‘The Pitt’ challenges the ‘only one’ maxim about diversity in casting

The acclaimed HBO Max series The Pitt returns for a second season today.

The Pitt centers around Dr. Michael Robinavitch (aka “Dr. Robby”) played by Noah Wyle — probably best known for his 13 season run as a doctor on another medical drama, ER — and a large cast of other doctors, nurses, patients and hospital staff.

The series has a unique format: a season spans just one day, with each episode representing an hour in the emergency room of a fictional Pittsburgh hospital. It’s been lauded for its authenticity (including by medical professionals) and also for its casting, which the show’s Emmy-winning casting directors see as connected.

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Cathy Sandrich Gelfond and Erica Berger, who took home an Emmy for their work casting The Pitt’s debut season, say their main directive from the show’s producers was showing the truth of working in an emergency department.

‘If they’ve got the goods, they’ve got the goods’

“ I think the great gift of this show for both of us is that everybody [from the] top down agreed — We didn't need ‘names.’ We had Noah. And that we could just go discover,” Gelfond says. “Best person wins and [it] doesn't matter if they've never done anything. If they've got the goods, they've got the goods. Cause everybody has to have a first job.”

Gelfond and Berger cast a wide net, and got three to five thousand submissions for each character. They narrowed that down to 20 to 40 candidates to read for the role (and more for series regulars), and then submitted five to eight of their favorites to the producers.

Gelfond says considering and casting a lot of newcomers also contributed to the show’s authentic feel. “Part of why this worked is a lot of these people [Erica and I] didn't know either, so they fell into the parts. You have no baggage and you have no expectations, and then they just suddenly become the character.”

‘There can’t be two of us’

The directive for realness also led to a diverse cast, including a Filipino doctor and nurses who sometimes speak Tagalog, and multiple South Asian doctors.

“At the end of the day, what we're trying to do is show the truth of who works in these hospitals,” casting director Gelfond says. “And guess what? There are more than two South Asians.”

But it was something Gelfond says surprised even the South Asian actresses cast on the show. Similar to what Brooklyn Nine-Nine actresses Stefanie Beatriz and Melissa Fumero described experiencing back in 2019, The Pitt actresses Shabana Azeez (who plays med student Victoria Javadi) and Supriya Ganesh (who plays doctor Samira Mohan) told the casting directors they thought, “There can’t be two of us.”

‘The climate hasn’t changed what we’re up to’

Their assumption, rooted in their experiences auditioning for other roles, is also reflected in the data on casting in Hollywood. The most recent Hollywood Diversity Report from UCLA that focuses on streaming shows from 2024 found that among the most watched streaming comedies and dramas that year, 79.6 percent of lead actors were white.

And while BIPOC actors “fared much better as co-leads than they did as leads,” they were still underrepresented as co-leads, filling only 29.7 percent of the roles in that year’s top streaming comedies and dramas.

That’s despite continued evidence that shows with diverse casts get good ratings, and that rolling back representation gains comes with substantial financial risks.

In a moment where networks and streamers are pulling back on pledges to diversity, equity and inclusion, Gelfond and Berger say they haven’t seen that have an impact on their work.

 “We're fortunate that we can be open on a lot of parts [...] the role goes to the person who gave the best performance, kind of regardless of anything else,” Berger says. “The climate hasn't changed what we're up to over here.”