Before I get into today’s hospital rounds with Isa Briones and Gerran Howell, the most beloved and unlikely duo on The Pitt, a quick detour toward something you probably thought I was done talking about for at least a few more months: the Oscars!
There were, in fact, Academy Awards handed out in Los Angeles this week, though a little different from what you’re used to seeing on TV. The Scientific and Technical Oscars have been held in some form or another since the 1930s, awarding winners not for their work on a single film but for technological innovations. The accomplishments can sound completely baffling — “pioneering work in high-dynamic range, image-based lighting techniques” and “the design and engineering of a suite of brushing and patching tools” were among Tuesday night’s honorees — but are at the core of many of the best films of this century. And let me tell you, even if you don’t understand what the winners do, it is a joy to applaud them.
The Scientific and Technical Oscars ceremony was held at the Academy Museum, with attendees in black tie and the winners identifiable with boutonnieres on their jackets (yes, though progress is being made with women on the technical side of filmmaking, only two of last night’s winners were female). I caught up briefly with Academy CEO Bill Kramer before the ceremony, and he was particularly proud of the clip reels that would precede each winner, explaining exactly what each person had accomplished.
He was right to be excited — the clip reels, as polished as anything you’d see on the actual Oscar telecast, did a remarkable job detailing how these tools and breakthroughs have a direct impact on what’s possible onscreen. Inventing the first small, lead-free pyrotechnic devices doesn’t sound like a big deal until you realize just how many of them are planted on a set for a gunfight sequence, and how much better it is to not have all those people exposed to airborne lead. I still can’t tell you exactly how high-dynamic-range, image-based lighting systems work, but seeing people standing on film sets holding a large, shiny ball — and knowing that somehow that makes it possible to make CGI characters look truly real — was enough of a revelation for me.
There was a moment during the ceremony, maybe while watching Paul Debevec’s funny speech above, that I had a bolt of revelation: Everyone who loves movies and the people who make them ought to attend these awards. Okay, maybe that’s a little hyperbolic. But the sheer humanness of Tuesday night was genuinely moving, as all the winners thanked their families and parents for putting up with their long hours tinkering with computer projects and engineering that few people would ever truly understand. Those devoted nerds (compliment) make incredible things possible and so rarely get the credit.
Introducing the night’s event, before handing things over to host Sofia Carson, the Scientific and Technical Awards Executive Committee co-chair Darin Grant put it best: “Everyone in this room knows that movie magic isn’t magic — it’s science.” Even I, someone who scraped by with a B in high school chemistry and never looked back, understand that now.
The Pitt’s Odd Couple
The doctors of The Pitt are on break, pursuing other projects or just some family downtime before clocking back in at Pittsburgh Memorial — okay, technically a soundstage in Burbank — in mid-June. A remarkable three of the show’s stars are on stage in New York right now, and I’ve now talked to all of them: Sepideh Moafi, who plays Dr. Al-Hashimi, is starring in the Off-Broadway play New Born opposite Hugh Jackman; Patrick Ball, who was recently handed a “Sexy Bitches for Langdon” bracelet at his show’s stage door, is in Becky Shaw; and Isa Briones is currently starring as Connie Francis in Just in Time.
During season two of The Pitt, Briones delved deeper into Dr. Trinity Santos, her prickly and polarizing character, thanks in large part to her unlikely friendship with farmboy Dr. Dennis Whitaker, played by Gerran Howell. So it felt only right to reunite them during this brief respite from The Pitt to glimpse the real, warm relationship between Briones and Howell that is beginning to emerge in their characters.
Agreeing to be roommates at the end of season one, primarily out of convenience, Santos and Whitaker return to work in season two, cautiously comfortable with each other, but not quite admitting they’re friends. “The relationship, intentionally, is kind of vague,” says Howell, who was back in his native Wales during our call. “They would have never chosen, I don’t think, to live with each other — it was just circumstance. And now they’re both dancing around each other, not really knowing where they stand, but knowing they need each other. It was fun to play that vagueness and work it out as we went along.”
“This is someone who’s really fun to play with as an actor,” Briones says, remembering her first impressions of Howell during rehearsals before season one. “We find a lot of little moments that we don’t necessarily plan, but it just comes out of the natural chemistry that we have and the chemistry that the characters have created. The writers are very good at writing toward our strengths, and it’s just felt very easy.”
Briones and Howell both credit The Pitt’s writers and creators for allowing their characters to grow together, but the show’s structure, with characters often in the background of other scenes, has given them plenty of space to play with their own ideas — whether or not they make it to the screen.
In the first episode of season two, for example, Briones improvised Santos giving Whitaker a friendly punch to the arm, which was cut from the final episode. “I was like, are we ever going to fucking acknowledge the fact that we live together?” Briones remembers thinking.
When they’re in the background of scenes, both Briones and Howell think a lot about how their characters interact with the rest of the hospital staff, whether or not any of that makes it onscreen. “You’ve got loads of time to think, ‘How does my character actually interact with this ER? Who’s he friendly with?’” says Howell. “You end up having conversations with background artists, and you go, ‘Oh, this is someone I trust. This is someone I don’t trust. This is someone I avoid.’ And that can kind of add a little bit of texture.”
In season one, we saw Santos reveal to Filipina nurses Perlah (Amielynn Abellera) and Princess (Kristin Villanueva) that she, too, speaks Tagalog. “There are also quite a few Filipinos in the background, with the nurses and staff,” says Briones, whose father is the great Filipino theater actor Jon Jon Briones. “Always in my head when I’m playing Santos, I’m like, ‘We’ve talked. We get each other.’”
The ability to imagine these characters outside of what we see onscreen is part of what has made The Pitt such a phenomenon, with fans clocking every single one of those tiny gestures the actors are trying out for themselves. At the end of season two, viewers were left to fill in a major gap, with no closure on what happens after we see Santos — who has a history of self-harm — pocket a scalpel from the supply cart.
According to Briones and Howell, they filmed a scene together that offered some closure there, but it was cut out of the finale. “Originally there was a bit more resolution with their relationship,” says Howell, with Briones adding, “Not even resolution, but just kind of like hope.”
The scene addressed the scalpel, they say, but Briones says Santos’ self-harm will continue to be a story going forward, regardless of whatever Whitaker told her. “This can’t be a moment where Whitaker is solving this for her,” she remembers thinking as they filmed the scene. “This shouldn’t be a device for him to feel good about himself, but it should be a moment where their connection means something. What they both really need is a friend.”
As with the rest of The Pitt cast, Briones and Howell don’t know what will await their characters when they return for season three — or even if another version of that deleted scene will make it into a future episode. “I think there are a lot of choices that both characters could potentially make there,” says Howell, making it very clear that he’s just speculating, as any fan would. “No matter what was kept in or not, I think Whitaker was very aware that maybe he needed to just give her space now. He’s getting on her nerves too much. So maybe he decides to drift further apart, maybe Santos says screw you. There’s so much that could happen.”
One thing that definitely seems possible, given the final scene of the season, is that Santos will finally invite Whitaker out to karaoke, as she did for Taylor Dearden’s Mel. “Maybe I drag all three of you to gay bars now,” Briones tells Howell with glee.
For more on karaoke, whether or not Whitaker should have driven that giant truck at the end of his shift, and how easily you can bond when learning how to pretend to be a doctor, watch the full video of our conversation embedded above. And knowing how much Pitt fan fiction is out there, if anyone wants to take a crack at that deleted Santos and Whitaker scene, I’m all ears!
