It’s impossible to properly discuss the incredible and most shocking moments of The Pitt without mentioning Langdon.
The series is a bonafide hit because of its authenticity. It resonates well with the audience when so few series succeed in stripping down to the basics and bringing us compelling stories and wonderful characters.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a person not discussing this series, as The Pitt has become this phenomenon that has taken television and streaming by storm.
One of the many strong suits of The Pitt is that it bolsters a truly incredible cast. Seriously, there isn’t a single person who doesn’t deliver with fantastic performances.
The series excels at producing relatable, vulnerable human characters; even the supposed B-list characters are total scene-stealing rock stars.
Of course, there is nothing “B-List” about one of The Pitt’s fan-favorite characters, Frank Langdon.
I can say the same for Patrick Ball, the talented, insightful, and charming man who plays him.
TV Fanatic was fortunate enough to catch up with the star via Zoom to discuss Langdon’s complexities, which bring stories of addiction to the forefront in meaningful, powerful ways, and Langdon’s dynamics with Santos, Mel, and Robby.
Check it out below!
I heard that your parents were frontline workers. Was that a factor that inspired you to join this project? How important was it to pay homage to them in that way?
Yeah. It was hugely important to pay homage to them. I’d like to say that that’s what brought me on.
To be honest, this is my first big TV job. I was just excited to have a job. But the fact that this one was about something so close to home made it special for me.
When they flew me over to LA to do the screen test, one of the first things I said was, “Oh, my God, this is incredible.” I happened to be in North Carolina with my parents when this all started taking off, and I read the pilot with them.
One of the first things they said was, “Oh, my gosh, this medicine checks out. This is what I would do.” Normally, they can’t watch medical dramas because they can often be very inaccurate. Then I started to talk with them. And all of a sudden, they started sharing their lives with me.
They started talking about their careers, and they’re both retired now. So it’s all retrospective. But they talked about what it’s like to get that call with a six-car pile-up on the highway.
My dad’s a paramedic. And so to show up on the highway with a six-car pile-up and just how terrible that can be. And that’s something they didn’t ever talk to me about as a kid, which was really interesting.
Another real entry point for me was this level of compartmentalization you have to do when you’re in this work. Because growing up, it was completely lost on me what my parents did.
They were just my parents. They would just come home, make dinner, and get mad at me for not doing my homework. It dawned on me much later that an hour prior, they might have been plugging a bullet hole in a human heart, you know?
Since this show has come along, it’s created a conversation about that for the first time, which has been amazing.
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. The show’s mass appeal is unsurprising, but I didn’t anticipate it being like this much. It’s because The Pitt is such a conversation starter.
What has it been like for you to be part of something like this and to witness all those conversations take place?
I think it’s so awesome. I have a bunch of doctors, nurses, and emergency workers reaching out all the time, thanking me for our commitment to telling their story with them in mind and not using their story as fodder, by which we can just make a spectacle.
One time, somebody said how great it felt for them to know that their lives were interesting as they were. We didn’t have to add anything to make their lives and what they’re doing—their work every day—worthy. It’s worth note, worth respect, and worth time. And that was really special to hear.
Oh wow. That really is.
High-stress jobs and fields like the medical field statistically have issues like addiction, mental health issues, and things like that. What would you love viewers to take away from Langdon’s particular storyline with addiction and perhaps extending empathy?
That was another big aspect of this story that I was really excited to talk about in as realistic and humane way as possible. I think oftentimes, we can think of addicts as sort of subhuman creatures or inherently weak people, or inherently untouchable people. And they’re people over there.
But I know a lot of addicts, and fairly active in the addiction community. I think there are a lot of people suffering that you don’t realize, and they’re not bad people. They’re not inherently weak people.
They’re often people who got caught in a trap. Maybe they got a prescription from a licensed physician, and then it led to a habit that snowballed into something that sort of swept their lives away.
And that happens all across this country, all the time. And to be able to talk about that as something that affects not just some mythological other, but somebody that you know, it was really important to me and really special.
It was one of the season’s biggest surprises, but I loved how, in hindsight, we could connect all these little things. The buildup was great.
Yeah, yeah.
Langdon has three of the most interesting dynamics on this show. Starting, of course, with the most contentious is Santos. They feel like they’re two sides of the same coin in many ways. What do you think is the root of Langdon’s issue with Santos?
Langdon needs to believe in structure, hierarchy, seniority, and experience. I think there’s a worldview that is like, “Look, you’re here on your first day.
If you’re saying on your first day at this job, you know better than I do who has been doing this for four years, that means all of the things I’ve experienced over the last four years don’t mean anything, and I didn’t learn anything from them.” He looks up to Robbie and says, Robbie’s been doing this 20 years longer than I have. And I accept that experience and that expertise matters.
And it trumps my opinion. This is a big problem in the world right now, where there’s become such a distrust. You can look at Washington. You can look at so many places where there’s become this distrust for experience and experts. Langdon is somebody who believes experience matters.
I say that, but also, whenever he came in on day one, he was probably just like Santos. One of the things that he’s learned over the last four years is what he doesn’t know. He stepped into the state of conscious incompetence. You know what I mean?
Conscious incompetence and conscious competence. I know what I know and what I don’t know.
The fact that Santos comes in wary of him really sets off a bunch of self-defense alarms, which sort of clouds things.
They see each other very clearly and probably in ways others don’t. But then, of course, there’s Me. I love the two of them. They’re so cute. It feels very like a sibling-coded. He’s very soft with Mel in a way you don’t see anywhere else.
Why do you think Langdon is drawn to Mel so much and takes her under his wing?
That’s so funny that you say it’s sibling-coded because she does remind me so much of my sister in real life. My sister is back in North Carolina and works with the County schools. She works with autism and adaptive learning technologies.
And her wife runs an autism wing of a psychiatric hospital. My nephew is autistic. And so there’s something about somebody who is a primary caregiver for someone with autism; there is a real clarity of communication.
There is a real clarity of expectation that I see really clearly in Mel. And I’m like, “Yes, that is how this place will work.” And I also think she’s funny.
She doesn’t quite know her superpowers yet. I just want to support her.
Langdon is also on his own journey of learning what it means to be a doctor, a senior resident, a teacher, and a mentor. That’s a skill set that he’s learning.
I keep comparing the mass shooting event to the Avengers assembling. Langdon’s return was epic. What can you tease, if anything, about the remainder of the season? Will Langdon and Robby have a conversation? It seems like he’s trying to get his attention and approval again.
Just stay tuned. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Like you said, Langdon comes back in response to a need. There’s a situation where he was needed. He dives back in to tend to the fire in front of him, but there are a lot of questions left unanswered and some conversations to be had.
What’s been the most challenging aspect of playing this character?
The most challenging part—it’s very challenging, but it’s also incredibly rewarding—is the one-day aspect of it. Just tracking it. We shot this scene in August, and it’s now February.
But it’s still the same day. So if I was in a certain energetic space in August, and I need to get to a different energetic space in February, I’ve got to weave a way to get from point A to point B that makes sense in the span of one day. So that was that was difficult, but it was also really fun.
We’ve edited this interview for length and clarity.
The Pitt’s season finale is on Thursday, and you can stream the season on Max.
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