A Beloved The Pitt Star Can’t Say If She Met Noah Wyle While Appearing On ER

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A Beloved The Pitt Star Can’t Say If She Met Noah Wyle While Appearing On ER

Noah Wyle as Dr. Robby and Katherine LaNasa as Nurse Dana on The Pitt

Warrick Page/Max

There’s a lot to love about the new hit Max medical drama “The Pitt.” The series was created by “ER” producer R. Scott Gemmill (no, it is not an “ER” spinoff) and follows one 15-hour shift at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s emergency room, led by senior attending Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) and charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa).

Each episode is one hour in the shift, making for an incredible sense of urgency that mimics the life-or-death nature of actually being in an emergency situation, and having some cast members with real-life experience helps keep it all authentic. In addition to casting medical professionals as some of the background actors, there are also some former “ER” stars, like Wyle and Shawn Hatosy, who plays night shift attending Dr. Jack Abbott. And, it turns out, everyone’s favorite charge nurse also had a short stint on the classic NBC series.

LaNasa appeared in the season 9 “ER” episode “Walk Like a Man,” playing a sexually adventurous mom who has some fun with Dr. Luka Kovač (Goran Visnjic) in a storage closet, meaning she spent a week on set of the drama. But does she remember meeting her future co-star Wyle, who played Dr. John Carter on the show for 11 seasons? According to an interview with TVLine, the answer is a big ol’ nope.

LaNasa remembers her ER stint fondly

NBC

While recalling her experience on “ER” with TVLine, LaNasa explained that she didn’t remember ever meeting Wyle, which makes some sense since her character wasn’t involved with his and there were tons of actors moving around on set on “ER” (much like “The Pitt”). She did remember meeting Maura Tierney, who played nurse Abby Lockhart on “ER,” because they had both starred in shows with actor Vicki Lewis, and revealed that she played poker with Don Cheadle, who played medical student Paul Nathan. (How fun would it be to see Nurse Dana playing poker with Don Cheadle in season 2 of “The Pitt”?)

LaNasa said that being given a shot on “ER” was a bit of a surprise because she was older than many of the other women who auditioned. She elaborated on how she tapped into a bit of experience to get the role:

“I remember when I auditioned for that part. I had watched ‘The English Patient’ the night before, and Kristin Scott Thomas [who played Katharine Clifton in the Oscar-winning film] had this very mature, very womanly sexuality, and the thing I always have loved about [‘ER’ and ‘The Pitt’ executive producer] John Wells is that he lets women be women. […] At that time, as young as I am in that, I was still a good seven or eight years older than everybody auditioning for that part. […] I was inspired by Kristin Scott Thomas to tap into that part of my sexuality required for that role, and I got it, and I remember thinking, like, ‘Yeah! The old girl got the part!'”

While we haven’t seen much of Nurse Dana’s sexuality on “The Pitt,” she is another complex woman brought to life with nuance and skill by La Nasa. Here’s hoping we’ll get to see more of her on the second season of the series and that Dana’s threats to quit were just threats, because she’s one of the best parts of this amazing series.