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How far would you go to embody the physicality of a dying man? Ernest Harden Jr., who played beloved frequent flyer Louie on The Pitt, went pretty far. “I did something that was very dangerous, but I went off all my blood pressure pills,” Harden said at the HBO Emmy Max Nominee Celebration, “to try to feel what it would be like.” He called it “the Robert De Niro” method of acting. “I don’t recommend this at home, but it worked,” he said.
Harden said he had a doctor monitoring his healht during this extended method acting exercise. When off his meds, it was hard to breathe, and even hard to make it to lunch on set. “They treated me like royalty. I got a ride everywhere. They came to my dressing room and always take me to lunch,” he said. “I said ‘I’m not that lazy, that I can’t go to lunch or something, but you know, I’m not feeling great.’ And they said ‘What? You’re not feeling great?’ And then I see a team of people around me taking me to the nurse. So I had to keep it quiet.”
But once Louie had died, the hardest part was yet to come: staying still while people eulogized him. “I was actually crying but no one could see it because I was dead,” he said.
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