{"id":594008,"date":"2026-04-08T19:15:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/594008\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T19:15:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:15:19","slug":"the-pitt-star-patrick-ball-feared-hed-die-with-student-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/594008\/","title":{"rendered":"‘the Pitt’ Star Patrick Ball Feared He’d ‘Die’ With Student Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The Pitt<\/a>” actor Patrick Ball, 36, says he once thought he’d be stuck with his student loans<\/a> for life.<\/p>\n

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In a Cultured<\/a> interview published Tuesday, Ball spoke about how his finances changed after landing the role of Dr. Frank Langdon on the HBO Max medical drama.<\/p>\n

When asked about paying off his student debt, he paused and began to cry, according to the interview.<\/p>\n

“I paid off my student loans like three months into ‘The Pitt,’ and that was a really profound moment ’cause I thought I was gonna die with it,” Ball told Cultured.<\/p>\n

The actor described his debt as a “huge burden to carry,” adding that many people share that experience.<\/p>\n

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“I was $80,000 in debt and I had been through a series of failed relationships where my financial insecurity<\/a> was a real problem. I had just thought that was going to be my life forever, and that is a really heavy thing to live with,” Ball said.<\/p>\n

He added that getting out of debt<\/a> felt like a win in itself, regardless of how the show performed.<\/p>\n

“Paying off those student loans and getting back to zero, I remember being like, Man, if this show works, great. If it doesn’t work, they can’t take that away from me. I am out of debt. No take-backsies on that,” Ball said.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time that Ball has spoken about his student debt.<\/p>\n

Ball told The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> in February that attending Yale was “a scary gamble” after he had dropped out of another college to pursue acting for five years.<\/p>\n

“When I got the job on ‘The Pitt,’ the first thing I did was to pay off my student loans. It felt really, really good, especially because when I went to Yale, I didn’t exactly get the reaction from my family that I was hoping for,” Ball said.<\/p>\n

He added that his parents tried to convince him to drop out. “They were worried about me taking on all that debt and wondering why I would do that to myself,” he said.<\/p>\n

Last month, the Education Department announced that beginning July 1, the 7 million borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan<\/a> will have 90 days to select a new plan and begin payments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“The Pitt” actor Patrick Ball, 36, says he once thought he’d be stuck with his student loans for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[32465,64,63,7779,447,289933,289935,134,222959,289936,27522,8280,66390,2349,289934,20964,20965,28333,28168],"class_list":{"0":"post-594008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-month","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-ball","12":"tag-celebrities","13":"tag-cultured-interview","14":"tag-dr-frank-langdon","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-february","17":"tag-financial-insecurity","18":"tag-hollywood-reporter","19":"tag-life","20":"tag-pitt","21":"tag-show","22":"tag-star-patrick-ball","23":"tag-student-debt","24":"tag-student-loan","25":"tag-tuesday","26":"tag-yale"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}