![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0afb3a18ea3b9f66da9b30177e18fb66fd-sepideh-lede.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n \u201cShe does have a lot of strong opinions about Robby that she keeps to herself.\u201d
\n Photo: Warrick Page\/HBO Max\n <\/p>\n
Spoilers follow for the second season of The Pitt through 12th episode \u201c6:00 P.M.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Whatever is going on with The Pitt<\/a> newcomer Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) when she seems to freeze and zone out while caring for patients is a mystery. How Dr. Michael \u201cRobby\u201d Rabinovitch<\/a> (Noah Wyle) is treating her is not. This entire shift, Robby has been dismissive and disrespectful to Al-Hashimi, the attending who will take over for him when he\u2019s on his three-month sabbatical, and in \u201c6:00 P.M.,\u201d he graduates to cursing in her face and implying she\u2019s not cut out for the job. When Baran calmly suggests that there should be two daytime attendings working in such a thinly spread department, Robby shouts, \u201cIt\u2019s going to be yours to fuck up, so don\u2019t fuck it up!\u201d and storms out of their conversation, signaling how little he cares about her opinion. It\u2019s an awful way to treat a colleague, and it\u2019s another moment when Dr. Al-Hashimi has to put up with Robby acting like an infant throwing a tantrum. Baby Jane Doe would never.<\/p>\n The Iranian American Moafi has spent over ten years appearing in all kinds of procedurals \u2014 including The Good Wife, Nurse Jackie, The Blacklist, and Black Bird \u2014 and as Dr. Al-Hashimi, she\u2019s the most major new addition to The Pitt\u2019s season-two ensemble. Like Dr. Trinity Santos last year, Al-Hashimi is somewhat divisive both inside the PTMC and with viewers, with some co-workers (again, Santos) chafing against her preference for rules and procedure and some fans immediately disliking her for championing a data-collection app that uses AI to help doctors with charting. But as the season has progressed, Moafi (who was originally invited to audition for the Samira Mohan character<\/a> in the first season) has kept Baran cool, collected, and mission focused, whether she\u2019s advocating for a prisoner with malnutrition to be admitted in \u201c12:00 P.M.,\u201d<\/a> pulling off a tricky slash tracheostomy in \u201c4:00 P.M.,\u201d<\/a> or dealing with Robby\u2019s antagonism. \u201cShe\u2019s never overstepping because she wants to get in the way,\u201d Moafi says. \u201cShe\u2019s trying to get herself fully in there, absorb herself in who she\u2019s speaking to and what she\u2019s doing and the patients she\u2019s with, as much as possible, because she\u2019s almost painfully, dangerously overachieving.\u201d<\/p>\n Tell me about your chemistry read with Noah to join season two. Flirting with Robby? I love it. \u201cDr. Daddy\u201d is a phrase that will haunt me for the rest of my days. The Pitt sometimes tricks us about a character by giving us one perspective on them for a long time before revealing something totally different. This is what happened<\/a> with Santos and Langdon in the first season. Along those lines, I think Dr. Al-Hashmi is treated very unfairly in terms of what we hear about her at first. Robby says she has \u201cgiant balls of disrespect\u201d for coming in early to the shift. She\u2019s labeled a strict rule follower like that\u2019s a bad thing. I\u2019m curious if you felt that the cards were stacked against her as a character in the beginning, and if that affected your performance. Part of her backstory that I fleshed out for myself is that Dr. Al-Hashimi is half-Iranian, half-Iraqi, and she was deployed in Iraq. Getting to reconnect with part of her identity that she has disconnected from for a number of ways, because of a slightly fractured relationship with her father \u2014 this is all stuff that wasn\u2019t in the script; it\u2019s for myself that I filled out. Long story short, it hasn\u2019t been easy, and there are qualities about her that can seem a little socially out of tune. You\u2019ll see her stand too close, but that\u2019s really how myopic she is with wanting to improve the system, wanting to collaborate, wanting to connect, wanting to help. Some people could easily, in the beginning, project onto her that she\u2019s there and she wants to dominate. She doesn\u2019t want to dominate the room, but the room sharpens around her. With any woman who\u2019s deeply rigorous and skilled and brilliant and high-achieving, you\u2019re going to get a lot of backlash, and you\u2019re going to have to push up against a system that\u2019s not built for you.<\/p>\n The complexity of who she is was so relatable. The way that we present ourselves is different from the way that we think and feel sometimes, because we don\u2019t think that we can reveal how we think and feel fully. We\u2019re afraid of being judged; we\u2019re afraid of being ostracized. There\u2019s a lot of that within her. She knows she\u2019s being misunderstood, but she can\u2019t allow her feelings \u2014 her pain even \u2014 to get in the way of this sort of Promethean charge to fix and advance a broken system.<\/p>\n We get a sense of this in \u201c6:00 P.M.\u201d when Robby yells at her for suggesting that the PTMC could benefit from two daytime attendings rather than one, and Baran can\u2019t really let herself react. How did you and Noah approach that scene? To be honest, I haven\u2019t seen episode 12, and I don\u2019t know which take they used. Regardless, in the writing, it does show that she\u2019s like, Why can\u2019t we have a heated argument, like a dialectic? Why does it have to slip into this personal jab? You don\u2019t have to agree with me, but why do you have to disrespect me? In the beginning, especially when he would undercut her, she\u2019s used to it to a certain degree. But the more she\u2019s grown to like, know, and admire Dr. Robby, the more it does affect her emotionally. Because it\u2019s like, You\u2019ve seen the work that I\u2019m bringing \u2014 the level of care, the level of attention to detail. Why do we have to get dirty in our fights or disagreements?\u00a0<\/p>\n The fact that Dr. Al-Hashimi suggests two attendings, even that is offensive to him. It reveals the level of sensitivity that he has personally and professionally, and a bit of a scarcity mind-set too. The last thing he literally says is, \u201cIt\u2019s yours; don\u2019t fuck it up.\u201d I don\u2019t want it to be \u201cmine.\u201d I want it to be ours. The only way that hospitals work is through teamwork, right? And that\u2019s what\u2019s beautiful about The Pitt. It\u2019s not about this one savior. Yes, Noah Wyle, Dr. Robby, is the main protagonist, but the reason why this hospital works is because of this entire ecosystem, this entire team that needs each other, this community of people who devote themselves and their lives to helping people.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to lay out my idea of what is going on with Dr. Al-Hashimi. We know<\/a> that she was at Dasht-e-Barchi Hospital in Afghanistan<\/a> when it was suicide-bombed and dozens of mothers and babies were killed. We know she has a son she wants to spend more time with. We know she\u2019s the patient of a neuroscientist. We know she feels a bond with the mother<\/a> who blames herself for her son getting locked in the car. My guess is she lost a child and is traumatized by that guilt. What\u2019s your reaction to that theory? We\u2019re both Iranian American. We\u2019re speaking after the U.S. and Israel have started bombing Iran. You mentioned the diaspora earlier. I\u2019m seeing so many wild takes on social media from so many different corners of the diaspora. I\u2019m wondering if there\u2019s anything you\u2019d like to say about all this right now, and how it\u2019s affecting you. There are many, many problems and conflicts in the world: Sudan, DRC, Gaza, the list is endless. In this moment, eyes are on Iran because of the long-standing suffering of the Iranian people, but mainly because, yet again, our U.S. dollars are being used to bomb and decimate another country. It\u2019s complicated. Iran is not a monolith. The political spectrum runs far and wide, and every voice matters. Even my answer is kind of all over the place, because I honor and I respect people who are inside of Iran who are so desperate that they think a bomb at least changes something or gives hope when they are trapped, when they\u2019ve been held hostage for 47 years by this regime. And if you see the patterns of history throughout the region, we\u2019ve never been able to bomb our way to democracy. So I\u2019m praying, and I\u2019m trying to amplify in the best way that I can, and I\u2019m trying to work and organize with these groups that I know are leading the charge. The priority is making Iranian people feel seen, feel heard, and not feel alone.<\/p>\n To tie this back to the show, The Pitt has, in its first season and throughout the second season, tied in societal issues we\u2019re living through and brought them to the forefront. What feels poignant about Dr. Al-Hashimi, and bringing her diverse medical background into the world of The Pitt, is that we\u2019re living through these proliferating crises all over the world \u2014 all over South America, all over the Africas, all over the Middle East or SWANA region \u2014 because of climate disaster, war and displacement, collapsing health systems, and rising authoritarianism. All of these things are simultaneously happening to bring us to an unprecedented moment of humanitarian need and crisis. To introduce a character who\u2019s practiced medicine in these environments, who\u2019s treated patients in places where the entire country is turned into an ER, where resources are scarce and the need is unbelievably, overwhelmingly high, adds a different gravity to the hospital. It helps us zoom out a little bit more from the microcosm of our lives to see that we are interconnected.<\/p>\n Bringing that global awareness to The Pitt felt really important and beautiful. I\u2019m an ambassador with the International Rescue Committee, and doctors in the field love the show. My friends in Jordan or Beirut are saying how amazing it is to bring a doctor that reflects their experience to arguably one of the biggest shows in the world, definitely the biggest show in the States. It gives me hope that we\u2019re making people feel seen and appreciated for their work \u2014 not just health-care workers that we see in our hospitals, but our health-care workers that travel abroad and do impossibly courageous work and come back and live with that trauma for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Vulture Daily<\/p>\n An entertainment newsletter for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n
Sometimes they won\u2019t give you the exact scenes, but they\u2019ll give mock sides that capture the sort of tone they\u2019re trying to see. I had one scene that was purely expositional, but in the words of my mentor, exposition is always POV. It was all about the AI and this new technology that she was trying to implement. Another was a scene in which I lost a patient and was beating myself up about it, and it was clearly a stark contrast to the first scene, where I was very put together, organized, and articulate. In this scene, I barely say anything, and I\u2019m really punishing myself. And the third scene was more of a flirty scene with Noah, teasing him and calling him out. You see all these colors in the Pitt.<\/p>\n
It starts off where I\u2019m confronting him, a similar dynamic that you see when I say<\/a>, \u201cWhy are you treating me like one of your residents?\u201d She\u2019s calling him out that way, but then it turns and she calls him \u201cDr. Daddy\u201d at one point. She makes jokes about how he\u2019s so smooth, and he\u2019s got this rizz and charm, and makes him really uncomfortable, basically.<\/p>\n
Me too. Me too.<\/p>\n
Oh my God, I didn\u2019t expect this. This makes me so emotional. Of course it affects how you live inside of this character, because you\u2019re so misunderstood. And as somebody who felt very misunderstood throughout my life, and still do in so many ways \u2014 like, in this moment that we\u2019re living through, with how fractured the Iranian diaspora is<\/a> \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s so hard, especially in these two-dimensional mediums like social media and technology, to be able to fully communicate the complexity and nuance of your life, of your views, of the whys and the hows of who you are and why. With her, I didn\u2019t feel emotional doing it, necessarily; I just felt like she knows she\u2019s misunderstood and she has to put all of that away. She has to compartmentalize all of that and trust that and know that she\u2019s coming from a good place in her heart.<\/p>\n
Scenes that are emotionally charged are always \u2014 even when they\u2019re uncomfortable on some level \u2014 fun to play. Dr. Al-Hashimi doesn\u2019t reveal much, so when she does deliver a piece of her mind or reveal her emotional life, it felt really good, because she spends 98 percent of her day covering it up. She does have a lot of strong opinions about Robby that she keeps to herself, but when it gets to the point where it is sacrificing the level of care, that\u2019s when the mama bear comes out a little bit.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m obsessed with this question. I can\u2019t say anything. [Laughs.] But I love that this has stirred up so much mystery and speculation. That is what art does. From the callback, I\u2019ve known what\u2019s going on with my character, and nobody else in the show did. At the end of episode one<\/a>, where Dr. Al-Hashimi is looking at the baby, people were asking me, \u201cDo you know what\u2019s happening? What\u2019s going on here?\u201d I would always ask them, \u201cWhat\u2019s your theory? What do you think?\u201d and everybody had a different answer. At a time where we are so divided and so isolated behind our screens, it\u2019s so cool that this is a moment where screens are actually stirring conversation. But I can\u2019t tell you what it is.<\/p>\n
The social-media world is so inundated with really disturbing takes and a lot of cyberbullying and attacking. It\u2019s been hard. I\u2019ve felt helpless. There are still family members that we haven\u2019t been able to reach in Iran. And it\u2019s also really difficult, because there\u2019s a lot of wishful thinking right now, and thinking that is divorced from a sort of political reality and political patterns.<\/p>\n