There are 15 hours in a shift at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, and “The Pitt” refuses to cheat the clock. Each episode covers roughly one hour of the same grueling day, leaving its writers without one of television’s most familiar shortcuts for character development: sending everyone home. We don’t need to see Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle), Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) or the rest of the staff around a dinner table to understand who they are. We learn about them in the emergency department, through the decisions they make under pressure and the way they respond to colleagues, patients and families when there isn’t much time to think.
That same economy of storytelling is what gives Brittany Allen’s Roxie Hamler such weight. A terminal cancer patient who enters the ER during the shift, Roxie could easily have been written as another heartbreaking case of the week. Instead, Allen is given the time to build a woman who has accepted that she is dying even as her husband Paul (Taylor Handley) and their children struggle to do the same. Her performance became one of the season’s most quietly devastating arcs and has now earned Allen her first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.
Roxie’s story is also evidence of the depth creator and showrunner R. Scott Gemmill, executive producers John Wells and Wyle, and the show’s writers have built into an unusually large ensemble. Wyle remains its anchor as Robby, surrounded by characters played by Katherine LaNasa, Taylor Dearden, Dourif, Patrick Ball, Gerran Howell, Shawn Hatosy and Season 2 addition Sepideh Moafi. The Television Academy clearly noticed the strength of that bench. “The Pitt” leads all programs this year with 25 Emmy nominations, including 13 for its actors, along with recognition for Drama Series, Gemmill’s writing and Wyle’s directing. Five of those acting nominations went to guest performers alone: Allen, Tal Anderson and Tina Ivlev in Guest Actress, and Jeff Kober and Ernest Harden Jr. in Guest Actor.
That guest recognition speaks to something “The Pitt” does particularly well. On a more conventional medical procedural, a patient might arrive after the opening credits and have their story resolved before the hour is over. Here, patients can remain in the ER across several episodes, allowing their stories to develop alongside the doctors treating them. Roxie spends roughly seven hours of the shift confronting her approaching death, enough time for the series to explore not only what she wants, but what her decision means for a family that isn’t ready to say goodbye. Allen researched cancer, terminal illness and death, sought out firsthand accounts and even worked with a death doula in preparing for the role.
Allen brings remarkable grace to a woman who knows she is ready to die but still has to navigate the grief of the husband and children who aren’t ready to lose her. Her story raises a difficult question: How much responsibility does someone approaching death have to prolong the goodbye for the people who aren’t ready to let them go? Roxie loves her family, but their grief doesn’t erase her pain or her desire to maintain some dignity and control over the time she has left. Allen resists turning those competing needs into a grand emotional confrontation. Instead, Roxie spends much of the arc reassuring everyone else before gradually allowing the hospital staff to do something she hasn’t allowed her family to do: take care of her.
Some of the season’s most affecting moments come opposite Dourif’s Dr. McKay. Roxie’s body is failing, leaving Allen increasingly confined to a hospital bed at precisely the point when the character begins giving voice to her fear, anger, regret and loss. For Allen, who describes herself as a naturally physical actor, that restriction became an important part of finding Roxie. “I had to find that motion internally,” she said. “I had to find the ability to allow my emotions and my thoughts to move freely within me without my body moving.”
Allen’s path to the Emmys adds another wrinkle to her story. After learning she would need to handle her own submission, she and her partner took on the process themselves. Allen doesn’t speak about the experience with resentment. Instead, she describes it as unexpectedly empowering, particularly after years in a profession where so much depends on someone else saying yes. “It’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that certain things are within your control,” Allen said. Taking control of this particular one ultimately resulted in her first career Emmy nomination.
Awards Focus spoke with Allen about finding Roxie through the audition process, preparing to portray a woman at the end of her life and working opposite Dourif on some of the character’s most intimate scenes. She also discusses hearing from viewers who have experienced cancer and loss, balancing such emotionally difficult material with raising a young son, the physical challenge of playing a character whose body is gradually shutting down, and why taking control of her own Emmy campaign changed the way she thinks about navigating her career.
Awards Focus: After having to go through the self-submission process for the Emmys, what was your reaction when you saw you had been nominated?
Brittany Allen: It’s funny, my initial reaction was joy and pride. It’s also one of these things that takes a minute to really settle into the body and the mind. You see your name there, and intellectually, you recognize that’s meaningful in the scheme of your life and your career. But it takes a bit of time for the rest of your body to catch up with that. I would say that in the month that has followed, I’ve definitely had moments where I’ve really allowed myself to process what that means to me. I’m so grateful to be included now in such a lineage of actors whose work I’ve looked up to for years. It really means a lot after working in this industry for so long to have that recognition from my peers.
AF: You were one of a couple of guest actors from “The Pitt” who self-submitted. At what point did you know that you would need to handle the submission yourself?
Allen: It was pretty early. I was working with a publicist at the time, and we just got word that it was going to be up to us to handle the submission process. As with everything in this industry, you get used to no’s a lot more than yeses, so it wasn’t something that fazed me. After reading about it, I learned that a lot of actors over the years have submitted themselves. It’s not that uncommon, and it was a relatively easy process.
The whole act of self-submitting and then running our own campaign, and the aftermath when I did set off on my own without a publicist, my partner and I were able to generate some attention around some posts that we built. It’s actually been really empowering. It is easy in this business to always be waiting for other people to give you the go-ahead. You have to wait to book the audition, to do the job, or wait for the agent to bring you on at their time. It’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that certain things are within your control. The plus side of going through this whole process is that it’s really reminded me of that. I’m now constantly looking for ways that I can try to steer my career more independently.
AF: “The Pitt” has an unusually large number of guest actors because of its format. Do you think deciding who gets submitted becomes a matter of resources and where the studio believes it has the strongest chances?
Allen: With a show like “The Pitt,” I imagine it has more guest actors than most other series out there right now. Each of those guest actors comes on, for the most part, as a patient in a time of great need in that character’s life. There are just so many opportunities for actors to shine on that show. I’m in awe of the performances and the casting.
I imagine it is not an easy task to whittle down who will be put forward in each category. I would guess it’s a matter of budget and placing their bets, like you said, which is perfectly reasonable. Again, you get good at not taking things personally. They want the best outcome for their show. They want the most nominations, and they want those who are nominated to have the best chance at winning. It’s probably a balance of putting forward as many people as possible without diluting the pool. The great thing is that with Jeff and me and our self-submissions, we’ve actually added to the overall nominations that the show secured, which I’m sure everyone’s thrilled about.
AF: Going back to the beginning, how did Roxy come to you? What did the audition material reveal about the character, and how many episodes did you initially expect her story to span?
Allen: Roxy came to me the way most opportunities have come to me, which is through an audition. I had not had a chance to watch the first season of “The Pitt” when the audition was sent to me, but I had heard it mentioned countless times, so I knew that it was a show that a lot of people watched and loved.
The material that was given for the audition was the best kind of material that you wait for as an actor. It was three scenes from Roxy’s arc, from the beginning when she’s first admitted to the hospital, to a few episodes in where she makes the decision to stay in the hospital, and then one of the final scenes where she’s saying goodbye to her husband. It’s a scene that ultimately was not included in the final edit, unfortunately, but it’s a beautiful scene. It gave me an opportunity just within the audition to really show a lot of range.
Playing the role of Roxy, the entire shoot was this incredible challenge of showing up to a place in this person’s life that the body inherently resists going to. I had to have a constant dialogue with myself before days on set to say, “It’s okay. It’s safe to play pretend right now,” because the subject matter is so real and something that I fear greatly, especially now that I am a mom myself.
Beginning with the audition, I remember having that conversation with my coach, who I worked with on the tape, and really unlocking that for the first time. It’s okay. It’s safe. Of course, as with acting in general, it’s always the things that you’re most afraid of that are the most gratifying to go to. It’s a beautiful release to explore these topics in a safe space. I was so fortunate to tap into that in the audition and then have the chance to do it again and again during the months of filming.
Initially, it was set that Roxy would, I think, have a six-episode arc, so I knew it would be substantial. Then, as it went on, they added two more episodes. The whole arc as we shot it was eight episodes, which was amazing at the time. Then when I learned I wouldn’t qualify for the guest actress category, I was momentarily disappointed because I knew that the work was going to be a really strong representation of what I could do. They ended up trimming that scene in the eighth episode when the show finally aired, so ultimately it ended up being seven, which was less than 50 percent of the entire season and made me eligible for that category.
AF: What was the scene that was ultimately cut from that eighth episode?
Allen: Roxy had already passed away. Roxy did pass away in her seventh episode as it was written, but then there was one last episode where you saw her husband, Paul, sitting beside her body, and that didn’t make it in.
I think “The Pitt” does such an amazing job of balancing so many storylines. I’m always amazed when I watch the episodes and go, “How am I 15 minutes in and suddenly deeply invested in 10 to 20 different people?” It’s got to be such a balance in the edit of shaping it and figuring out, okay, what do we have to lose in order for all of these other stories to really hit?
AF: Roxy is different from the way a dying cancer patient might traditionally be portrayed on a medical drama. She can sometimes seem like the least outwardly emotional person in the room. How did you approach her emotional state?
Allen: For this project, I worked with two different coaches. I worked with Warner Loughlin, and I worked with Doug Nyback. Doug’s based out of Toronto and Warner’s in the States. They both offered this beautiful array of ideas and perspectives and different things that I could consider in the lead-up to shooting.
It was the kind of role where, once you get the word that you’re going to be playing this character, they just start to seep inside of you. Then you’re living with that person for the duration of the shoot. It’s a beautiful and, at times, challenging balance when you’re trying to stay present in your own life on your days off and also allow for ideas to drop in that deepen your understanding of the character.
With Roxy, I knew that sort of immersion and dedication was essential because of the fact that they shoot chronologically. We shot the eight episodes over about three and a half months, but in Roxy’s world, that’s only about seven hours. Holding on to the minute-by-minute experience that Roxy was having and the subtle but deeply profound changes that she’s going through as she faces death, as it gets closer and closer to her, was a challenge and something that required me to keep her in my heart on my days off.
I did a lot of research for this character. I read every memoir I could find on the subject of death and dying, cancer and terminal illness. I was absorbing Reddit forums with people speaking about their experience, and I worked with a death doula. I really tried. I saw it as a responsibility because I knew that this show would be seen by so many people and that this experience was so rooted in our present-day reality. I felt like I had to do justice to this truth and go there in a way that scared me. But I also saw it as a gift and an opportunity to meditate on death because I think that’s something that is a gift for us and something we avoid at all costs until it’s thrown in our face.
Roxy, like you said, isn’t wallowing in what’s happening. When you first meet her, she’s taking care of her family. She’s taking care of her husband. She’s taking care of her kids, and at the expense of being truthful. Coming into the hospital and having the support of the nurses and the doctors who are suddenly there to take care of her with no strings attached, they just want her to be comfortable. They are not going to hold on to her and keep her here for longer than she wants to be here. I think it allows her to release that pressure of putting on the appearance of being better than she is.
AF: You clearly came in with a deeply researched idea of Roxy. How much did the performance evolve once you were actually on set with the other actors and directors?
Allen: For me, it’s about doing as much preparation as possible. Charting out the character’s history, having an overarching philosophical understanding of the subject matter, developing the relationships with the people that she’s speaking to and about. Then you show up on set and you are present with the actors in that room and the director and whoever else is there to support the story creatively. You know that all of the work you’ve done is within you, and you just allow your body to relax and be present.
In the case of this set, that was such an exciting experience because of the way it’s shot. It’s so fluid. It’s not, “Okay, we’re going to turn around and get this coverage,” and then you relight for 30 minutes and turn around and get the other person’s coverage. Obviously, there’s a little bit of that. You have to cover everyone. But it’s more of a dance, and you run the scene many times. Oftentimes, you don’t really know if the camera is going to catch you in that moment or if they’re going to spin to another character in the scene. You just have to be living in it and responding truthfully every second.
You know the arc of the scene, but the most exciting thing is when it surprises you slightly in subtle ways. I was just so lucky to be working opposite Fiona and Taylor and Banks and Emmett and Lloyd and all of the incredible actors that are there with all of their hearts to commit to this reality.
AF: You’re normally a very physical actor, but Roxy can barely move by the end. Did that force you to find a different way into the performance?
Allen: What was really unique about this experience for me was the fact that Roxy is stationary. She’s in that bed the entire time, and her energy is depleting with every minute. She’s in immense pain, so she can’t move. I’m a pretty physical person and oftentimes a very physical actor. Music is a big thing for me and dance. Sometimes on a set, I’ll be hiding behind the set, getting into my body in a very physical way before stepping into a scene.
But in this case, once I was locked into that bed, I was there for the duration of the hours that it took to do that scene. I had to find that motion internally. I had to find the ability to allow my emotions and my thoughts to move freely within me without my body moving. It took a few days, I think, to realize that was a challenge I was going to have to lean into.
Once I found it, it was like unlocking another part of my performance that I had not found previously. I think it’s where a lot of Roxy’s power came from, a lot of her strength. Even though she’s in this bed, she is going through something so immense and finding such truth within herself.
Especially during that scene with Dr. McKay, where she’s confiding in her fears, the rage and the darkness and the regret and the loss, all of these feelings are so deep, but she can’t move and she can hardly breathe and she doesn’t have much power to even speak. Yet she is surging ahead on this need to get this out and communicate. That juxtaposition of this final power that is coming from her without her body reflecting that was really an exciting thing to embody.
AF: That relationship with Dr. McKay becomes such an important part of Roxy’s story. When you’re playing a scene that emotionally complex with Fiona Dourif, how much preparation and rehearsal do you actually get together?
Allen: The nice thing about the way “The Pitt” works is that the lighting is all from above. The changes they make are subtle, and it’s not these huge setups or location changes. There’s more opportunity to rehearse a scene beforehand. You don’t feel quite as much of the same pressure of time that you do on other sets.
Of course, they do still have to get through their day, so you’re not given all the time in the world. But I did always feel like there was space when we first settled into the room to talk through it gently. There aren’t really any marks on the floor either. The director has a clear idea of how they want to capture it, but there is a real conversation between everyone as we land on it. Then the camera crew comes in and they are also a part of that conversation.
I would say there’s a little bit more space to explore than most sets. But as with any set for TV, you better come with a lot of your work done beforehand. That’s the beauty when you’re working opposite actors. You don’t know what they’re drawing on or what they’ve brought to the table, but all of you have brought something. Then when you look in each other’s eyes, you have this magic that’s exchanged.
AF: Have you heard from cancer patients or their families about how Roxy’s story landed with them?
Allen: I have heard quite a bit from people who either went through cancer themselves or who lost someone to cancer. I’m just so grateful to have been a part of a story that has touched people in a meaningful way.
Just yesterday up here in Muskoka, I met a woman who had been through leukemia as a teenager and who came out the other side. She was telling me how moved she was emotionally by Roxy’s storyline and by the performance. I’ve gotten many messages from people as well sharing that maybe it helped them process grief from many years ago or grief from more recently. It really means so much to me.
When I have someone come up to me and they’ve got tears in their eyes and they tell me that they lost their grandfather a year ago to cancer and they saw their own experience reflected in Roxy’s storyline, that’s why I became an actor. I love acting. I love stories. The process of it is deeply enjoyable to me. Just as importantly, if not more importantly, I long to offer something to the world that is of genuine meaning.
It was just the ultimate gift to step into Roxy and now hear in the aftermath that it’s impacted people. It’s been really beautiful because I also love meeting new people. It’s been such a treat to have all these conversations with strangers when I’m out grabbing a coffee or taking my toddler to the grocery store. I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with a lot of people in the aftermath.
AF: You mentioned being a mother yourself. What did you do after shooting these scenes to leave Roxy behind and return to your own family?
Allen: It was very hard to leave her behind every day. I got to know that hospital room so well, and it’s just such an immersive set that you can really believe that world exists while you’re in it. She did become very real to me. I remember feeling many days when I was leaving set that she was still stuck in that hospital room and I was leaving her there. That was very sad to think about, and it’s still sad to me.
I did feel like I had a lump in my chest and in my throat for the months of shooting, even on my days off. I found that decompressing with the other cast members after a heavy scene was really helpful. We would go to the Starbucks on the Warner Brothers lot and just hang out and get silly and come back to ourselves outside of that world. Then I could return home.
The days where I didn’t do that and I expected myself to run from Roxy to jumping back to a wild three-and-a-half-year-old at home, that didn’t really allow for the same transition. But I think it made me even more appreciative when I did return home that I was able to be with my son and that we were healthy.
I think it has given me a greater appreciation for the present moment. I’m inherently a bit of an anxious person and a bit of a worrier, and I also can ruminate on the past. Roxy is at a state where she’s doing none of that. She deeply reflects on the past, but also everything is the present, and there’s no stopping the present now. Because I was able to access that with her, I’ve been a lot more able to access that in the aftermath too, which has been a beautiful gift.
AF: Has becoming a mother changed the way you work as an actor?
Allen: Since becoming a mom and balancing motherhood with acting, it’s always a bit of a trip. I will be taking my three-year-old to swim lessons in the morning, racing home, throwing on some mac and cheese and cutting up some fruit, giving him a kiss and then running out the door to go to the Warner Brothers lot and drop into a completely different reality and access a totally different side of myself. Then I return home eight hours later to a wild dance party with my kid and trying to get him to bed for many hours.
I think he had a crazy sleep regression while I was shooting “The Pitt,” so I would show up every day on set with very little sleep. But actually, it’s also really freed me up to be more playful within my work, even with this sort of subject matter. There just isn’t as much time to fret about things in the lead-up.
You do your prep, and you do it maybe a little bit more intensely and within a shorter time period than before. Then you show up on set and you just give it because you know that this is your opportunity. Then you’re going to have to go home and you won’t really be able to have much space for yourself. So this is your moment to play and do your art and really go there. That’s a kind of unexpected freedom and joy that comes to the work now since becoming a mom.
AF: You’ve had a long career and played many different kinds of roles. What do you hope people see in this performance that they perhaps didn’t know about you before, and what kinds of roles would you like it to lead to?
Allen: I hope that the work on “The Pitt” leads to more opportunities to tell human stories on a platform that a lot of people get to see.
I love the work. I love to act. I love to be on set, and I love great characters and great stories. Every time I’m on a film set, I think, “Wow, this is such a merry band of…” We’re carnies in a way. It’s this wild thing to show up to a set for that many hours day after day and to play make-believe and dress up. It’s something I never take for granted, having done it for as many years as I have and been through dry spells and ups and downs. Every time I land on a set, I’m just so grateful to be there.
I mostly hope that the visibility of this work allows for me to do that more frequently and continue to work with people who are telling meaningful stories and with complex characters.
AF: You brought so much grace to Roxy in the show. Congratulations again.
Allen: Thanks, Ben. Same. I really enjoyed this. I appreciate you taking the time.