The scene that made Fiona Dourif’s heart race the most on set for “The Pitt” Season 2 wasn’t simulating CPR or resetting a tailbone.
In Episode 4, Dr. Cassie McKay gets dealt a flirty patient. After she diagnoses him with a non-fracture foot injury and permits his discharge, she confirms she won’t be seeing him again — “as a patient.” She starts to walk away, before doubling back and telling him she might check out an art gallery after her shift, around 9 p.m. He smiles.
“When I was actually shooting it, I remember my heart was beating out of my chest,” Dourif tells TODAY.com. “I’m somebody who has spent decades of my life single, and I know how scary that is. I’m actually quite bad at it. I’ve done it a couple times, but just the fear of rejection is really acute in the way that feels like a trauma bay.
“It’s also — it’s a funny thing when you play someone so close to my actual personality,” she adds. “I get nervous in places that I wouldn’t in my life and it just feels very exposing.”
Tapping into that raw nerve to play McKay, a resident in her 40s who made bad decisions growing up before deciding to turn her life around, has earned Dourif her first Emmy nomination, for best supporting actress in a drama series.
McKay is a third-year resident at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, known for an intuitive empathy inspired by her own traumatic past. She has a known experience with addiction but is now a sober single mom who started medical school in her 30s.
“I think (when) writing McKay, they wanted to feature someone who’s really fallen in their life and struggled to get back up,” Dourif says. “(She’s) had addiction problems, been arrested, just struggled in ways that a lot of doctors who went to a good school and then medical school and then residency and then attending don’t have exposure to.”
Below, TODAY.com caught up with Dourif to reflect on Season 2, her thoughts ahead of the Sept. 14 Emmy Awards and get as much as possible out of her about the highly anticipated Season 3 of “The Pitt,” due to return in January.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
We’re on Episode 5 now. So I have a full-time Monday through Friday job. I report in.
“No matter how bad it gets in the hospital, it will never be as bad as where she’s been.”
Everybody has their story, but it took me longer to get my feet on the ground. I had some sad things happen to my family, and I think I just had that quality, whatever it was.
I got two paragraphs in the character breakdown for the initial audition. I remember reading it and saying to myself, “If they’re going for somebody who looks like me, I’m a version of the character.” I knew right away. And mind you, the audition scenes were mostly medicine. It was very little about me … but it was mostly just a vibe. I think they were really looking for the essence of the person.
And then when we were cast, I was brought into this room with (executive producer) John Wells and (creator) Scott Gemmill, and they said, “Here’s what we’ve written about McKay’s backstory. You can take or leave whatever you want. This was just our idea of it,” and they read it through. There’s some things that are quite different from me. There’s a lot that’s pretty similar to my actual life.
They are nimble with what we fill in and where we take it, the character. But I’ve never played something so close to Fiona. It’s quite vulnerable to be honest.
