An unforgettable shift.
During Thursday’s Season 1 finale of Max’s breakout hit “The Pitt,” Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) and Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) clashed over Langdon stealing drugs from patients and then returning to the hospital to help deal with a mass shooting casualty.
Ball exclusively told The Post he thinks Robby had a right to be so tough on Langdon during their heated confrontation.
“I think Langdon has made a huge mistake,” Ball said. “I think he’s put lives at risk and I think Robby does what he has to do from a legal perspective, from an insurance perspective, from an ethical perspective of not having a doctor sort of running amok, stealing drugs. You can’t have that.”
“As far as what grace is given, in this scene you have two men that are equally as traumatized and equally as incapable of tending their own wounds and they’re trying to help each other to an extent,” the actor continued. “For certain people it’s a lot easier to give help than take it, so I think that’s what we see.“
Ball told The Post “it’s an honor” to be able to highlight the epidemic of substance abuse in the healthcare community with Langdon’s storyline.
“You have a bunch of people that work incredibly long hours and are witness to traumas on a daily basis that would sit most of us down for a week and would take a lifetime to process. And this is just an everyday occurrence for them,” he explained. “And they also work in a place with a plentiful supply of drugs sort of available to them. And so it’s not uncommon for healthcare workers to fall into a trap of self-medicating, which can lead to a real rough road of addiction.”
“Healthcare workers have a higher rate of drug dependency of suicide and divorce than almost any other profession in the US,” Ball stated. “And so it’s something that needs to be talked about and needs to be talked with integrity, which I hope that we’re doing.”
Ball noted that the series tackling a mass shooting in its first season “was a shocker.”
“I wish that it were jumping the shark more than it is. But unfortunately, we live in a country where this is a fairly regular occurrence,” he noted. “So this happens with some frequency. And to show just what that looks like and what the implications of that are and what the impact of that is outside of the CNN headline was really cool. It was a really cool thing to be a part of.”
As “The Pitt” continues to generate Emmy buzz, Ball is hopeful that Wyle, 53, will be awarded at the ceremony later this year.
“It’s time. He deserves it,” said Ball. “I grew up watching ‘ER’ and was a huge fan of his back in the day and getting to work with him now at this stage in his career and see just how deep that well is and how much he has grown. Not only does he give an incredible performance, but I think also just the mission statement of the show that he set in the intention that he brought to it, both in the story that we were telling and how we were telling it. He’s the real deal.”
Ball also weighed in on the lawsuit involving “ER” creator Michael Crichton’s widow, who sued Wyle (also an executive producer on the show), “The Pitt” creator R. Scott Gemmill, executive producer John Wells and Warner Bros Television, alleging that “The Pitt” is a rebranded version of an unauthorized “ER” reboot.
“Mercifully, they keep us completely out of the loop with that. I have really no idea what’s going on with it,” Ball shared.
It was recently confirmed that “The Pitt” Season 2 will come out in Jan. 2026 and take place over a Fourth of July weekend — but Ball clarified that the cast hasn’t started shooting yet.
“We are not in production. The writer’s room is up and right now Scott [Gemmill] and the writers are coming up with their plan for season two. I learned that it was gonna be July 4th weekend from the same press release that you did. But I can’t wait. I think Scott is unbelievable at what he does. So I can’t wait to see what he’s cooking,” he said.
When asked what Ball’s hopes for Langdon in Season 2 are, he replied, “I wish him peace and happiness and a happy marriage — and a raise.”
All episodes of “The Pitt” are streaming on Max.
