Patrick Ball‘s character Frank Langdon returned on The Pitt — but what does that mean ahead of the season finale?
“I think this is the moment to save lives,” Ball exclusively told Us Weekly about his character’s surprise appearance. “I think when [s—-] hits the fan, he is needed. There are lives that need to be saved and that’s what he’s going to do.”
During the Thursday, March 20, episode of the hit HBO series, Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) noticed Langdon (Ball) helping out in the emergency room after a mass shooting. Ball acknowledged that Robby and Langdon still have issues they needed to address when they weren’t focused on keeping every patient alive.
“There’s a lot — and this is more broadly the case — going on with him personally,” he noted. “There’s a lot of questions about whether he’s going to have a job, whether he’s going to have a career, whether he’s going to have to go home to his wife and kids and tell him that he was fired and that he’s a drug addict.”
Ball continued: “There’s a lot of questions out there that probably would paralyze most other people but this person is an ER doctor and knows how to save lives. That’s what is needed so that’s what he’s going to do. And we’ll figure the rest of it out later.”
Langdon originally was dismissed by Robby after the senior attending was tipped off about his senior resident stealing opioids from patients to treat his own drug addiction. Ball praised The Pitt for introducing the arc for his character.
“All credit goes to our creator, R. Scott Gemmill, and the writers because it’s never who you think when it comes to addiction,” Ball shared earlier this month. “Addiction is a disease and it’s a disease that a lot of people fight with — including a lot of people I know.”
Ball pointed out the intention behind making Langdon the one secretly struggling, adding, “People don’t come out and tell you that they’re an addict. The person might not be the one hunched over in a chair. It might be the quarterback of the football team. You don’t know what the person across from you is going through.”
While weighing in on the onscreen development, Ball explained how his personal connection influenced his portrayal.
“I’ve got someone in my life who is the star of the family, ran the family farm and then blew out his knee working one day. He goes to a doctor, gets put on pain meds and then it’s just a slippery slope and it just really takes control of your life,” he detailed. “There’s also an element that this sort of self-medicating is something that is not uncommon amongst emergency workers. Every day they deal with a lot of trauma and a lot of unprocessed feelings of their own. It’s not uncommon for people to self-medicate when put in that situation.”
Ball continued: “So being able to raise awareness to that in a way that isn’t like, ‘Oh, this is a junkie doctor.’ It’s like, ‘No, this is your doctor and this is your neighbor and this is your sister that may be going through this.’ It’s been really cool [to represent that].”
New episodes of The Pitt premiere on Max every Thursday.
