This article contains spoilers about the season-one finale of The Pitt.
The first season of The Pitt introduced dozens of characters who work at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital, but none have broken out quite like Taylor Dearden’s Dr. Melissa “Mel” King. The second-year resident is highly capable, emotionally attuned, and somewhat insecure as to whether she has the “special sauce” to become a great doctor. But in Thursday’s season finale, she makes some bold choices that prove she’s well on her way—specifically, fast-tracking a life-saving spinal tap operation for a child with measles, even though his anti-vaxx mother disapproves of the procedure.
Mel has also resonated as a nuanced portrait of a neurodivergent professional in large part thanks to Dearden, who herself is neurodivergent. The Pitt subtly pushes back on some clichés while allowing the actor—previously best known for her turns in American Vandal and Sweet/Vicious—to flesh Mel out over 15 episodes, each of which covers an hour in a nightmarish ER shift that culminates in a mass-casualty event. The endeavor was not always easy, given the way The Pitt was developed by creator R. Scott Gemmill, writer and star Noah Wyle, and the rest of its producing team. In conversation with Vanity Fair, Dearden looks back on the “anxious” making of season one and ahead to what she hopes to get out of season two—which is coming sooner than you think.
Vanity Fair: Are you in production on season two yet?
Taylor Dearden: No, we start bootcamp June 1. We know literally nothing, which is making me very, very anxious.
For season one, it was two weeks, and it was going over everything standard when a trauma comes in: “Here are the things that happen. We’ll just randomly assign you to scenes that will take place, like you’ll do the ultrasound.” So we knew what ultrasound meant, where we go, how you hold it, and all of it so that they could just do shorthand with us and not have to teach us every single time. They went over the first half of the injuries that were going to come in. But I really wish there was another bootcamp in the middle of the season to do the last injuries, because then we had to learn again. I heard season two bootcamp is only one week. We all were like, “Can we please have two weeks?”
In the finale, your character performs a spinal tap on a child who’s contracted measles. Did you feel prepared for that? How did you do it?
I stayed after shooting to learn how to do it in one day. I was like, “It sounds scary,” but all the doctors went, ’You do these all the time.” And I went, “Really? Because it sounds terrifying.” What a great rig they had there. Our makeup department is insane. It was a fake back that had IV packages inside, and so you’re puncturing the fake skin, and then you could literally feel the second puncture—which is great, because there are two puncture feelings with a spinal tap.
Mel is performing this quickly, against the clock, because the child’s mom is against the procedure.
It’s definitely the first time you see Mel be sneaky for a patient’s benefit. At the beginning of the shift, I don’t know if she would’ve been this sneaky. By the end, having seen what happens, I think she’s like, “Sometimes you’ve got to break the rules.” I thought it was really fun to show that.
The show has dealt with so many timely issues. How did you feel that Mel’s final arc surrounded a thorny conversation around measles and—
—anti-vaxxers?
Yeah.
It was great. I remember just reading that there have been many outbreaks. Kids die. They die. And it’s just such a strange—I can’t get into that mindset. I have no idea why they feel that way, especially when they talk about neurodivergence. Like, “All of a sudden, this shot gives you autism.” Really, you think that? Okay, I’m just going to walk away from this conversation. It’s all really bizarre, especially when it’s something like measles that is easily eradicated if you just have your shots.
Seeing especially how fast things move during the mass-casualty [event], Mel was the one that suggested, “What if we start donating our blood” Already knowing protocol—knowing that that’s so not allowed—and going, “Fuck it, we have to do it.” I like that evolution of Mel’s character, of becoming so much more of an advocate for the patient. It’s less about getting it done legally and with permission, and more about saving lives.
You’ve talked about pitching Noah on an idea for Mel early in the season, drawn from your own experiences with neurodivergence. Did you feel confident from the jump to advocate for your character like that?
Not really. They had all the scripts written, but we didn’t get to see them or know what happens. So we were like, “If I do this, will it make sense for the next few episodes?” On individual days, you could pitch something, and usually, if it made sense, they’d hear you out. And maybe you could do a few versions your way and then the other way.
With Noah, I was just like, “I don’t think it’s a good character choice to have a mumbly-fumbly, constant anxiety person. Then it’s just comic relief, as opposed to real character.” I was trying to think of ways to build confidence, and I pitched what is a very real ADHD thing, which is we are just amazing at emergencies. Something in our brain clicks. We can do things that we read about once freshman year. All of a sudden, we can pull it out.
This is an actual medical thing. We are overrepresented in emergency departments and firefighters, because there is some weird part of the ADHD brain that clicks into the perfect emergency person. My dad [Bryan Cranston] has ADHD, too, so if I’m ever sick or anything, I just call him.
Did they tell you why they didn’t want you to know what happens from episode to episode?
With Noah, he went, “That works.” I went, “It does?” He was like, “By this episode you should start getting more and more confident.” But I don’t know. I think there’s an idea from the writer-producer perspective of, “How cool would it be if they don’t know?” But every actor goes, “It would be great if we knew everything, actually!
With plays, we know absolutely everything about the playwright. We’ve researched every part of not only the actual play itself, the script, but everything about the history of the time. We can tell you exactly how everyone would stand during a period piece, and it still looks like we’re surprised at the end. I will always be better if the actors know more than less, if they know the whole script. It actually has a cohesive start, middle, finish. If you don’t know, then you can’t do much layering.
Do you have hopes that that will change in season two?
Oh, God, yes.
Do you expect it to change?
No. We have no clue. I see Noah and I’ll go, “How’s it going? Anything you can say?” He’s like, “Nope.” It’s like, “Are you kidding me?”
Going back to that example of pitching Noah, did you find there was some level of educating the writers or producers on neurodivergence, and how to depict it?
Because it was all written already, it was tough to get anything else. I do hope in season two that there’s more obvious stimming. It’s something that people will see—like repeating words, or liking patterns and textures and stuff. But they don’t know that there’s other stuff involved—something tactile. You’d be watching the lava lamp while having a worry stone or something that you could touch at the same time. Stuff like that, it’s what I know I do. It’s just really specific and accurate.
But they were really good about listening and trying to take in different things. It’s one thing writing after you’ve researched some, but a lot of stuff gets missed if you’re either not around someone constantly or don’t have that yourself.
Mel’s emotional connection to her patients felt particularly gratifying to me as a viewer—pushing back on stereotypes of neurodivergent people you often see on screen.
Yeah, I don’t know why the usual depiction is without any emotion or empathy. It’s like robots. It’s got to be just people watching and judging. The thing that is never shown, that is definitely most of the difficulty I have with my neurodivergence, is overwhelm. I won’t be able to have the right intonation on this sentence because I’m overwhelmed; we get angry or whatever because of being overwhelmed, usually.
Hopefully, I did a decent job of showing that it’s not robotic. That’s the totally wrong version of it. Things are happening in our heads so much faster and more intensely than everyone else that it’s hard to be able to focus on how it comes out of your mouth when you’ve got eight billion other things going. Our brains are working way faster.
Viewers have connected with Mel in a pretty profound way. How have you experienced that?
I’m not very good at social media. I actually genuinely forget I have a phone most times. Every time I do, I go, “Oh, I should check this,” and it’s a good overwhelm to see messages of other neurodivergent people reaching out. It’s great to see, and I just hope I can continue doing right by my community.
There’s a show on right now that definitely has a very judged neurodivergent character, and it’s just the same kind of robot, numb feeling. If they get in trouble, they just pretend like they don’t understand anything. It’s like, oh, my God, no. We’re usually panicked that we hurt someone. We don’t know how we can change it, we don’t know what it was that did that. Really, it’s just so annoying to see that.
Mel has been in the ER for 15 hours, and she seems as together as anybody there. At one point, Dr. Mohan asks her how she’s still standing. Where did you feel like Mel was by season’s end? How did you want to play her in the finale?
Mohan feels like she’s got this high. She could go all night. And then she has that crash—and I think Mel’s crash is much less of a crash. The time it took to drive from the hospital to the adult care facility to pick up her sister was enough time to go, “Oh, I could really sleep right now if I could.” But I think still there’s so much energy in her that it just clicks in.
It was nice to see Mel get her last moment in the season out of the ER, with her sister.
It was weird because everyone but me and Patrick [Ball, who plays Dr. Langdon] went to Pittsburgh to shoot, and we were just here. It was the first time we were out that wasn’t the ambulance bay at St. James, and it was really nice. It reminded me of what I have usually filmed, which is on location, pretty much. I like any time when you can see what Mel is like when the anxiety is lessened, when she’s actually much more comfortable. She is different—not so dramatically different that you can’t recognize her, but she’s more relaxed.
Because Mel’s had this long day and we had a long shoot, it really was easy to get into the mindset of, “I can’t worry as much, I just have to get this done.” It’s how I felt too—being so anxious for the first Lord knows how many episodes, and by the end being like, “I can barely talk or walk.” It accidentally worked really well.
What was the source of the anxiety for you at the beginning?
We don’t have a lot of rehearsal at all, and it’s stuff that we’ve never ever done before. It was going really, really fast. Trying to put together very specific choreography, and a bunch of Greek and Latin terms that don’t really mean anything to you at the same time as having maybe half a rehearsal, then starting filming—it’s beyond anxiety-invoking.
Mel and Langdon don’t get a final moment together in the finale, but their bond has been one of the sweetest parts of the show. What did you make of that—how they’re leaving each other for the day, given that Langdon’s fate at the hospital is so up in the air?
I definitely think Mel thinks that, next shift, she’ll see him—and the audience knows she won’t. Mel has no idea.
So what’s your hope for season two?
I would love to see some friendship, to have something more on the peer level, or someone who genuinely tries to understand Mel’s neurodivergence. With me, it’s so helpful to have either a partner or friends who know what your neurodivergence is so that, when I will inevitably put my foot in my mouth, they’ll be able to come in and go, “She means this.” To not have any ally like that at work with such an intense job would be really tough—to just constantly be misunderstood, without anyone trying to understand. I’d love to see someone get it and latch on.