*Warning – contains spoilers for The Pitt season 2 episode 11, which is yet to be released in the UK.*
As The Pitt gets set to go back into production on its third season, updates from the cast are coming thick and fast, with the latest coming from Dr Langdon star Patrick Ball.
Ball was speaking with Deadline about his work on the series, when he was asked about how he gets his head around the time jumps between seasons, and gets to grips with what has happened to his character in the meantime.
“With this show, we don’t always know where we’re going,” Ball said. “We get scripts one at a time. I’m currently in this situation for season 3, where we’re going to go back into production in a month, and I’m having conversations with Scott [Gemmill, series creator].
“I don’t know exactly where we’re going to go over the course of the season, but let’s check in and establish where I’ve been.”
Ball also opened up about Langdon’s journey in season 2, where he was trying to make amends for his actions in season 1, where he was stealing medications due to his own drug addiction.
Throughout the season, he apologised to a number of his colleagues, but struggled to get through to two of them – his former mentor, Noah Wyle’s Dr Robby, and Dr Santos, Isa Briones’s character who was responsible for exposing his drug addition.
“I think Langdon came back, at the top of season 2, knowing that he had been hurt,” he said of his character’s relationship with Dr Robby. “He had felt abandoned by Robby, but he had also hurt Robby, and he had been spending the last 10 months doing the work to take accountability for [that].
“He came back in with a great game plan to make his apology tour and thought that he was going to go up to Robby, apologize, and rekindle this very close mentorship. He then came in the door and realised that it wasn’t necessarily available.
“As the season goes on, he realises, ‘Robby is not the person I remembered him to be. I remembered him to be this sterling, noble role model that I looked up to in every way and wanted to emulate,” and then I come back in and I’m a little disappointed that he won’t take my apology.
“That feels a little bit like, ‘Why does he hate me? I know I messed up, but please give me some grace.’ As the day goes on, you realize, ‘Wait, he is not doing well in a way that actually is not about me,’ and I learn to see him as not just an extension of my healing process, but somebody who has a healing process of his own.
“He might need care and compassion, rather than him being there as a lighthouse and guidance figure for everyone else on the staff.”
When it comes to Dr Santos, Ball noted that “recovery is a lifelong journey” and “addiction is a lifelong disease”, meaning Langdon “still has a lot of fears and resentment for the person that put him out of work and almost ended his marriage”.
The eleventh episode of The Pitt season 2 saw Langdon try to apologise to Santos, but she angrily suggested he wasn’t taken true accountability, given that his taking drugs from the hospital was not public knowledge.
Ball continued: “As much as part of his mind can say, ‘I did it to myself,’ the other part of his mind is like, ‘You almost ruined my f***ing life. You almost killed me. You almost made me lose my wife and my kids.’
“Like, ‘By the way, I was doing a good job, I came in the middle of a mass-casualty event and saved a lot of lives. And I walked out of that mass-casualty event a pariah, having to now be a loser in the eyes of my wife and children, and all of my coworkers, and lose all trust and respect and a community that I feel like I’ve done a lot of work to earn respect from.’
“So, there is a lot of ego injury there that takes time to get over and it doesn’t happen like that. Langdon didn’t go away and all of a sudden come down from the mountaintop having seen the light. He will continue to be an imperfect person, because this is a cyclical lifelong journey.”
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Other The Pitt stars to have recently spoken about the show and its upcoming third season include Wyle himself, who has revealed that the new run will be set in early November.
Meanwhile, Sepideh Moafi confirmed that her character, Dr Al-Hashimi, will be back for the new season.
The Pitt season 1 is available to watch on HBO Max in the UK now. Season 2 continues releasing new episodes weekly on Thursdays. Subscribe to HBO Max from £5.99 a month.
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