HBO’s medical drama “The Pitt” is one of the most lauded shows on television, winning two Golden Globe awards on Sunday after picking up five Emmy Awards in September. For two of its stars, the show’s breakout success even allowed them to quit their day jobs.

When actors Patrick Ball and Supriya Ganesh landed their roles on the show, which premiered in January 2025, they were both struggling actors waiting for their big breaks. Ball, 36, was bouncing between theater roles across the U.S. and working as a barista in Brooklyn, New York, before landing a starring role as Dr. Frank Langdon in “The Pitt” in 2024, he told E! News in a Jan. 4 interview at the Critics Choice Awards 2026.

“Eighteen months ago, I was in Brooklyn working three jobs. I was making coffee and thinking about moving back to North Carolina,” said Ball.

Ball studied acting at both the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Yale University’s School of Drama. He “spent five years traveling around, doing regional theater across the country,” Ball said in an interview with UNC Greensboro’s alumni website in September 2025.

“I spent 12 years hustling and pounding the pavement, working for $700 a week,” he said. “I’d play the lead in a big [theater] show, move back to Brooklyn with nothing to show for it, and have to start again from scratch.”

Ball “auditioned for a bunch of films and TV and came close on some,” he said. “The Pitt” was only his second-ever television role, after a guest spot on “Law & Order” in 2023.

“The fact that I got pulled on to this show at age 35, when I thought I had missed the boat, and now I’m standing here at the Critics Choice Awards is just crazy,” Ball told E! News. His work on the show’s first season earned him a Critics Choice Awards nomination in the supporting actor category.

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As for Ganesh, 28, she’d put a potential medical career on hold to pursue acting while earning extra cash working as a tutor.

In 2019, Ganesh earned a degree in neuroscience from Columbia University, where she was pre-med and always planned on becoming a doctor, she told Cosmopolitan on Jan. 8. However, she also loved acting, and landed a guest role on CBS’ “Blue Bloods” before graduating college.

When acting jobs dried up during the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by the 2023 SAG-AFTRA actor strikes, Ganesh began the process of going to medical school. She scored in the 99th percentile on her Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), according to Columbia Magazine, and earned extra money as an MCAT tutor while working medical internships.

“I’d start off in a bio lab, and then in the evening, I’d be taping an audition for some indie movie,” she told Cosmopolitan, admitting she “felt so torn” between pursuing careers in both acting and medicine.

That indecisiveness continued even after Ganesh landed her role on “The Pitt” as Dr. Samira Mohan. She was still reluctant to give up her tutoring gig, for both the money and the remaining tie to her medical aspirations, she told Canadian media outlet eTalk in an interview posted to YouTube on Saturday.

“I felt like the show was going to be a success … But I was like, ‘Just in case I’m wrong. I’m going to keep my day job and I’m going to tutor,'” said Ganesh. “I was tutoring through Season 1. Even after the show started airing, I was still tutoring.”

Eventually, “people started signing up for my [tutoring] class just to see me,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, OK. Maybe I can’t do this anymore.'”

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