In season two of The Pitt, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) begins as a new attending set to replace Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) when he leaves on his sabbatical. Her methodology isn’t the same as his, leading to some tense and challenging interactions as she tries to understand the people she’ll be working with and impart what she believes to be critically important to their success.
Awards Buzz spoke with Moafi about the tremendous fanbase for a previous show of hers – The L Word: Generation Q – and how that compares with the unstoppable devotees of this series. She praised this character and what she found to relate to about her:
“She is a quiet storm. She holds this quiet storm on the inside, and I think she’s someone that, over time, reveals herself. She knows how to be a pro and she’s had to condition herself from an early age to be a certain way in public because she doesn’t want people to come after her, whether it’s bully her in her childhood years or as an adult, threaten her, or to have to suffer discrimination, which she definitely has throughout her life.”
She talked about what she learned about working in a hospital and playing someone with a health condition:
“I think we all became aware of how under-supported and overburdened our healthcare workers were, especially during COVID, but I guess I didn’t spend much time thinking about a doctor who is also navigating their own medical condition, what that could look like. And so living inside of her, somebody who is incredibly, almost frighteningly, high-achieving and tenacious and rigorous and detail-oriented on top of the fact, or because of the fact that she has this condition, and the outpour of love and appreciation for visibility for doctors, healthcare workers who have a similar condition, not just temporal lobe epilepsy, but other health conditions, feeling incredibly seen in Dr. Al-Hashimi. My appreciation for our healthcare community has grown exponentially. I mean, I can play a doctor, and even that’s hard, but imagining being a doctor is beyond comprehension, and I just have utmost respect and awe for everything that they do.”
Watch the video above to hear what she’d like to see next for Dr. Al-Hashimi and the passion projects she has coming up.
The first two seasons of The Pitt are streaming on HBO Max.
