Patrick Ball on Dr. Langdon’s Storyline on The Pitt Season 2

As season one of The Pitt wound down, Patrick Ball was convinced his character wouldn’t be returning to the show. “The ego of an actor means, generally speaking, you’re always sure that you’re the worst one and that you’re the most likely to get fired,” he laughs. “I, however, did have a unique claim to this anxiety because my character was literally fired from the hospital — and he did steal drugs.”

The 36-year-old actor, who plays Dr. Frank Langdon on the venerated hospital drama, was ready to take it all in stride. The gig on The Pitt was his first major onscreen role, capping off a decade-long grind that included New York theater and a midcareer pivot to Yale Drama School. “I was like, I’m employed, I can pay off my student loans, I’ve already won,” he says. “Nothing else needs to happen, there’s no takesies-backsies on that.”

And yet, Ball held onto hope that the writers would find a way for Dr. Langdon to return to Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. There is a strong ethical and moral spine to the storylines on The Pitt, and Ball knew how important that would be in a storyline about addiction. “I would like to believe, as somebody who is four years sober, that we are not damning people who struggle with addiction, and that rehabilitation and reintegration would be part of this story.” Finally, showrunner John Wells called with the news that they’d decided to start season two 10 months after the events of the first season, which would allow Dr. Langdon ample time to go through rehab and outpatient counseling.

Below, Ball talks to The Hollywood Reporter about his character’s progression, how he’s celebrated the show’s success and his favorite gifts from The Pitt fandom.

When you booked the role of Dr. Langdon, did you know that his season two might not be a sure thing?

I knew I was going to get fired in episode 10, but I didn’t know for what. During the final callback audition, they brought me to L.A. to meet John [Wells] and Noah [Wyle] and they brought up the addiction storyline, but I still didn’t know how it was going to play out until I got the scripts the week we filmed each episode. There were little breadcrumbs along the way, like hand tremors and little behavioral bits, but then when I saw the show, I realized that those moments went missing in the edit. They explained that to me as they wanted to make sure nobody saw it coming.

It also made us, as viewers, question whether Santos was onto something or whether she just had an axe to grind with Langdon.

So many people in the fandom were like, fuck Santos, this is a witch hunt. I ride for my boy Langdon, blah blah. And then she’s right. And everyone was implicated, insofar as why did we not trust or believe her? Why did we immediately want to side with this guy? This season, there’s a distrust for Dr. Al-Hashimi because she’s coming into beloved Robby’s space. She’s asserting herself and that puts Robby on edge, but she’s doing nothing but assuming the position that has been put in front of her. There’s a feeling of distrust towards her and I think that’s worth interrogating.

What sort of work did you do to make sure that the addiction and recovery portion of Langdon’s story was realistic?

I talked to a lot of real-life doctors and nurses whose stories are reflective of Langdon’s, people who deal with an incredible amount of trauma every day, who work in a place with all sorts of access to drugs, and they fall into the trap of self-medicating. They go through rehab, they get the help they need and they go back to being a valued contributor at the hospital. I’m stoked to be telling that part of the story.

There are moments this season in which it seems like Robby is being really harsh on Langdon. But I also know the stakes are much higher at their workplace than at your average office. Do you think Robby is offering enough grace?

That is a really big question. I think there was a very close bond between Langdon and Robbie; Langdon looked to him as a mentor and close friend and role model. Robby saw Langdon as a reminder of himself, and I think at the end of season one, there’s a lot of things Langdon says out of desperation that are very hurtful — and also somewhat truthful. A big argument of this show is, physician heal thyself. These people don’t have time to stop and ask themselves if they’re OK. That’s a price they pay to help others, and I think all of that hits the wall when Langdon’s addiction comes to light, and the situation is exposing for everybody involved.

Was there anything else you were unsure about in regards to Langdon’s storyline and its effect on your potential return to the show?

Just the nature of being a senior resident, that means that you have to find a fellowship or a job elsewhere. But luckily, we’ve had this incredible year where we’ve won all these awards — it’s crazy, because the last honor that was bestowed upon me in my life was senior year of high school, when I was named ‘most likely to be late to graduation.’

Were you late to graduation?

I was on time, because my little sister was a year behind me and was valedictorian of her class and a junior marshal. She had to be there early to set up and I rode with her. But then I was late to my college undergrad graduation by about 10 years. I dropped out and spent about five years doing regional theater before I realized I’d reached a plateau. I looked around and knew that everybody who was doing the kind of work I wanted to be doing, which was on Broadway, came through the Big Three pipeline: Yale, Juilliard, NYU. Yale was willing to accept professional acting experience in lieu of a degree, so that was the only school I applied for and I got in.

There’s a whole trope within our generation of, things aren’t going the way we thought so we just go to grad school, and it’s usually a bad decision. But your situation asks whether you’re the exception or the rule.

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It was a scary gamble! I went $80,000 down to go to Yale. That big David Geffen gift, which makes tuition free in perpetuity, came in during my last year. I spent the two years after graduation doing theater again, making $700 a week, so there was a lot of fear that I was going to die with that debt. When I got the job on The Pitt, the first thing I did was to pay off my student loans. It felt really, really good, especially because when I went to Yale, I didn’t exactly get the reaction from my family that I was hoping for. My mom’s an ER nurse, my dad’s a paramedic, and when I came back home to North Carolina between my first and second year to help my parents fix up the house to sell, they spent much of that summer trying to convince me to drop out of Yale and take up heating and air conditioning. They were worried about me taking on all that debt and wondering why I would do that to myself.

Did you have one specific moment when you realized that The Pitt was going to be a hit?

I remember when we got an early screening of episode one, Noah pulled me aside and asked what I thought. And I was like, I like it but it feels niche. It seemed like one of those shows that people will brag about having watched, like The Wire, but doesn’t get broad appeal when it’s airing. But then by episode 10 or 11, all of a sudden all the Twitter girlies were talking about it. The Internet started exploding around it. And then I started getting stopped on the street. I realized it existed outside of the healthcare world.

Do you follow the show’s online fandom? Do you know about Discord?

The only social media I have is Instagram, and I’m trying to stay off that. I know there’s Twitter and TikTok activity, and I will get fan edits secondhand through my girlfriend. I thought it was exciting at first but now I’ve had to bury my head in the sand. We have an incredibly forensic fan base. It’s a really fun way to tell the story, because we don’t have to spoon-feed anything. I can be 15 feet in the background of a scene and I know I have to commit to the truth of the scene because someone will notice.

This season, your girlfriend, Elysia Roorbach, joined the show for an episode; did you know when she was auditioning that you would be onscreen together?

I did, because we did the self-tape together. We actually met doing a play in Miami, about corruption in Venezuela. It was 75 percent in Spanish, the cast was made up of mostly political refugees from Venezuela and we played the two Americans. She was a femme fatale and I played her loser boyfriend back home; I spent the whole play being like, baby, when are you coming home?

You’re making your Broadway debut this spring in Becky Shaw; do you plan on doing the stage door?

I did Hamlet this past summer and we had a bunch of newly-minted Pitt fans get really excited about Shakespeare. People flew in. They had all discovered that I wear Crocs a lot, so all the girly pops would show up to the play with the little Croc charms. I have a stethoscope charm that I love, and I’m very, very excited about some new Croc jewelry.