'The Pitt' stars Katherine LaNasa, Patrick Ball discuss shooting show with its 'kinetic nature'

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Katherine LaNasa and Patrick Ball in "The Pitt"

HBO Max

MANILA, Philippines — HBO Max's Emmy-winning medical drama "The Pitt" is back for a second season, bringing back viewers into the fast-paced environment of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

"The Pitt" earned high praise for its accurate depiction of the medical community and the challenges healthcare workers face, with each episode in the debut season covering around an hour of the emergency department staff's work shift.

Adding to that realism is the presence of three Filipina characters: Isa Briones as first-year resident Dr. Trinity Santos, Amielynn Abellera as ER nurse Perlah and Kristin Villanueva as another ER nurse, Princess.

The show won five of its 13 Emmy nominations last year, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor (Drama) for Noah Wyle.

The series' second season premiere just dropped, set nearly a year later on the Fourth of July as Wyle's Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch meets who will take over for him when he goes on sabbatical, meanwhile, new faces join the fray.

Philstar.com spoke with two of the show's stars Patrick Ball and Katherine LaNasa, the latter an Outstanding Supporting Actress (Drama Series) winner for her role as nurse Dana Evans, about filming knowing what they're shooting is going to be a high pressure or high energy setting.

This as Katherine put previously that what "The Pitt" does well is make viewers really feel they are in a hospital environment.

Patrick began by, in terms of creating a sense of realism in the hospital, crediting the set by production designer Nina Ruscio which takes up an entire soundstage.

"It's incredibly immersive, and you've got the cast and the crew all in there together all day long," Patrick said. "You don't, like go crawling back to your trailer in between takes or anything. We move very fast, and it's just a massive body sort of bumping around."

That became the team's routine for eight months, the actor continued. "You just become engulfed by that world, the kinetic nature of that world in a way that I think feels very realistic to probably what the lived experience is like."

A hospital environment also feels close to home for Patrick as his mother is an ER nurse and his father is a paramedic, though the only perspective he's known is as his parents' son.

Katherine then brought up the two-week medical boot camp or "doctor school" the cast went through early in production, where she asked showrunners R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells if they wanted to depict "The Pitt" like a documentary.

John answered no as "a documentary identifies the subject," whereas the executive producer wanted to feel as if he was inside the show.

The actress described that as a great note on how to approach her performance, "Just be fully in your body, doing what you would be doing with the weight, pressure, adrenaline, exhaustion, or whatever it is in your body that you would have at that moment."

That perspective, Katherine told Philstar.com, tells the show's story best, like being under a microscope.

"I feel like the people that are most grounded in their body and most grounded in what they're doing, they just come off most believable. I think they tell the story the best when I watch the show," Katherine ended.

"The Pitt" is currently streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes every Thursday until April 16.

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