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<\/p>\nThe test results are in: Sepideh Moafi\u2019s first shift on \u201cThe Pitt\u201d received a positive result from Emmy voters.<\/p>\n
Moafi joined the popular medical drama\u2019s second season as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, an attending physician brought in to take over as chief as Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) prepares to take leave for a three-month sabbatical. Her leadership style \u2014 she likes efficiency and structure \u2014 and interest in implementing some changes quickly turns heads at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. And it causes some tension with Dr. Robby, which comes to a head in the season finale, as Dr. Al-Hashimi confides in him about living with a seizure disorder that leads to an ultimatum from Dr. Robby: Self-report or he will. <\/p>\n
Moafi scooped up a nomination Wednesday for supporting actress in a drama, joining castmates Taylor Dearden, Fiona Dourif and Katherine LaNasa, as well as Allison Janney (\u201cThe Diplomat\u201d), Julianne Nicholson (\u201cParadise\u201d) and Karolina Wydra (\u201cPluribus\u201d).<\/p>\n
The morning\u2019s jolt of excitement hit \u201cThe Pitt\u201d team with the strength of a defibrillator to the chest. The HBO Max series led all nominees with 25 total nods \u2014 nearly doubling its 13 nominations from last year \u2014 including recognition in the drama, actor (Wyle) and supporting cast categories. <\/p>\n
The Times spoke with Moafi about her first-ever Emmy nomination; this conversation was edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take a page from \u201cThe Pitt\u201d \u2014 place me in Hour 1 (8:30 to 9:30 a.m.) of your Emmy nominations morning. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been abroad for a couple weeks now, and I got in yesterday and I was fighting so hard to stay up for as long as possible, but I couldn\u2019t. Around 7 p.m., I fell asleep and woke up at 3 a.m., had a long meditation workout, and tried not to think about this too much. I actually have my parents here [in Los Angeles] with me. We started watching the live broadcast and I had my sister on FaceTime and other family. Then my team called me and I kept denying their call. I didn\u2019t realize that they knew something I didn\u2019t; I kept declining the calls. They called again, and were like, \u201cCongratulations!\u201d I was like, \u201cWhat do you mean? It hasn\u2019t been announced?\u201d It took me like 15 seconds or something to really understand what was happening. I\u2019m still in disbelief right now. I can\u2019t really wrap my head around the magnitude of this moment, but it just seems so, so appropriate to have such a climactic moment in my life arrive in somewhat anticlimactic fashion. Like, I\u2019m the last person to really understand. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Pitt\u201d led the pack with 25 nominations. And in your category, you\u2019re nominated alongside Fiona, Taylor and Katherine. How does it feel to share in this moment?<\/p>\n
I just feel so proud to stand alongside, not just these women of \u201cThe Pitt,\u201d but all of the women who are recognized in this category and all of the categories. My dear friend Valerie Chu, who\u2019s one of our writers, is being recognized. Kirsten [Pierre-Geyfman], another writer, is being recognized. The show was recognized and celebrated last season, but it\u2019s not about those of us who are being given an Emmy nod, it\u2019s about the whole team. I don\u2019t say that lightly; sure, we are lucky to have this sort of concentrated recognition, but it really doesn\u2019t work without this entire ecosystem. All the writers, all of the people in the sound department, makeup department, hair department \u2014 it\u2019s just another reason for us to celebrate the teamwork on the show as a whole.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Katherine LaNasa, left, and Sepideh Moafi in Season 2 of \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d Both were nominated in the supporting actress in a drama series category.<\/p>\n
(Warrick Page \/ HBO Max)<\/p>\n
Dr. Al-Hashimi is experienced, but she\u2019s a newcomer to this well-oiled machine, much like yourself joining this series in its second season. How did that parallel inform your approach? And what intrigued you about what this character brought to the show?<\/p>\n
Like you said, we\u2019re both experienced professionals in our respective careers, and we both had our first day on \u201cThe Pitt\u201d at the same time \u2014 her first day lasted a lot longer than mine did. It was intimidating, but thrilling to enter this show that you know works, with such pros, with people who care about the details, who care about the craft, and so I was excited to just get in and be part of the team.<\/p>\n
I was also excited to bring voice to this character that I just don\u2019t see represented or reflected in a lot of mainstream media. Somebody who was managing this temporal lobe epilepsy, but also somebody who works in humanitarian aid field in this moment of unprecedented attacks against our aid workers. Having that visibility for my friends who sacrifice everything to go where help is needed most was a huge honor, even though it\u2019s not what this character is about in the show, it\u2019s such a big part of her lens on the world, on her career, on her life. It might not be explored more than a couple times in the show itself, but it was with me every single moment of every single day I was on that set. That felt really poignant and powerful to me. And having a mixed-race woman \u2014 half Iranian, half Iraqi \u2014 bringing her life experience, and it\u2019s not about identity, but her identities inform her approach to her staff, to her colleagues, to her patients, to her work, to her life, to her condition. There\u2019s so many things to sink into, and that gave me the confidence to enter this world because we\u2019re there to be part of the collective and in order to be a strong part of the collective, we have to have a strong hold on our characters and the world in which they live in.<\/p>\n
It seems daunting dialing in that depth and breadth within \u201cThe Pitt\u2019s\u201d hour-by-hour format. How did you approach pacing your performance in the confines of a single day at work? Did it shift how you thought about character building?<\/p>\n
Because I have some background working with humanitarian organizations and because I have a lot of friends who are journalists, doctors, humanitarian aid workers, who either do this full-time working with NGOs, or they volunteer \u2014 it\u2019s not like I thought I had a handle on it, but it was just something that was a little bit more familiar to me. The part that I found most daunting was getting into the medicine. This idea of entering the headspace of [a doctor] and the way they think, the velocity, the specificity, it\u2019s a very different world and a very different mindset from the one that I\u2019ve grown with, having devoted my life for the most part to art. I had to cram 15, 16 years of medical experience into a week before we started shooting. We are supported by so many different doctors and nurses who are on set at all times. We have a medical advisor, a technical advisor, on set at all times, and so I lean on them heavily. I speak to them for hours before each episode and throughout the episode. I\u2019m constantly checking in with them on the day on set. If I had a role like this 10 years ago, I would have put a lot of pressure on myself and there would have been much more tension in the preparation; whereas I think at this point in my life it was, I\u2019m doing everything I can do, and I\u2019m immersed and absorbed in the ways that I can be, and then I have to show up to set and just trust that the work is working on me. <\/p>\n
The new season takes place in November. How far into production are you? And what can you tease now that won\u2019t make sense until we watch?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m aware of this overall trajectory of my character, very broad strokes. I don\u2019t know any details, but I kind of know what\u2019s happening to a certain degree. I start this week. Actually, we have our table read tomorrow for the episode that I enter in. This season, not everybody\u2019s entering Episode 1; there are delayed entrances. I\u2019m one of those delayed entrances. All I can tease is that it\u2019s four months into the future, there are certain things that I can tell from the script that I just read \u2014 certain things are dealt with and other things are not dealt with. I think, in a way, that is very appropriate for \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d You feel what\u2019s behind the lines. We haven\u2019t filmed it yet, but I imagine that it\u2019s less about what is being said and more about what is not being said. I\u2019m excited to explore more and to learn more of where all the characters are going, and where the story is going. <\/p>\n
But does the Lululemon zip-up jacket make a return?<\/p>\n
[laughs] I don\u2019t know if I can spoil, but I will say there is a riff on it, a different style that\u2019s sort of similar. <\/p>\n
Emmys is a fun night where you can run into your favorite actors by your seat or in the lobby, if not on the red carpet. Who do you hope to see at the Emmys?<\/p>\n
Oh gosh, there\u2019s so many people whose work I admire, but I think the person that I just have so much awe and admiration for is Jean Smart. She\u2019s a living legend. She\u2019s one of those actors that I\u2019m watching and taking mental notes constantly … and thinking, \u201cGod, how does she always nail it? How does she always have the perfect timing?\u201d I\u2019m really, really excited to see and meet her … and everyone. I\u2019ve been an admirer of Carrie Coon for a while. Rhea Seehorn. Riz Ahmed. Oscar Isaac. There\u2019s so many people across categories that I\u2019m just excited to be in company with. I\u2019m more than happy to just absorb all of the energy throughout this process, throughout this campaign process, and beyond. It\u2019s so cool to be alongside this caliber of talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The test results are in: Sepideh Moafi\u2019s first shift on \u201cThe Pitt\u201d received a positive result from Emmy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[157638,6193,48,52,51,7036,157637,47,50,49,1741,16145,1459,592,14857,141564,6196,1860,427,1968,8074],"class_list":["post-391795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-cast-category","tag-character","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-year","tag-life-arrive","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-lot","tag-moment","tag-part","tag-people","tag-pitt","tag-sepideh-moafi","tag-set","tag-show","tag-team","tag-work","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}