For ‘The Pitt’ breakout star Patrick Ball, the show’s success is ‘beyond my wildest dreams’
The only person having a better 2025 than The Pitt star Patrick Ball is his mother. "My mom has never been hotter on Facebook," the actor tells Gold Derby.
Not only is her son starring on the breakout hit of the year in just his second onscreen role — his first was a guest appearance in a 2023 episode of Law & Order — but the medical drama has her, his dad's, and their friends' stamp of approval for its realistic portrayal of emergency medicine. Ball's mom is a nurse and his dad is a paramedic.
"The first thing they said was, 'Wow, this checks out. This is real medicine,' which is amazing because they can't watch medical dramas most of the time," the actor says. "Most of the time, they just turn it off because it kind of honors the demands of entertainment over sort of the authenticity of the medicine. They felt very, very excited about the material just from reading it on the page and now seeing the conversations that have popped up with them and all of my mom's Facebook friends — my entire community that I grew up with."
"The conversation that it started up around it amongst emergency workers was something that happened whenever the show first started coming out, and that was like really encouraging because that was the community that we were making it for," he adds. "And then very recently, over the last two or three weeks, just, like, everybody else got involved, which is crazy. I feel very lucky. This is my first ever TV show and to have my first experience be this successful is beyond my wildest dreams."
You can say Ball was born to play Dr. Frank Langdon on the Max medical drama. "I have said this joke for a long time: My mom's an nurse, my dad's a paramedic, I was conceived in a state of emergency, and I've lived there ever since." Besides his emergency pedigree, Ball has an extensive background in theater. In 2022, he graduated from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University and received a BFA from the University of North Carolina the following year. Next month, he'll play the title role in Hamlet, a dream role since undergrad, for a five-week run at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. That theater experience comes in handy on The Pitt, which shoots in continuity on replica set of a real ER, with a ceiling, functioning lights, and everything.
"I struggle to not get too esoteric about it, but it really feels like providence," he says. "It really feels Godsend somehow. I didn't tell them about my parents or anything like that, but, yeah, it's this show where I'm literally telling the story of my parents and I'm telling it with [executive producer and director] John Wells, who made the two shows that we grew up watching, ER and The West Wing, and I'm working on this set that is very theater. There's really no egos on set. Everybody is just in there, like we're not gonna stop and set up a lighting setup and move around the dolly track. It's all handheld, so it moves fast. It's really funny because a bunch of people in the crew are a lot more experienced than I am, and they're like, 'Dude, doing 12 pages a day is insane.' I'm like, 'Dude, I'm used to doing 80 pages a day! So this is great!'"
The Pitt was another "random self-tape" audition for Ball, one of, he estimates, five he did that week. But there's nothing random about Langdon. The senior resident is Dr. Robby's (Noah Wyle) "best resident" and righthand man — until the 10th episode when Robby fires Langdon for stealing drugs, reported by new intern Dr. Santos (Isa Briones), with whom Langdon has been butting heads.
Langdon was described to Ball in his early audition rounds as "the doctor that everybody liked." He wasn't made aware of the addiction twist until one of his final callbacks with Wells, Wyle, and creator and executive producer R. Scott Gemmill — or more accurately, he nearly missed it.
"They sent an additional scene — that scene in Episode 10 where I get fired. I initially didn't even see it," Ball recalls. "I thought it was the same material. So about 30 minutes before I got on the call with John Wells, I'm sitting in the park, running through my lines and I like scroll down and I go, I'm like, "Oh my God, there's a whole another scene here!' I was like, 'OK, OK, learn this as fast as I can,' and then I ran in in 30 minutes and did it with John. It was very apparent that he was my kind of guy. Just from that that callback conversation, he just put me really at ease and was really a process dude. I knew that I was in the right place."
During the mass casualty in the 12th episode, Langdon returns to help out and is allowed to stay by Robby. In the finale, the pair have a heated argument after Langdon rejects Robby's terms for his return, which includes rehab and drug tests. Langdon hits below the belt, calling out Robby's breakdown — "I wasn't the one talking to cartoon animals in PEDS" — prompting a guttural "F--k you!" from Robby.
"I think Langdon hopes for grace and hopes that his friend will stand with him, and when he doesn't, he says, 'Well, I'm gonna keep this job by hook or by crook because I'm not going back to my wife and telling her that I got fired for being a drug addict. That's not gonna happen. That's the end of my life,'" Ball says. "I think it's just acting from just desperation. It's a desperate, ugly move, but it's what he feels like he has to do to survive."
"I loved shooting that scene and, both that scene and the scene in 10," he continues. "It just became very clear that this is such a rich relationship because it is mentor-mentee. He is my boss, but it was very clear you don't say 'f--k you' like that unless, like, 'this is my boy,' you know what I mean? It felt really, really personal, and I think that's a real testament to [the writing by] Scott."
Spoiler alert: Langdon does go to rehab, because Season 2, which will premiere in January, picks up 10 months later on Langdon's first day back at work on the Fourth of July. Ball has no idea what's to come between Langdon and Robby, especially since "there were things said in that final fight that you kind of can't take back."
That's not the only fallout Langdon has to contend with. "With Santos, that is gonna be really interesting because on some level, I have to know she was right. She was right, and also she completely derailed my life. The ability to take responsibility for that, to take ownership over my own actions and how I brought about sort of like my own demise, if I can take responsibility for that -- I don't know, we'll see."
Langdon and Santos clash because they're probably more similar than he would like to admit. "He probably entered this space on his first day of work very much like Santos. She walks in the door and is quite front-footed and not readily accepting or embracing his authority in the space. And he feels threatened by that," Ball says. "But I think from his perspective, it's really a matter of, 'I've been here for four years. I've learned for I've had four years of experience that have put me in a senior position.'"
On the other hand, Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden) does treat Langdon with the respect he expects. "Langdon also likes to feel needed, needs to feel needed, and I think Mel provides him with the gift of saying, 'Hey, I don't know right now. I do need some help.'"
But it's not one-way street: Langdon recognizes and nurtures Mel's talent, which has made them a fan-favorite duo. Like the rest of the staff, though, Mel has no idea by the end of the 15-hour shift what's gone down with her mentor. "It's gonna be really hard looking at Mel and know that this person at one time looked up to me as somebody that they could trust," Ball muses of Langdon's first day back. "And I know that I have failed that person. And I've proven myself to be somebody that you cannot trust."
Production on Season 2 begins in June, and Ball will be pulling double duty on The Pitt and Hamlet for a bit. "John Wells is amazing and he runs a great ship. Most of the time, we get out at a pretty reasonable hour. There's gonna be about three weeks there where I'm shooting all day and then running across town and running on stage as Hamlet at night, which is kind of crazy."
Not that he's complaining. "It's literally all of my dreams that I've ever had all coming true all at the same time."
Season 1 of The Pitt is streaming on Max.