Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Spoilers follow forThe Pittepisode 11, 5:00 P.M.
It all begins with a joke.
she announces to a roomful of blank stares.
…Babys hair, she clarifies.
Its a simple line, but it cues up the shot that definesThe Pitts approach to depicting birth.
It comes with a whiff of smugness, this coy misdirect.
If you thought this would be concealed and clean, youre quite mistaken.
ForThe Pitt, its a statement of purpose.
Thats why were doing it this way: not to cheat it.
But the scene is also a special-effects feat.
I was very invested in making this as authentic as possible, because I had lived it.
It does happen, and we wanted to show something we hadnt seen before.
We also wanted to have it reflect off our characters.
Our doctors have to put that aside and do whats best for the patient.
Then a postpartum hemorrhage, which would threaten the birthing persons life.
This combination of character development and medical complications becomes a series of repeatedly upended expectations and assumptions.
The final element was one more layer of the medical picture.
There is a higher infant and maternal mortality rate for Black women in America, Gershman says.
This one came in and I said, You know what?
Now is the time.
She was cast in August even though the scene wouldnt shoot until November.
I remember thinking,Wow,this is really early.
And they said, Oh, no, they have to fit the rig.
Its a whole thing.
I was like,Dear God, what does this mean?
Its not too complicated, even though it seems really complicated, says McCarty.
But in initial rehearsals, both Okuma and Tran realized some elements needed adjusting.
So we made adjustments.
Round two, she got in and it still wasnt right with the seat.
She wasnt comfortable, she couldnt hold herself up, Tran says.
I knew the scene was going to be mentally exhausting, physically exhausting.
I really, truly appreciated it.
Even though we all know its make-believe!
Its just,Lets make this actress comfortable.
ButThe Pittfilms multiple patients at once, in the sequence of how their doctors will encounter each new person.
Normally, well go down and do a sequence in a day, maybe two, says McCarty.
Here, it was like seven or eight days of filming because they shot everything in order.
It was like, Okay, lets do the crowning!
Great, you guys can go home and come back tomorrow.
Its really challenging to do it that way, says Noah Wyle, who playsThe Pitts protagonist Dr. Robby.
But the benefits of filming in sequence outweigh the downsides: Incidents build on each other, Wyle says.
Its already in your body, its already in your memory.
You carry that with you into the moment youre about to do.
But the scenes rig setup was really the key.
I want to underscore the impressiveness of the prosthetic, says Wyle.
It allowed me to not have to simulate or imagine anything that I was doing.
Its very rare in a medical show.
Usually, youre not really doing the stuff youre doing.
But this one, my hands were inside.
The baby was in there.
The babys shoulder is caught on a pubic bone.
I was trying to manipulate it and rotate it around so I could get this thing clear.
Everything we did was possible because of the beautiful artistry behind the prosthetic.
The prosthetic and the puppeteers continue to feature in the story even after the baby is born.
It was pretty grisly, McCarty says.
We were like,Really?
Subtle, subtle little movements.
I was like,Shes gonna die.
This is a realistic show, and theyre gonna show a realistic situation.I was surprised that I survived.
This is precisely what makesThe Pittso beguiling, even in the many stories with much more tragic endings.
And theres a miraculous save that underscores the heroism of the practitioners who do this every day.
