Adam Patla
In the midst of the chaos and heaviness that fills The Pitt, Taylor Dearden is imbuing television screens with a much-needed beacon of light. Her performance as second-year resident Dr. Mel King has burrowed its way into the hearts of many fans due to her warmth that emanates through whatever scene she tackles.
“It’s so nice to be so nice,” Dearden says. “Mel is the nicest person ever. I just wanna hug her all the time. It’s really, really fun to play that sweet. It’s also really hard to play that sweet to me. Sometimes I wanna interject some sarcastic comment and it’s like ‘That’s not her!’ She sees past everyone’s thing and just sees whatever’s the gooey part in the center. She’s lovely. I wanna be more like Mel.”
A lot of what made Mel special was already on the page, according to Dearden, but crafting her into the character audiences know and love was a true collaboration.
“Most of it was written, but when we were on set is when we got to be a little looser….” she explains. “The actor becomes the ship of the character but the writer is still choosing the direction. But the rest of it and how it goes gets handed over. It must be so hard as a writer to be like, ‘Well now someone else takes it, I don’t get control anymore.’ But then the director shapes and everyone else kind of moves it around and so to be able to have some freedom in…it’s not fighting for your character because we’re not fighting, but it’s that feeling of like ‘I think I know who she is and maybe this would help’…. It’s a dialogue, it’s great.”
Dearden’s deep knowledge and understanding of Mel stemmed from something that came from the top before the cameras started to roll.
“Something that John [Wells] and Scott [Gemmill] did for us…was they sat us down and gave us the backstory that’ll never be shown. But it’s just for us. And they just went through each of us. We had meetings. It was me and Fiona [Dourif] and they just went through absolutely all of your backstory that will most likely never be said…. I feel like that really shifted how all of us were able to play our characters and we came in with a strong background. It felt like it was weighted with knowledge of who we are.”
That knowledge trickles into our interview; Dearden speaks of her character like an old friend and knows Mel so thoroughly. She clearly recognizes the characters strengths, her shortcomings, and her needs. One major need of Mel’s is the desire to be mentored, a hope answered in the form of Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball).
“Of all the new people that day, which there’s so many, for him to grab the one that people are ignoring the most too I feel like says something about Langdon that was not necessarily something that everyone sees in him,” she says about the dynamic. “I think there was something about him kind of choosing her and her choosing him that felt very ‘this guy’s got a depth to him that he does not let people see.'”
The Pitt has consistently been highlighted for showcasing another side to medical professionals that don’t often get highlighted in mainstream media.
“That’s why I loved episode nine so much because in all the TV I’ve ever seen and film when any kind of accident…happens…you never see the recovery,” Dearden says. “To have an episode where everyone’s coping in their own way…. Losing a kid is against nature, it’s not supposed to happen, so there’s no way anyone’s coming out of it fine…. I asked all of the nurses and stuff and they [said] there’s a change in atmosphere…. I wonder if it was helpful to show that these people are heroes and rockstars but they’re also human and no one should keep plowing through after something like that.”
Another major point of praise has come for Dearden’s depiction of a neurodivergent character. Dearden approaches the role with an honesty and nuance that’s often missing when it comes to neurodivergent characters. In fact, the very setting of the show works in tandem to allow the performance to shine brighter.
“With me, with ADHD, we do have a superpower and it comes out in emergencies,” she explains. “And I think to have Mel being anxious and trying to find some concrete routine to build and pretty much finding that with Langdon…and chaos comes…and instead of rolling back into anxiety…my ADHD takes over and her… somewhere in that world also [takes over] and it’s just like, ‘Oh, right, this is why we do this because we’re really good at this part.’ We’re over-represented in emergency departments. Everything that has to do with emergency is like an overabundance of ADHD people.”
Season one takes place on Mel’s first day and the experience completely changes her. Luckily, fans won’t need to wait long to see how she moves forward as season two is already in production. When asked about what she hopes to see for Mel on the upcoming season, Dearden said, “I would love for there to be more confidence in the day-to-day. The thing with Mel it wasn’t just blind anxiety…it was also because her sister is in the perfect environment and this is the best place for Mel to be and so it has to work out. So much of that anxiety is people have to like me enough, I have to be good enough to stay here…. I’ve never had a situation this perfect…. It’s ten months after, it’s Langdon’s first day back and I’d love to see at least with the medical things an ease in knowing that I’ve been here ten months, they’re not letting go of me now.”
If her work is anything close to what she accomplished in season one, we can consider ourselves very lucky that The Pitt isn’t letting go of Mel or Dearden anytime soon.
Taylor Dearden’s full discussion with Awards Radar can be found below. You can check out Dearden’s incredible work on season one of The Pitt, now streaming entirely on HBO Max.
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