Mohan<\/a> and Joy both have these obligations to their families whom they\u2019ve had to help navigate the system here. A lot of the well-being of the parents is put upon the daughter in medical school, and there\u2019s pressure that comes with that.\u201d<\/p>\nHow were you introduced to the world of The Pitt?
I got the audition through my reps at a time when I was like, I\u2019m really on my way out with how this industry has been going. Everyone has taken a step down. People who were in movies are now in TV, and everyone who was in the series-regular boat moved down to the recurring-guest boat. For a lot of actors, it\u2019s an uphill battle. But especially for a child of immigrants with absolutely no ties to this industry or access points, getting to the next step over the past several years was so difficult. It came at a precarious time for me in terms of uncertainty about my future in the industry.<\/p>\n
The character felt like me. With really big auditions, I\u2019ll get coaching or rehearse it with people, but I did not have the time. I hate to sound so nihilistic, but at that stage of your life where you feel like nothing really matters, you take the pressure off yourself. It\u2019s like, I\u2019m just going to give it a go and try to make the character real and authentic. If it doesn\u2019t work, it doesn\u2019t work. I went in for an in-person callback, which used to be the standard, pre-COVID. It\u2019s like you go on a date with someone and you\u2019re like, No, it\u2019s just too good to be true.<\/p>\n
What parts of yourself did you see in Joy?
It was clear she was a daughter of immigrants, which was confirmed once I was on the show. One of the breakdowns was \u201cShe doesn\u2019t have that much to say. She\u2019s got a strong sense of boundaries.\u201d That\u2019s what struck me as the biggest thing. Actors are so eager to find moments to act and react. That\u2019s how we\u2019re trained. Her realness came from nonreactiveness. She doesn\u2019t say much. One of the tricky tasks I got was to not overtly show too much of what she is thinking or feeling.<\/p>\n
Somewhere in the current lexicon of psychobabble, we\u2019ve become conditioned to see boundaries as represented by characters who really stick up for themselves and tell people, \u201cYou\u2019re crossing my boundaries.\u201d I\u2019m not as good at speaking up for myself, but I will build boundaries in the form of walls. When I was told, \u201cJoy has a strong sense of boundaries, yet she doesn\u2019t talk that much,\u201d I was like, Okay, so she\u2019s not asserting her boundaries through words. She\u2019s showing them through a set of masks she built for herself. We got a note from Noah as the season went on: \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a moment where people\u2019s masks start to slip and you\u00a0see the doctors\u2019 individual traumas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does Joy\u2019s mask slip?
For Joy, we finally see it with the toddler with heatstroke. We haven\u2019t seen her jump to conclusions that much until this point. She pulls a Santos, so to speak. But how many masks is she wearing? Underneath this mask, is there just another wall?<\/p>\n
How do you read her suspicious reaction to the kid\u2019s mom?
The first time I read it out loud at the table read, I felt myself get really hot and teary-eyed. I didn\u2019t play it that way when we actually came down to it because that would be too much of a departure from who she has been so far. Even though Santos\u2019s and Joy\u2019s actions come off the same way, I wanted to make sure the root of their reactions isn\u2019t the same. For Santos, neglect has a lot to do with her trauma. I think she dealt with not having a family system, but there are people who have family systems that can be disciplinarian or too toxic, and that was the backstory I had for Joy. These are personal choices I made that weren\u2019t discussed with the writers.<\/p>\n
The fact that she was so accusatory made me think, Okay, there\u2019s a reason I hate this mother right now. For some reason, she triggers something in me. The conclusion she hastily jumps to is that it was a case of punishment gone too far. That\u2019s my dark answer. Joy doesn\u2019t come from a place of much privilege; we find out she grew up in a situation where her family didn\u2019t have access to medical care or insurance. I put together that she probably grew up in a situation where punishment discipline was the way. I wanted to show that Joy is more angry at the mom than sad for the kid. There were enough people in the room who were sad about the kid.<\/p>\n
In your final scene, Joy sticks to her guns and leaves the ER. It\u2019s striking to see someone who actually wants to clock out at the end of their shift.
That was in the character breakdown: She\u2019s counting the hours until 7 p.m. Again, that\u2019s where her boundaries are made really clear. If she\u2019s clocking out at seven, she\u2019s going to try her hardest to not let anything get in her way. God, I hate to make everything about race, but again, this is where I felt so much realism. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve seen a person who looks like me in a situation like, \u201cI\u2019m the first one out of here.\u201d In some ways, she\u2019s kind of like Stanley from The Office. It\u2019s so not stereotypical. I\u2019ve heard this from people, specifically from Asian women, like, \u201cOh my God, I\u2019m so glad this character is out there because she\u2019s not the type of character often written for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you see Joy\u2019s determination to leave on time as a mark of maturity or the opposite?
Your strengths are also your weaknesses. Mohan has that conversation with Robby about leaving everything at the door, and Joy is good at that but maybe she isn\u2019t leaving enough room for when she\u2019s needed at work. She\u2019s just like, \u201cI\u2019ve got my own stuff to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a really effective way of showing that strength and weakness of asserting your boundaries and preserving your energy. Maybe we all have to learn from Joy to take a moment to disconnect and say, \u201cNo, I can\u2019t do this anymore because if I do this, you\u2019re not going to get a good me tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone is getting put through the wringer mentally this season, and Ogilvie\u2019s perspective on working in the ER seems to be shifting. Does Joy take away anything throughout this shift, or is she defined by how unchanging she is?
This is the start of something internal. Joy has clearly researched burnout for a reason: She\u2019s someone who thinks she\u2019s done enough healing. She\u2019s a Lexapro girlie, and she has built up this arsenal of self-coping mechanisms. In time, she will outgrow them because that\u2019s what all people do. But in this moment, she has found the things that work for her: I take my meds, I try not to let anything faze me, I conserve my energy, I don\u2019t give any more than I need to. She doesn\u2019t have the energy to compete.<\/p>\n
The evolution we start to see is when she comes out and says, \u201cOkay, I can actually help you solve this situation with the outage.\u201d She\u2019s hesitant to bring up her photographic memory because she probably knows from the past that if she\u2019s useful, she\u2019ll have to put in the extra effort. She was probably bringing her classroom mentality into this first rotation, like, I\u2019m just here to learn and leave. But there are moments when she starts to see that shrinking back doesn\u2019t help you or the situation. You offer something just by being part of the effort. Maybe she can grow in a way where she can give more energy.<\/p>\n
Do you want to see Joy come back to the ER?
I hope this is the start of her journey. We have to get to why she is the way she is. Why does she come off so passive? Why is she so eager to get out of here? I would like for her to find something worth coming back to the ER for.<\/p>\n
I do think she occupies a very unique role on the show compared with the other doctors trying to put in as much time as possible.
That\u2019s the note John Wells, the executive producer, gave me and Lucas our first week there. He was saying, \u201cIn med school, you\u2019ll always see these students who feel like there\u2019s not enough food in the puppy bowl.\u201d That\u2019s the biggest stereotype, but not all of them are going to be like that. That\u2019s the story line I made for myself: She\u2019s there because she kind of had to be there, because of what happened with her family, and because she\u2019s smart enough to do it.<\/p>\n
That was the same for my family\u00a0\u2014 that\u2019s where she and I related hard. It\u2019s like, If you\u2019re smart enough to be a doctor, you should be a doctor. I see this a lot among my Asian cohorts that I went to school with. A lot of them did go to medical school because it was like, Why not, if you have the potential to be there? But they end up not enjoying it as much. That\u2019s where Joy is right now. Maybe she has felt she was forced to be there. Ogilvie says very clearly he\u2019s there because he has always wanted to be there; it\u2019s a childhood dream of his. Joy doesn\u2019t say outwardly if she ever wanted to be a doctor, but she says she wanted to go into pathology. Trust me, no Asian parents want their kids to go to med school to go into pathology. So maybe it was a compromise. But it would be nice to see her realize, Maybe I do have a spot here. I\u2019m worth something here.<\/p>\n
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\n See All<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Warrick Page\/HBO Max Twelve hours into the second season of The Pitt, the day shift has finally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[12840,156,190297,111,139,69,7063,18673,134416,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-361406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-chat-room","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-irene-choi","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-qa","15":"tag-the-pitt","16":"tag-the-pitt-season-2","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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