide net for the series regulars, don’t get me wrong, but there’s such a deep well of talent in L.A. when you look at the caliber of the guest stars and smaller parts that form the fabric and texture of the show. I’m a Los Angeles native, but I rarely get to work in L.A. We need to bring production back to Los Angeles.  

Featured image: Medic Harley brings in Roxiae; Medic Bashir brings in badly beaten Gus Varney. (Warrick Page/HBOMAX)