How Katherine LaNasa Finally Broke Out in ‘The Pitt’
From: Hollywood Reporter
When Katherine LaNasa walked onto the set of The Pitt to begin filming the medical drama’s second season, she immediately noticed that something was different. There was, as she describes it, a veneer of success permeating across the cast and crew. “Everybody was a little more tanned, a little more buff, they’re all redoing their bathrooms,” she recalls with a laugh.
The show, created by ER writer-producer R. Scott Gemmill alongside star Noah Wyle and producer John Wells, debuted one year ago and became a smash hit — it’s now among HBO Max’s top three most watched series of all time. In September, it won five Emmys, including one for LaNasa’s performance as crowd-favorite charge nurse Dana Evans, and this season it will compete at the Golden Globe and Spirit awards (after winning big at the Critics Choice). But LaNasa, 59, is happiest about the fact that she still has a job.
At the end of season one, Dana was experiencing an existential crisis; her decades-long dedication to the ER was buckling under the brutal realities of the modern health care system, compounded by a violent attack by a disgruntled patient. She was threatening to quit, and neither fans nor LaNasa herself knew what would happen next. “I was really hoping they wouldn’t fire me,” she says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘I’m in my 50s, I finally got on something that really took off — please don’t let go of me now.’ “
That kind of uncertainty might rattle a less seasoned actor, but it didn’t faze LaNasa. “This is my ninth series, so I’m pretty used to it,” she says. “I never really know where we’re going.” She’s been working steadily in Hollywood since 1990, with stints on network heavyweights (NYPD Blue, Judging Amy and Two and a Half Men) and intriguing, if underperforming, streaming projects (Apple TV’s Truth Be Told). She’s been married three times — first to Dennis Hopper, then to French Stewart and, most recently, to former Melrose Place star Grant Show. She has two children and splits her time between Atlanta and Los Angeles. In other words, while she was deeply invested in Dana’s fate, she also was realistic about how these things tend to go.
“I’ve had a lot of other jobs that looked like, at the time, they were going to be ‘the thing’: I had a starring role in a movie with Billy Bob Thornton and Robert Duvall, that didn’t do any business; I was in a Jay Roach movie with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis that didn’t catch fire for me; I was in an HBO show with Lily Tomlin that didn’t air,” she says. “It took me a really long time to get here.”
more here:https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/katherine-lanasa-interview-the-pitt-1236461223/