The actor opens up his archive to&nbsp;L'OFFICIEL and discusses starring as Dr. Frank Langdon in HBO Max's hit medical drama.

Though he was raised by an ER nurse and a paramedic, a career in medicine was never in the cards for Patrick Ball. &ldquo;I spent most of high school suspended and doing drugs, so nobody wanted me following in those footsteps,&rdquo; he says, laughing. Instead, The Pitt star, 36, left his North Carolina hometown for New York City and spent six years performing in regional theater before feeling &ldquo;stuck on a plateau.&rdquo; That restlessness led him to Yale&rsquo;s School of Drama, where he earned his degree just before the 2023 writers&rsquo; strike. &ldquo;I made peace with the idea that this is what my life would be: doing plays for two or three months at a time.&rdquo;
Hollywood, it turned out, had bigger plans, which would eventually land Ball in a pair of scrubs after all: He was cast as Dr. Frank Langdon on HBO Max&rsquo;s The Pitt. Set in the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center&rsquo;s emergency room, the show&mdash;now in its second season&mdash;quickly found an audience. &ldquo;We set out to make a show about healthcare workers, for healthcare workers,&rdquo; Ball says. &ldquo;People have been conditioned to think of medical dramas as doctors making out in broom closets, and that&rsquo;s just not what we&rsquo;re doing. We put the medicine first&mdash;but none of us anticipated the Twittersphere latching on the way it has.&rdquo;
Ball&rsquo;s character was an immediate favorite, but fans were divided when Langdon&rsquo;s addiction to prescription painkillers&mdash;and the fact that he was stealing pills from patients&mdash;was revealed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got half the people riding for me online, and the other half want my head,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m telling an important story about recovery and the stigma around addiction.&rdquo; Ball has since &ldquo;completely unplugged&rdquo; from online chatter, choosing instead to focus on doing right by his character and the healthcare workers who inspired the arc. &ldquo;I wanted to present Langdon as someone struggling in a way that most people wouldn&rsquo;t even flag,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s incredibly front-footed, always wanting to be where the action is. He also needs to be the best at whatever he does, and that includes recovery.&rdquo;

the pitt season 2 dr langdon mel

Set on Langdon&rsquo;s first day back at work after 10 months in rehab, Season 2 tracks his attempts to make amends with his coworkers. For Ball, the redemption arc hits close to home. &ldquo;As somebody who&rsquo;s been through recovery myself, I know there&rsquo;s a fundamental shift that happens,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a necessary part of the process: cleaning out your closet and taking inventory of your wrongdoings. But from my own experience, it was important to show that this is someone still mid-process.&rdquo; The performance&mdash;Ball&rsquo;s second onscreen credit after a 2023 guest spot on Law &amp; Order&mdash;earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Critics' Choice Awards, where The Pitt continued its Best Drama&ndash;winning streak. &ldquo;As a cast, we&rsquo;ve been on such a rollercoaster,&rdquo; says Ball. &ldquo;A year ago, nobody knew who we were. To go from serving coffee in Chelsea to being stopped on the street&mdash;it&rsquo;s been quite a process.&rdquo;
With The Pitt already renewed for a third season, Ball isn&rsquo;t letting success pull him away from his first love: theater. This month, he makes his Broadway debut in Becky Shaw, a dark comedy in which a blind date goes spectacularly sideways. &ldquo;Theater is what fills me up,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s something that happens when you step onstage and have nowhere to hide&mdash;I call it jumping in the river.&rdquo; Offstage, Ball leads a &ldquo;pretty simple life&rdquo; in Los Angeles, hiking with his girlfriend or spending time in their garden. There, among the plants, sits one of his most cherished possessions: a bonsai tree given to him by his parents. &ldquo;Life feels like it&rsquo;s moving really fast this year, and I have a tendency to feel like everything has to happen right now,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;But every day I go out and water this thing, it reminds me that all I have to do is focus on today. If you just focus on today, the rest of it will take care of itself. It&rsquo;ll be fine.&rdquo;

patrick ball the pitt dr langdon season 2

L&rsquo;OFFICIEL: 'The Pitt' had a huge awards season&mdash;after winning Outstanding Drama Series at the Emmys in September, the show took home the top honors at the Critics' Choice and Golden Globe awards in January, just as Season 2 premiered. How have you adapted to overnight success?&nbsp;
PATRICK BALL: I mean, we're just spoiled rotten. But this has all happened in one year; I was living in Brooklyn and working three jobs when The Pitt came in&mdash;so this has been a very quick education, and it&rsquo;s been the same for a number of my castmates. At the beginning, I think we all peeked a bit at what people were saying online, and I had a really good time because I went straight into doing [a theater production of] Hamlet in LA. All these Twitter girlies who had gotten excited about The Pitt were able to get really excited about a Shakespeare play, which I found cool. But as time has gone on, I've had to put up more and more boundaries, because it really does get quite intense.
L&rsquo;O: Speaking of intense, Season 2 picks up as Langdon returns to work post-rehab. What do you make of his evolution over the past 10 months?&nbsp;
PB: Between seasons, I was talking with [R.] Scott [Gemmill] and Noah [Wyle] about how, if Langdon goes away and gets help, there needs to be a fundamental energetic shift within him. Because this is not somebody who&rsquo;s recovered, but is actively in recovery. He&rsquo;s hurt others and been hiding from himself, and now he's done the work and is coming back in. It&rsquo;s still early days, and it was important to me to show that.&nbsp;
L&rsquo;O: How did you go about showing that subtle difference in him? Especially when, last season, he hid his addiction quite well.
PB: People don't come out and tell you that they're an addict. There are a lot of people in my life that are really suffering and carrying a lot&mdash;and they do a pretty good job of masking it. It's not just the guy doubled over at the bus stop or the person sleeping on the street that have to deal with these problems. It's people that you know, people that you love, and people that you work with. We have a number of real-life ER nurses and ER doctors on set with us every day, and they would come up to me in between takes and tell me, Just so you know, this has been a problem at every hospital I've ever worked at. This is a very real thing that afflicts healthcare workers.

the pitt season 2 release date; the pitt season 2 trailer

L&rsquo;O: People were curious about Langdon&rsquo;s personal life when the season started&mdash;there was a lot of chatter about the fact that he was wearing his wedding ring in some scenes but not others. He&rsquo;s since mentioned that they&rsquo;re still together, but what did you make of the speculation about his marriage?&nbsp;
PB: I'm very interested in my character&rsquo;s home life, and I think that there is a lot of untold story about his wife, Abby, and their two kids. In Season 1, you get little breadcrumbs with him thinking he can solve a bunch of problems by going out and buying a dog and not really thinking that process through. I think there's a lot to still be said about that, and I don't want to give anything away.
L&rsquo;O: Fans are obsessed with Langdon&rsquo;s very endearing and pure relationship with Dr. Mel King, a third-year resident played by Taylor Dearden. What&rsquo;s your take on their bond?&nbsp;
PB: It&rsquo;s a very unlikely pairing, but it is so funny to me how worked up everybody has gotten over this. I think it's just a beautiful friendship; we don't have enough loving, platonic friendships like that between the genders on television. To me, Mel represents a caretaker&mdash;she takes a lot of responsibility for the people she loves, and she knows the weight of it. That is something Langdon feels regularly with his family, too. So when he meets her, he sees that sense of responsibility; he also sees somebody that has their sensitive side intact. This place can be a meat grinder&mdash;coming into work and being presented with traumatic situations all day long can create a lot of calluses, and Mel isn't calloused. Langdon doesn't want to become calloused either, and in Mel, he sees this hope that you can stay soft and human.&nbsp;

patrick ball the pit dr langdon

L&rsquo;O: On the other hand, there&rsquo;s no shortage of tension between Langdon and Noah Wyle&rsquo;s&nbsp;Dr. Robby&nbsp;this season. What&rsquo;s it like to get to work with Noah in that way?
PB: It's interesting. I mean, Noah has been an incredible leader and mentor to me, and to all of us. He's really sort of like a player-coach. If you think about it, there's nobody in the history of television that knows more about making a hospital drama than Noah Wyle. He's literally the authority on this kind of show. He brought in a bunch of people like me, Supria [Ganesh, who plays Dr. Samira Mohan] and Shabana [Azeez, who portrays med student Victoria Javani], many of us who had never done anything like this. And he&rsquo;s really ushered us through stepping into this new chapter of our lives.&nbsp;
L&rsquo;O: The cast famously partakes in group poker nights. Are you a part of those?
PB: Oh, I&rsquo;m a part of that for sure. Katherine LaNasa [who portrays charge nurse Dana] has been hosting poker night since the beginning of Season 1. There's a core group of us&mdash;it's me, Katherine, our set designer Nina [Ruscio], Brandon Mendez Homer who plays Donahue, and Fiona Dourif [who plays Dr. Cassie McKay]. And then we have a group of rotating players that come in and out. It&rsquo;s awesome, and an incredible way to get to know each other. Like, there is a bond there.
L&rsquo;O: Did you ever consider going into medicine yourself?
PB: No. My mom's an ER nurse, and my dad's a paramedic. My sister was 5 years old with a 5-year plan, and now she and her wife are both occupational therapists working in the autism field in North Carolina. Meanwhile, I was always just loud and chaotic. I'm the fuckup of the family.
L&rsquo;O: Do you think that growing up in a home with medical professional parents prepared you for the graphic nature of some of&nbsp;The Pitt&rsquo;s scenes? Or are you still squeamish like the rest of us?
PB: The prosthetic team is so good at what they do, and it's so realistic. The first couple of episodes, you're like, Oh my gosh, this is crazy. But then it becomes normalized to do highly traumatic things every day, which is exactly the process of residents that are doing this for real. There's a calcification that happens&mdash;similar to what I was saying has not overtaken Mel yet&mdash;and I know that to be true through my parents. My mom would come home and be totally present, asking me what was going on with school and taking me to baseball, but an hour prior to that, she had her finger plugging a bullet hole in a human heart.&nbsp;

patrick ball the pit actor

L&rsquo;O:&nbsp;What kind of roles or projects do you hope to take on beyond 'The Pitt'? 
PB: I feel very lucky that, between&nbsp;The Pitt and my theater work, every project I've been a part of is attached to a cause or social agenda larger than itself. Part of The Pitt's utility is that it is raising awareness on the malfunction of the healthcare system and honoring healthcare workers, and that mission is very personal to me. Immediately before The Pitt, I was doing a play [Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard] in Miami with Mois&eacute;s Kaufman that raised awareness of the state of decay in Venezuela. My girlfriend Elysia [Roorbach] and I were in that together, working with a bunch of Venezuelan political expatriates who had to flee their home country out of fear of persecution. And before that, I was doing a play [The XIXth] about the Mexico City Olympics that dealt with activism within sports. So I feel very lucky to be making art with a purpose.
L&rsquo;O: It seems like you also have a good time when it comes to your style. Have you been enjoying the fashion aspect of attending all of these red carpets?
PB: It's a brand new game for me. But I think there's a lot of fun to be had playing with fashion, and I've got a really good stylist and a really good girlfriend. I just sort of follow their lead. I wore Thom Brown to Critics Choice, which was really cool and felt like the right vibe. And then we've been working with Dolce &amp; Gabbana on a couple of things, which is fun for some period extravagance. I spend most of my life in sweatpants and a hoodie, and the fact that I&rsquo;ve been invited to so many of these costume balls lately has been awesome.
L&rsquo;O: Glamour aside, did you ever think this level of success was around the corner?
PB: It was a dream long deferred. And I had let go of it. So the fact that this is all happening now, at 35, it really is just surreal.

How Patrick Ball Found His Way to 'The Pitt'

Tags

Recommended posts for you

Film & TV

How Patrick Ball Found His Way to 'The Pitt'

Fashion

Olandria Carthen Turns Heads in a Plunging Archival Georges Chakra Dress in LA

Men's

Tyrese Haliburton's Best Off-Court Style Moments

Shopping

Prepare For the Beach With the Ultimate Guide To One-Piece Swimsuits

Film & TV

Emma Chamberlain Is Making Her Feature Film Debut With ‘Forbidden Fruits'

Fashion

All The Spring/Summer 2026 Campaigns To Keep On Your Radar

Beauty

The February 2026 Beauty Edit: Celebrate Love With These Heartfelt Launches

Fashion Week

All Of the Celebrities at Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2026