The Pitt


The Pitt is an American medical procedural drama television series created by R. Scott Gemmill, and executive produced by John Wells and Noah Wyle. It is Gemmill, Wells and Wyle's second collaboration, having previously worked together on ER. It stars Wyle, Tracy Ifeachor, Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa, Supriya Ganesh, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Isa Briones, Gerran Howell, and Shabana Azeez. Each season of the series follows emergency department staff as they attempt to overcome the hardships of a single 15-hour work shift at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, all while having to navigate staff shortages and underfunding. Each episode covers approximately one hour of the work shift.
The Pitt premiered on Max on January9, 2025. The series has received acclaim from critics for its performances, writing, direction, format, and realism. The series has also been praised by the medical community for its accuracy, realistic portrayal of healthcare workers, and addressing the psychological challenges faced in a post-pandemic world. The Pitt was renewed for a second season in February 2025, which premiered on January8, 2026. In January 2026, ahead of the second-season premiere, The Pitt was renewed for a third season.
The series has received several accolades with the first season winning five awards at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series, Casting, and acting wins for Wyle, LaNasa and recurring guest star Shawn Hatosy. Additionally, it was listed as one of the ten best television programs of 2025 by the American Film Institute and won for Best Television Series – Drama at the 83rd Golden Globe Awards.

Premise

In the first season, attending physician Dr.Michael "Robby" Robinavitch starts a shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center's emergency room, nicknamed "the Pitt". Four trainee doctors join the team. Throughout the next fifteen hours, the students and residents learn more about their professional duties, while trying to deal with the emotional toll of patient care and the hardships of working in an overcrowded and underfunded ER. They are guided by Robby and the Pitt's other staff members. Meanwhile, Robby struggles to cope with traumatic memories resurfacing on the fourth anniversary of his mentor's death, which happened in the Pitt during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The second season begins ten months later, on the 4th of July. Robby meets the attending who will be taking over for him while he is on a three-month sabbatical. Two staff return from time away and two medical students join the team.

Cast and characters

In decreasing order of seniority, the medical hierarchy begins with the attending physician, followed by senior residents, junior residents, interns, and finally, medical students.

Main

  • Noah Wyle as Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch, a senior attending physician
  • Tracy Ifeachor as Dr. Heather Collins, a senior resident
  • Patrick Ball as Dr. Frank Langdon, a senior resident
  • Katherine LaNasa as Dana Evans, the day-shift charge nurse
  • Supriya Ganesh as Dr. Samira Mohan, a third-year medical resident trying to find balance between diligence and speed
  • Fiona Dourif as Dr. Cassie McKay, a 42-year-old second-year resident raising her young son, Harrison, as a single mother
  • Taylor Dearden as Dr. Melissa "Mel" King, a neurodivergent second-year resident
  • Isa Briones as Dr. Trinity Santos, a cocky and ambitious intern
  • Gerran Howell as Dennis Whitaker, a fourth-year medical student who lacks confidence
  • Shabana Azeez as Victoria Javadi, a 20-year-old third-year medical student whose parents also work in medicine
  • Sepideh Moafi as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, a new attending physician at the Pitt who arrives as Robby's interim replacement ahead of his sabbatical

    Recurring

  • Shawn Hatosy as Dr. Jack Abbot, a night shift attending physician and old friend of Robby
  • Amielynn Abellera as Perlah Alawi, a nurse working in the ER
  • Jalen Thomas Brooks as Mateo Diaz, a nurse working in the ER
  • Brandon Mendez Homer as Donnie Donahue, a nurse practitioner working in the ER
  • Kristin Villanueva as Princess, a nurse working in the ER
  • Ned Brower as Jesse Van Horn, a nurse working in the ER
  • Joanna Going as Theresa Saunders, a middle-aged woman concerned about her son's behavior
  • Deepti Gupta as Dr. Eileen Shamsi, a senior attending and Victoria's mother
  • Michael Hyatt as Gloria Underwood, the chief medical officer
  • Jackson Kelly as David Saunders, Theresa's troubled teenaged son
  • Krystel V. McNeil as Kiara Alfaro, the department social worker
  • Alexandra Metz as Dr. Yolanda Garcia, a resident surgeon
  • Johnath Davis as Ahmad Zidan, a security guard who frequently starts betting pools
  • Ernest Harden Jr. as Louie Cloverfield, a patient who frequents the ER and has severe alcohol-related issues
  • Drew Powell as Doug Driscoll, a patient who has been in the ER waiting room for hours
  • Arun Storrs as Minu, a Nepali woman who was pushed onto the subway train tracks
  • Brandon Keener as John Bradley, the father of a braindead teenager
  • Ashley Romans as Joyce St. Claire, a woman with sickle cell disease
  • Samantha Sloyan as Lily Bradley, the mother of a braindead teenager
  • Mika Abdalla as Jenna, a college student who overdosed
  • Abby Ryder Fortson as Kristi Wheeler, a pregnant teenager with an appointment for a medical abortion
  • Marguerite Moreau as Lynette Wheeler, Kristi's aunt
  • Tracy Vilar as Lupe Perez, the hospital's ward clerk
  • Shu Lan Tuan as Ginger Kitajima, an elderly woman who fell
  • Courtney Grosbeck as Piper Fisher, a patient with a controlling boss
  • Shani Atias as Laura Fisher, Piper's boss
  • Robert Heaps as Chad Ashcroft, McKay's ex and Harrison's father
  • Ayesha Harris as Dr. Parker Ellis, a night shift senior resident
  • Ken Kirby as Dr. John Shen, the night shift senior attending
  • Tedra Millan as Dr. Emery Walsh, a night shift surgeon
  • Charles Baker as Troy Digby, an unhoused patient
  • Irene Choi as Joy Kwon, a third-year medical student with photographic memory
  • Lucas Iverson as James Ogilvie, a fourth-year medical student who, alongside Joy, trains under Whitaker
  • Laëtitia Hollard as Emma Nolan, a recent nursing school graduate working in the ER, who Dana mentors
  • Jayne Taini as Evelyn Bostick, a patient with Alzheimer's
  • Annabelle Toomey as Kylie Conners, a 9-year-old patient with various injuries around her body
  • Meta Golding as Noelle Hastings, a nurse and case manager in the ER who is casually dating Robby
  • Christopher Thornton as Dr. Caleb Jefferson, a psychiatric attending physician
  • Becca Blackwell as Dylan Easton, a social worker
  • Zack Morris as Jackson Davis, a patient brought to the ER after an outburst at his college library
  • Lawrence Robinson as Brian Hancock, a patient with a soccer injury
  • Brittany Allen as Roxie Hamler, a patient
  • Bonita Friedericy as Cora Wilkins
  • Taylor Handley as Paul Hamler, Roxie's husband
  • Jeff Kober as Duke, a motorcycle engineer and old acquaintance of Robby
  • Luke Tennie as Dr. Crus Henderson, a fourth-year resident working in the night shift
  • Travis Van Winkle as Curtis Larson, an aggressive patient
  • Rusty Schwimmer as Monica Peters, a hospital clerk

    Guest

  • Brad Dourif as Neil McKay, Cassie's father
  • Victor Rivas Rivers as Trent Norris, the chief executive officer of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center

    Episodes

Series overview

Season 1 (2025)

Season 2 (2026)

Production

Development

From the 1990s, actor Noah Wyle and television producers R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells worked together on the set of the medical drama television series ER, which aired from 1994 to 2009. ER became successful throughout its run, influencing subsequent medical drama series. After its end, Gemmill and Wyle purposefully pursued projects unrelated to the genre, with Gemmill saying he thought he "would never do a medical show again, because we had done it so well". In 2020, Wyle began receiving an influx of direct messages on Instagram and fan mail from first responders working in the healthcare system, thanking him for inspiring them to pursue emergency medicine, with his role as Dr. John Carter in ER, and talking about their struggles during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Wyle shared many of the messages with Wells, with whom he thought he could make a television series dealing with the contemporary challenges faced by healthcare workers and the spread of health misinformation. Meanwhile, Gemmill began thinking about possibilities to innovate the genre of the medical drama after having a conversation with a fellow television writer. Gemmill, Wells, and Wyle kept in contact with each other and with other ER collaborators, such as television writer and ER doctor Joe Sachs, who shared his experiences in the healthcare system.
Over the next few years, Gemmill, Wells, and Wyle began sharing their ideas and developing an ER spin-off focused on Carter, also recruiting Sachs and other ER collaborators such as Mel Herbert. However, Warner Bros. Television could not come to an agreement with the estate of ER creator Michael Crichton, overseen by his widow, Sherri Alexander Crichton, leading to the project being abandoned. Nevertheless, Max, a streaming service affiliated with Warner Bros. Discovery, expressed their interest in making a medical drama series starring Wyle with the team. At the time, Max CEO Casey Bloys was searching for a network-style procedural drama that could keep audiences engaged for several weeks. Additionally, he sought to expand the service's library with original releases and define the characteristics of a "Max Original", as opposed to the HBO series that Max also offers. The team began developing The Pitt after the end of the Writers Guild of America's strike in the fall of 2023. After switching to Max, Gemmill initially thought of adopting the narrative device of real time, following a twelve-hour shift at the hospital, due to the time constraints of direct-to-stream series, which are usually afforded a maximum of twelve episodes. Instead, Bloys suggested doing fifteen episodes, wanting to reduce the wait time in between seasons and avoid it feeling "like an extension of a streaming show".
In March 2024, Max gave the production a fifteen-episode straight-to-series order for The Pitt, overseen by John Wells Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television. Each episode had a reported budget of million to million dollars. Bloys explained that the lower per-episode budget made it possible to order more episodes than is typical for streaming services. Gemmill, Wells, and Wyle are the executive producers along with Simran Baidwan, Michael Hissrich, and Erin Jontow. Credited as The Pitt creator, Gemmill wrote the pilot episode and serves as the series' showrunner. In February 2025, Max ordered a second season of The Pitt. The season will chronicle a shift in the ER on Independence Day—Langdon's first day at work after going to an inpatient rehabilitation facility. Wyle explained their choice, saying: "The biggest driver of Langdon... Nine, basically 10 months later, gives a lot of room for us to have developed a few stories in the interim and catch up with everyone. And with it being Langdon's first day back, we get to catch up as he catches up with all those people." In January 2026, a day before the second-season premiere, Max renewed the series for a third season.