Adam Patla
“It’s the dream role I did not know existed….” Patrick Ball admits. “I’m very excited to continue to learn about him.”
That dream role is Dr. Frank Langdon on HBO Max’s hit medical drama series The Pitt. Dr. Langdon starts the season as a senior resident and the right hand to Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle), but, as the season progresses, we learn there is far much more to him than meets the eye.
Despite not knowing that this dream role existed for him, it feels almost written in the stars that Ball should star in a project set in the medical world as his parents are emergency workers. However, it was important for all involved to make The Pitt feel different from the medical dramas of the past.
“As the child of two emergency workers, I know my parents often complain that they couldn’t really watch medical dramas because it felt like TV,” he explains. “We really set out to make a medical drama for medical workers all the way down to making sure that the medicine was as accurate and realistic as possible as well as not leaning into trying to depict these people as great heroes or great geniuses. These are people doing their job. This is a blue collar job at the end of the day. That was really important for me because I grew up in this community and I saw how hard these people worked and…the toll that it can take on people who do this for a living. It was just an absolute gift from God or the universe or whatever that after all these years this is the story that I get to tell.”
Langdon is Ball’s first series regular role on a television series, but he’s far from a newbie. Ball’s resume showcases an extensive theatre background.
“You do pick up on some stuff,” he says when asked on how theatre prepared him for something like The Pitt. “[Y]ou learn how to move fast. But most importantly I think you learn how to collaborate and how to dance with others and that is something that is really a big part of what we do on The Pitt. It’s a very collaborative space.”
On the flip side, when asked what he learned stepping into the world of television, Ball said, “You can only do what you’re doing right now. I can’t try to play actor and editor. I can’t try to play showrunner. What I can do is I can do this script and luckily I’m in really great hands…. [T]he people upstairs will weave it all together in a very masterful way.”
A major moment where Ball cracks the character wide open is when we discover that Dr. Langdon has been stealing drugs from the hospital. Ball’s intricate and compassionate portrayal, however, paints addiction in a light that we are not used to seeing in mainstream television.
“It was a very big responsibility that I was really excited to take on,” he says. “I have a lot of addiction in my life. And so I really wanted to make sure we told this story as honestly and humanely and compassionately as possible. I think it was also really important to see that addicts are not just morally bankrupt or inherently weak people. They’re often quite ambitious and quite hardworking and quite successful people. There are many addicts I know in my life that are kind of the best of us and struggle often without us knowing until it’s too late.”
The reveal culminates in an emotional confrontation between Dr. Robby and Langdon that allows both actors to operate at the height of their abilities. “That was my wrap day,” Ball confesses. “It was a night I’ll literally never forget…. John Wells was directing that episode. It felt like theater rehearsal. It felt like kids in the sandbox just going for it…. There was enough trust built between all of us that we were able to just go for it.”
As for season two, no one is more excited to return than Ball. “As far as where that leaves us it’s a pretty ugly scene…and some ugly things were said that are gonna be very difficult to come back from but I’m very excited as I now know and can talk about coming back for season two. I know that I’m still alive and I am very excited to learn how I get myself out of this mess.”
You can watch all of Patrick Ball’s incredible work on the first season of The Pitt in its entirety on HBO Max. Awards Radar sat down with Patrick to chat about crafting a more authentic medical drama, Langdon as a mentor, and where the character could go next. Check out the entire interview below!
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