With its ensemble of doctors, nurses, interns and patients squeezed together into a small emergency department with scripts that play out in real time, “The Pitt” feels like a lab made to grow great performances. The Emmys rewarded it accordingly Wednesday.
Thirteen of the 25 nominations for HBO Max’s drama about a Pittsburgh ER went to its actors in one of the great achievements for a cast in Emmy history.
In its rookie season last year, “The Pitt” got just three acting nominations but it won all three: best actor in a drama for star Noah Wyle, best supporting actress for Katherine LaNasa and best guest actor for Shawn Hatosy. The trio was nominated again, but this time had a ton of company.
“It feels really exciting to have more of my colleagues up on the board,” LaNasa told The Associated Press on Wednesday during a break in the shooting of Season 3. “You’re happy when you get acknowledged, but you kind of know that you’re only there because of everybody else. So the more people that are getting acknowledged, the better it feels.”
She said that like her character, Nurse Dana, she has a “motherly feeling” toward her colleagues, who are nearly all first-time nominees.
“I’m very wanting them to have this experience as well,” she said.
LaNasa was joined in the supporting actress category by doctor-portrayers Taylor Dearden, Fiona Dourif and Sepideh Moafi, who played a new attending physician reckoning with a seizure disorder that is returning in the stress of the ER.
Hatosy, whose night-shift leader Dr. Jack Abbott won a big fan base and was the object of many crushes in Season 2, was bumped up from the guest actor category to supporting actor, where he’s joined by Gerran Howell and Patrick Ball.
The 13 nominees will be competing against one another so much that there are only five acting Emmys they can win. That’s one for every drama category except best actress, where it didn’t submit anyone. The show makes only Wyle a lead.
In the guest acting categories, Brittany Allen and Jeff Kober both pulled off the coup of getting nominations from self-submissions of their portrayal of patients with heartbreaking arcs. Ernest Harden Jr. got a guest nod for playing the ER’s constant presence and struggling alcoholic Louie Cloverfield.
And Tal Anderson, an autistic actor who has been an advocate for neurodivergent performers and portrayals, got her first Emmy nomination for playing Becca King, the younger sister of Dearden’s Dr. Mel King who is striving to be treated as an adult.
“Besides the fact that I get to have a small role in this giant, amazing show with so many talented people in the cast and on the crew, it means so much to me to be able to help this character, Becca, be seen and to have a voice,” Anderson told the AP. “As a disabled person myself, it’s such an honor to be able to, through this role, call attention to issues that are so important to the disabled community. It’s everything to have the opportunity to do that.”
LaNasa’s Nurse Dana was already among TV’s most beloved characters, but went even deeper on the drama in Season 2, in which she gives a rape kit and emotional counseling to a sexual assault victim.
Nurse Dana went meme-able with her loud pronouncements about the ER’s “Baby Jane Doe.” The child also provided a pivotal and heart-wrenching scene for Wyle’s Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch that may well win him a second best actor trophy at the September ceremony.
With the numbers “The Pitt” pulled in, it was almost surprising to find the many babies that played Baby Jane Doe didn’t get nominated.
AP video journalist Brooke Lefferts contributed.
—Andrew Dalton, AP Entertainment Writer