The Pitt Boasts a Very Impressive Set for a Very Strong and Involving Show
Paying a visit to the set of the new medical drama, copious amounts of blood included.
I’ve been lucky enough to be on a lot of sets, some of which have been quite cool, so it’s saying something that Max’s The Pitt still stands out as such an impressive one - and also one of the ones with the most blood just absolutely everywhere.
Seriously, there was so much (fake) blood on the floor! Some of it in faint steaks, but some of it in rather large pools. During a group press visit to the set I participated in recently, the cast and crew were in the midst of shooting the season finale and it seemed safe to say the day wasn’t going to get any easier for the hardworking staff at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital.
By “day” I mean the single day the show’s season takes place over, since if you haven’t seen The Pitt yet, you may not know it essentially takes place in real time, with the 15-episode season taking place over a 15-hour shift at the hospital. While no one would give us any specifics on the blood, they did indicate it was representative of how everyone was doing all they could to save lives, and the cleaning up process would have to wait.
The Pitt is a great show, at once giving you the nostalgic hit of seeing ER’s Noah Wyle once more playing an ER doctor in another involving, well crafted drama*, while also updating this type of series for the modern age - both with the uncensored cursing and realistically graphic visuals that would accompany working in such an environment and through its involving storytelling approach.
[*the estate of ER creator Michael Crichton has sued Warner Bros. TV over The Pitt, claiming it is a reworking of a discarded ER sequel series concept, though it remains to be seen how much “Noah Wyle as an ER doctor” is a legal concept someone can lay claim to]
Said Wyle, about returning to this type of material 15 years after ER ended, “I’d say that the level of sophistication that audiences bring to their viewing has really accelerated in the last couple of years. People have become so familiar with narrative devices and tropes and patterns that it's out of respect for them that you have to sort of up your game in the way that you tell something to make it new, to make it seem fresh.”
ER was a terrific and gripping series but The Pitt definitely feels more modern both in technique and story, with the new show feeling even less inclined to follow more heightened subplots or diversions, even as we still do learn more about the characters as the season progresses. Along with its compelling real time approach, the recent past is tied into the characterization in a very strong manner as well, as Wyle’s Dr. Michael "Robby" Rabinavitch has been profoundly, realistically affected by what he and his colleagues experienced at the onset of COVID-19.
Said Wyle, “We are still playing catch up from the nuclear bomb that was dropped on the medical community in 2020 and it's going to take a while to right this ship. So part of doing this was to shine the spotlight back on this community and to hopefully inspire the next generation of health care workers to want to go into these jobs because we are going to need them. And our system is fragile. And it is as fragile as the quality of support we give our practitioners.”
It’s become a sometimes-mocked cliche for TV series creators to describe the location their series takes place in as “another character on the show,” but though no one uttered those words on The Pitt set while I was there, it actually would have felt pretty appropriate if they did. The way the show is structured, there’s almost no scenes set outside the hospital, meaning the look and feel of the show’s set is crucial, which led to an unusual order of events behind the scenes when The Pitt was being developed.
As series creator R. Scott Gemmill — like his fellow Executive Producer, John Wells, Gemmill worked with Wyle on ER — explained, “We had the set design before we started writing because there is no way to write a show like this without knowing the space,” giving well earned high praise to production designer Nina Ruscio.
Ruscio, while leading us on a tour of the set, noted she’d never been brought onto a project at such an early stage, but said the goal was “to have the set transcend the normal overly art directed hospital designs that you see.”
That meant realism and functionality were key, with the set primarily based upon Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. The set feels very large, with almost all the rooms you see on the series actually connected as they would be in real life, rather than much trickery in terms of building them separately, as can be common. The Pitt team wanted you to actually be able to see across their ER as much as possible, with doors and windows usually open to the rooms in the background. Ruscio noted they were making maximum use of their primary soundstage, and ultimately did need to use one and a half stages to fit the entire hospital set, with the second stage holding the waiting room area where we spoke to the cast.
The approach to making The Pitt feel as genuine as possible includes the lighting, as all the scenes set inside the hospital only use the visible overhead lights built into the set itself, meaning there are no additional lights (nor the usual accompanying c stands and equipment) brought in. And with the show’s approach encouraged to depict everything going on in a busy ER, including in the background, it also means the main cast are also sometimes essentially working as extras.
As Isa Briones (“Dr. Trinity Santos”) described it, “We're always on stage. It's like you never leave the stage because we're often background acting in other people's scenes. And the way we do trauma scenes is so intensely rehearsed. It is a dance, it is choreography. And we run it, run it, run it until it's in our bones. And then we do it and there's like no time in between rehearsing and then shooting. So it feels like theater.”
With the way the series is shot, it feels inevitable that even without lighting equipment, they might sometimes accidentally catch the crew or additional cameras in a shot. Ruscio said that absolutely does occur and though they obviously wouldn’t be able to include a shot with a camera in it, the crew is another story - because they all are dressed for the occasion. On a normal day, Ruscio explained to the visiting press, “All of us would not be allowed to be here right now, because we're not wearing scrubs. If you're on the set, you're wearing scrubs.”
As Executive Producer John Wells put it, “The set is so big and open that you're constantly getting caught in the back of shots. The crew members are constantly getting caught” - hence the need to make sure everyone blends in by also wearing scrubs.
As our tour was coming to an end, we got to see some costumes on display, as we learned about the work done to maintain continuity – The Pitt’s season was shot in chronological order, unlike many streaming series these days, which shoot in blocks, filming scenes from multiple episodes at once – and how they’ll design patterns for blood stains that must be replicated on clothing throughout multiple episodes.
And we got an up close look at some of the terrific prosthetics made for the series for various accident victims or emergency procedure scenes, including the infamous “degloved” foot from the show’s premiere. There were all rather awesome things to see for a practical FX fan, including a full sized head with a moving eyeball or a torso with a cut in the chest and the ability to see the heart pumping inside. Of course, we were still left wondering who was going to spill all the blood on the floor and ponder just how harrowing and heartwrenching it will be when that happens.
New episodes of The Pitt debut Thursdays at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on Max.