Katherine LaNasa Reveals Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of The Pitt

At the ATX Television Festival this year, The Pitt star Katherine LaNasa was a mystery guest for a panel with other TV fans. LaNasa, who plays the role of Dana Evans, took the time to reminisce about her time in Hollywood and also to reveal some unknown details about how The Pitt came together for the audience.

From information about the audition process to how each moment was created with continuity in mind, LaNasa was more than happy to deliver. Her enthusiasm showed just how much this project means to her.

“The Pitt audition came along with another one for The Righteous Gemstones. My agents thought I was a shoo-in for that one. They were trying to get them to offer it to me,” LaNasa began.

When asked about how the audition for Dana went, LaNasa said, “Noah [Wyle] wrote this letter. I don’t know if you guys have heard about this letter, but Noah wrote this letter and I think he still sends it out to everybody that auditions for The Pitt, and it talks about what they’re looking for — how they want this top to till immersion at all times.

“You’re invested in what you’re doing, you’re always busy, you’re not standing around waiting for your line. And he wrote, leave your ego and bring your creativity,” she said. 

When asked about her first interactions with John Wells, LaNasa explained, “ I did a Zoom with John and it was really spastic. You know, they didn’t have a Zoom waiting room, and I was away from home, and I didn’t have any clothes for Dana. I had to borrow a ring light and was at the hardware store 20 minutes before trying to find an extension cord.”

“The Zoom was upside down, and I asked if I could start over. And John [Wells] goes yes, but I liked exactly how you played that scene,” she added.

In terms of some behind-the-scenes details about The Pitt, Katherine LaNasa was happy to divulge just how complicated it was to keep up with continuity. After all, the premise of The Pitt was a risky one, considering the whole season spanned one day in the lives of each of these characters.

“ So it was really rigorous. It was kind of painful at first ’cause I stand up like, like 10, 12 hours a day. But, I call ’em puppet shows, like what we do in the background. So I was like, we’ll make a little puppet show over here. We’ll make a puppet show over there,” LaNasa said.

“I remember one day I went up to John Wells and I go, ‘John, you know, I’m called to the scene, but you don’t really see me.’ And I said, ‘Would you like a puppet show over here?’ And he says to me, ‘Well, Katherine, I always love a puppet show.’ So we call ’em puppet shows,” she said.

While she was making sure the ‘puppet shows’ went off in the background without a hitch, LaNasa spoke about how other details also needed to be consistent from take to take, episode to episode. Especially things as complicated to replicate as blood splatters.

“Those are decals. There’s a blood splatter decal making wizard [on set].  Everybody was outta work from the strike. So we were able to get like the very best of everybody,” LaNasa explained.

“ But, yeah, you could pick it up like a mat, and it looks like those ads of nail polish when they have the drop of nail polish and it’s really shiny, right. It looks like that. And it’s just like a mat. They flap it down, it’s heavy, and they just drop it down so it’s dimensional and heavy and they can pick them up and drop them down and only some of the blood is applied.”

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The Pitt Season 1 is streaming on HBO Max.

Check out all of our coverage of the ATX Television Festival right here. 

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