Interview: Shawn Hatosy on Directing ‘The Pitt,’ Camera Choreography, and Being Online
Since its first season premiered last January, The Pitt has been on a steep climb to being the best drama on television. Acting as a true ensemble show, every character gets their moment, however small it may feel in the moment. A sprawling cast that characterizes nurses, doctors, security guards, clerks, and patients seems unwieldy to handle, but Emmy winner Pitt actor Shawn Hatosy chose to direct an episode on top of being a guest star in the series.
Hatosy plays Dr. Jack Abbot, a night-shift attending that – we found out this season – also doubles as a field medic during the day. To hear Hatosy say it, this is Abbot’s way of managing himself and his emotions, perhaps taking the suggestion of a therapist and twisting it to do something he enjoys and keeps his adrenaline pumping. Hatosy stepped into the director’s chair for the ninth episode of the second season, “3:00 P.M.” Though Hatosy doesn’t have as much screen time as the regular ensemble, he makes his own impact with this episode, as “3:00 P.M.” travels through the emergency department struggling with technology woes due to a potential cyberattack, Mel’s sister showing up with her own ailment, a young boy who has blown off two of his fingers, and a cancer patient at wit’s end.
Hatosy gets to show his commitment to camera choreography and blocking during the episode, the camera fluidly moving throughout, fast enough for the audience to suffer whiplash as the patients pour in and the day gets more difficult. As an actor (and former director on Animal Kingdom) on the show, he was already familiar with the planning that would be needed to get every part precise. The episode is tightly constructed and introduces the beginning of the end of the day, moving quickly but never rushed, every minute moving quicker than the last. The episode ends by introducing a major disaster that could influence the rest of the season: a waterpark slide has collapsed, and we all know where any potential patients will be going.
I spoke to Hatosy about getting the camera and blocking just right, setting up new relationships on the show, his preparation for directing “3:00 P.M.” and how he’s affected by the online community that loves him.
Tyler Doster: Last time we spoke, it had just been announced that you were going to be directing an episode, and I was wondering what the preparation was like after you found out you’d be directing all the way up until you got on set for that episode.
Shawn Hatosy: Yeah. So it takes a minute over there. From the time I found out and the time I actually got a script was probably a couple of months, but I was lucky that they were sending me all the episodes leading up to 9, because I didn’t appear in any of them so I wasn’t getting them. And then they also let me watch all the cuts as they were coming in, so that’s a lot of the prep that you get. And then once we get into the actual pre-production process, it’s so different on The Pitt compared to other shows just because of the nature of it, being one location. On other shows, you spend so much time prepping, finding locations, making decisions about what time the sun is going to set. So all these silly things that we agonize over, you throw that out the door with The Pitt. Really, the coolest thing I’ll say is, because I was in Episode 7 and 8 and I had received Episode 9, I’m on set so much that I get to start thinking about blocking and choreography and how the scene is going to transition to the next. That becomes the essence of your prep, is the blocking and reading. You really just have to understand what’s going on in a way that on other shows, of course you do, but really the prep becomes reading it over and over and over again until you can memorize it.
TD: That actually leads me into my next question. The first moments of the episode is everyone finding out, or everyone has an opinion on what’s going on with the cyberattacks and everything. How was blocking for those first few minutes when you have so many speaking roles?
SH: Well, the other thing, the great unknown, is of course I spend a lot of time choreographing and blocking, but that scene picks up right where Episode 8 ends, so I don’t know what that blocking looks like until they shoot it, which they shot it literally the night before I started the next day on Episode 9. So I made sure I was there to watch them, and I took a picture with my phone to see where everybody was standing.
And then the next morning, my first day, those scenes are the biggest challenge on this show because you have 20 characters who have something to say, including Ogilvie, who raises his hand. And this show really wants to be able to find people in a continuous shot, so those scenes become the hardest because you sorta have to piece it out. There’s no other way. I mean, some of the best are really good at doing it, but it’s a balance, man, and it’s terrifying at the same time. You’re like, “How am I going to do this? I need another camera.”
TD: What’s the shooting schedule like for any given episode? You guys shoot chronologically, correct?
SH: We shoot chronologically. We started chronologically, and then Isa [Briones] got appendicitis and we lost her for about a week. So we had to take her scenes out and she’s quite busy, and it might have been one of the first times we actually shot much of the episode out of order. But we have a nine-day shooting schedule. We do about 10 hours a day with an hour lunch. And in this episode, we had one day where we split between the waiting room, which is a different set, and the exterior out in the ambulance bay where we did the scene with Dana and Emma, and then the scene with Howard and Abbott and Whitaker and Langdon.
TD: You mentioned it, but how much planning do you do for the camera choreography, it’s always flowing through the emergency room, and how much prep goes into that with and without the actors on set with it?
SH: So in terms of camera, this show is defined by what John [Wells] and JoJo [Coelho] created on the pilot. We don’t really deviate too far from that. It is such an immersive style, that we are always following the action. There are certain rules about how we shoot that we have to follow. So the camera, you can’t really design what you don’t see, right, until you get there. So again, the prep is taking the maps, looking at the sets, thinking about where people are going to stand. But of course, actors have ideas about where they want to stand and what their motivation to come into a scene is. So you kind of, as a director on the show, have to be ready to just accept what is needed for the scene in the moment, and then just create from there.
Jojo is such an incredible tool and asset for this show. We block it, and sometimes you’ll do a scene where you might start in a room and then carry some characters through Central into the hub, and then all of a sudden you’ll be in a scene with like eight people. So you might bang out three scenes all in one take, and she will watch the scenes, and then we kinda discuss what needs to be seen if there’s a moment, if there’s a look, if there’s a prop that we need to focus on.
And I kinda say, “This is a moment,” and then she sort of does this. She furrows her brow and then she says, “Let’s watch it again.” And then we confer, and next thing I know, she’ll have the camera up and she’ll create what we call a master on this show, that basically covers about 70% of the whole scene in this one first master. She’s really incredible, and I don’t know that the show would be as successful as it is if she wasn’t there.
TD: Working together with your DP like that, I’m sure it’s an immersive experience just to get everything correct like that.
SH: It is, and the big challenge here is it is like a stylized chaos. So the operators, as well, have creative freedom to feel it, you know, in the scene, and if something speaks to them. I encourage them to find things that are happening, because they can feel it in a different way than we can behind the monitor. So it is this attempt to try to catch things that aren’t perfection, if you know what I mean. So you’re always looking for the mistakes, in the best possible way, because that’s how things go in an ER.
TD: Yeah, more organic that way. The episode also, as you mentioned, spends a few moments in the waiting room because it introduces Mel’s sister, this is the first time we’ve seen her. How was setting up that relationship between Taylor Dearden and Tal Anderson?
SH: Well, those two are complete pros. Tal was incredible. Her presence in front of the camera, her understanding of the character, what she brings to it, is a quality that it’s infectious. I so enjoyed her portrayal of Becca, and I just wish she was in more scenes. Seeing the waiting room, particularly at this time where things have really turned, the energy, the chaos, has turned up a notch, the hope was to build that waiting room with as many background artists as possible, fanning themselves. It’s the analog of it all, and this world is not the most comfortable place for Becca. And for Dr. Mel, she’s being pulled in two directions on this day. And in her mind, this is her worst day because she has to go talk to the lawyers and whatnot, so Becca coming in, that’s her number-one priority.
So trying to create as many obstacles as we can, so I was really happy with how that scene turned out. I love how they’re traveling through that waiting room and you almost can’t see them as they’re moving because it’s just so full. And on another show, the network might say, “Hey, we need a clean shot.” But for this show, the style is such that feeling people in the way is the way to capture it.
TD: Yeah. And I thought it was a nice touch. All the fanning that they’re doing is using the patient portal sheets.
SH: Yeah (laughs).Al-Hashimi’s work is finally utilized in a good way.
TD: How do you work differently as a director when the episode moves so swiftly between moments of humor, moments of darkness, moments of grief? You have the deportation storyline introduced in this episode with a young boy. How do you work to just work through all those different emotions?
SH: Yeah. The guest stars on this show, me being one, are so important to each episode and each scene, creating this powerful, emotional story. You get it with Roxie. You get it with, like you said, the young boy Jude and his sister who come in, and we think it’s one thing and then we suddenly learn that it’s a much bigger thing that they’re experiencing, and seeing Robby and Santos navigate that, how to try to help out. That scene in the family room, after once she reveals what’s really going on, that their parents were taken, was such a powerful scene and beautifully acted, and it was an opportunity to watch Santos watch it and see how deeply it moved her, which I was very proud of how that came together, sort of lingering on her reaction.
And I think that that’s what this show gets right while the guest stars are crushing it every time, including me. Just kidding (laughs). The style of this show, the opportunity to focus on the effect of the case on the medical professionals is what resonates the most, and we deal with that again with Javadi, who has made a terrible blunder and this patient, Claire, who is in dire straits. It was a scene where the trauma was, yes, it was like a 10, of course, trying to save this woman, but what we see is how we really linger on Javadi throughout that trauma. And, look, Shabana has spent a lot of time online whacking me and making fun of me for being old, and I’m so glad that I got to be there as Javadi had a little egg on her face (laughs).
TD: I’m sure that makes the day a little bit easier, getting to hold that over her head.
SH: Yeah (laughs). Yeah, for sure.
TD: So just to switch gears just a little bit, last season we found out that Abbot is constantly listening to the police scanner. This season, we found out he is a field medic. How did that inform what you’ve done over the past couple episodes into Episode 9, knowing more about him?
SH: Yeah, it’s his way of … It’s an interesting choice, of course, but the other side of it is we understand that Abbot is … t’s a chance for him to talk about therapy. Of course, his therapist is like, “Well, you can’t just sit around. You need to go play golf or do something,” and he self-diagnosed himself and he took that as to say, “I need to do other things,” and he decided that a field medic was the way to go. And in his mind, it’s him doing the work, but in reality, he’s not.
So I love that aspect of it, because for Abbot coming into Season 2, looking at Robby saying, “You need to do the work,” and we learned that Robby’s not doing the work and he’s about to go off on this, whatever you want to call it, this self-journey to take some time, but it’s such a destructive one. And in many ways, that’s what Abbot’s doing, but it’s a process. And for Abbott throughout the rest of Season 2 … as we learn in 9, he’s going to leave, he’s going to come back … it’s really the beginning of the goodbyes that Robby has to say to people. And it presents this question to him and to the audience, what’s behind this journey he’s about to take.
TD: Yeah, absolutely. Before we go, Shawn, I wanted to give you the opportunity to address your oomfs community online.
SH: (laughs) Well, what I’ll say is I’m so excited to be a part of this community, this oomfs community. It has been humbling, of course, because there has been a lot said about me being a dinosaur. And I’ll say that, for a guy who started way back in the MySpace days and where we are now with Twitter, all those old tweets I wrote that I thought were funny way back in 2009, it’s really rewarding to see that they’re finally finding an audience in 2026 (laughs).
TD: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Shawn. I really appreciate it.
SH: Oh, thank you. This has been great.
Photo: HBO Max
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