Screen rant did an article for katherine and fiona ahead of the screen awards!!
Article By: Screen Rant
Fiona Dourif (The Pitt)
From the moment she appears, Fiona Dourif’s Cassie McKay establishes herself as one of The Pitt’s most compelling characters. HBO’s smash-hit medical drama follows doctors through a single, hellish shift in an understaffed and overloaded Pittsburgh ER, unfolding in real time with each episode covering one hour — a 24-style conceit that lends brutal immediacy to an often oversaturated genre.
McKay initially presents as pleasant and capable, but a glimpse of an ankle monitor quickly reframes everything. As the season unfolds, it’s revealed that she’s a newly sober single mother fighting to regain custody of her son while navigating a fraught relationship with her ex and his new partner.
Dourif makes McKay instantly sympathetic, grounding her fierce sense of justice in lived-in trauma rather than saviorism. Her relentless advocacy — whether confronting a suspected trafficking case or clashing with a volatile young patient — feels earned, human, and deeply affecting. It’s a performance marked by empathy, realism, and emotional precision.
Before The Pitt, Dourif was best known for her work in the Child’s Play franchise, including Syfy’s Chucky (RIP), where she starred opposite her real-life father, Brad Dourif — who incidentally also makes a brief cameo as McKay’s father on The Pitt.
The Pitt thrives as a true ensemble, and Katherine LaNasa’s Dana Evans is a cornerstone of its success. A charge nurse who’s spent decades in the ER, Dana is the team’s emotional anchor and de facto old guard — a no-nonsense mama bear who keeps everything running, in turn both tender and tough.
LaNasa plays Dana with sharp intelligence, dry humor, and deep compassion. She’s the one coworkers confide in during moments of crisis (like Collins' secret pregnancy and mid-shift miscarriage), and she’s often the steady hand guiding younger doctors through chaos. Yet the performance is carefully restrained, revealing only fleeting glimpses of how much the job weighs on her.
That restraint shatters in Episode 9, when Dana becomes the victim of a violent, disgruntled patient. The shocking moment triggers a subtle but unmistakable shift, as LaNasa conveys the quiet realization that even the strongest caretakers have limits. It’s a formidable, deeply human performance.
LaNasa won an Emmy for The Pitt, following a career of memorable work on series like ER, Big Love, Longmire, and The Deuce. She also recently appeared in Daredevil: Born Again as Artemis Sledge.