Highlights from the Sublime Primetime Drama Panel – The Pitt & Pluribus

Each year, The Writers Guild Foundation hosts their Sublime Primetime Event to chat with the Emmy-Nominated television writers for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.

In this two-parter, drama TV writers Valerie Chu, Kirsten Pierre-Geyfman, R. Scott Gemmill discuss their work on The Pitt on HBO Max and showrunner Vince Gilligan talk about Pluribus on Apple TV.

Valerie Chu – “12:00 P.M.” • The Pitt
Kirsten Pierre-Geyfman, R. Scott Gemmill – “1:00 P.M.” • The Pitt
Vince Gilligan – “We Is Us” • Pluribus

Vince Gilligan on the main aims of the pilot episode of Pluribus.

I love science fiction and post-apocalyptic shows. I wanted to take some of the tropes from them and try to subvert them and turn them on their ear. But to subvert a trope, you’ve gotta set it up to begin with. That first episode is a lot scarier. It’s a different kind of show than the rest of the episodes.

It’s before the setup happens and you think to yourself,  ‘I’ve kind of seen this before.’ But then, in that crazy scene at the end of the first episode, that is where the subversion starts.

Related: In Conversation with Writer Gordon Smith: Unraveling the Layers of “Pluribus”

Valerie Chu, Kirsten Pierre-Geyfman, and R. Scott Gemmill on doing “pulse checks” on The Pitt.

Scott: We tend to think of the season in three acts; it’s 15 episodes, so it’s easy math: 5 + 5 + 5. We roughly think of the first five episodes as the first act. By episodes six and seven, we’re in the middle and we build to the same crescendo for each character. Each character doesn’t necessarily peak in the middle or at the end.

It’s a little bit more about individual characters and where their stories peak and we track that. We have usually a pretty good idea when we start about where we’re gonna end. We work our way towards that. But we keep a loose hold on things so that we can adjust as we go if new opportunities present themselves.

Kirsten: In 1:00pm, Episode 7, the big storylines focused on Nurse Dana dealing with being a sexual assualt victim. It was definitely focused on Dana’s sexual assault in Season 1. She’s calcified a lot.

Valerie: The magic of the writers’ room is that you often don’t know when things are going to land. We didn’t know that a patient was going to die in this episode until we got closer, And we also didn’t know there was going to be a nurse focus. Scott had pitched a nurse-centric episode very early on in the season, but we didn’t know where. And then the two things kind of magically came together where it felt appropriate that the nurses who do a lot of the grunt work.

We really wanted to go into this very intimate gesture of what it’s like and the nurses that get attached to these unhoused folks and these frequent fliers.

Related: John Wells on Directing “The Pitt” – Especially The Season 2 Finale

Dr. Jack Abbot returning and the impact he has on the staff at The Pitt.

Valerie: When he just arrives. I feel like you learn so much about him as a person just understanding him in the field and why he’s a medic. Everybody in that ER asks, ‘Why are you doing this?’ He just seems to really enjoy it.

We crafted these backgrounds for our characters as well, and we give them to the actors. I think that really helps a lot because they run with it.

Kirsten: I think we leaned into that to make it exciting and it fits with his character as a combat vet. So it was a little shameless, but it’s kind of like when we had him take his shirt off. Sometimes you throw some beads to the crowd.

Establishing Carol and Helen’s relationship in Pluribus.

Vince: The first thing that Carol notices about things being out of sorts is the parallel planes flying in the sky. I think I wanted to start off slow and it was at the same time we’re establishing Carol’s relationship with Helen, her wife.

They don’t have a lot of time together in that first episode.  I want the audience to feel Carol’s loss when when Helen is no more in that episode.

It’s hard fought, whether you’re doing it by yourself or whether if you’re lucky, in a writer’s room. You’re plugging away, you just keep throwing stuff against the wall until something sticks.

We’re still building Carol and Helen’s world, and then Helen expires within two minutes of screen time after that. But when you see those planes… it’s probably stuff I learned on the X-Files 30 odd years ago.

Chris Carter always taught us, showmanship and starting small, give the audience those little moments and let them put two and two together.

Taking The Pitt to analog this season.

Scott: We have tons of medical experts to ensure accuracy. We always have a technical advisor on set and we have some real nurses at work. So the thought to go analog was partially because of one of the issues that does affect the healthcare system are these cyber attacks. So we thought that was something interesting to see what would happen with newer generation is forced to go back to old school.

It just came from there and we really leaned into the experts, what sort of chaos that creates, just to really mess things up for our doctors and give them one more obstacle to deal with.

Related: Simran Baidwan on Writing The Pitt’s Revolutionary Healthcare Drama

Creating moments of empathy for characters like Dr. Robbie and Carol in The Pitt.

Valerie: I think there was a lot of discussion about how Dr. Robbie, at least toward the back half of the season, about how a lot of his anger, frustration, and suicidal ideation was coming out.

I don’t recall there being a lot of that in episodes one through five, but certainly in episode six, that moment with the eulogy. It’s Dr. Robbie at his best. In season one, we fell in love with him doing these debriefs that were very meaningful.

I think it’s important to show those three sides of characters and remind people that human beings are three-dimensional. They might have these sides that snap at people and get a little feisty at times, but also have these very human sides to them. People really responded to that because it is Dr. Robbie’s compassion and empathy for patients and their families that people remember.

Louie, was the patient in that eulogy that Dr. Robbie gave because he knew the most about him.

Dr. Robbie’s our lead and we talk a lot about not only portraying him in a way where he’s this kind hero, but also pull back the curtain of the reality of what a lot of these doctors are going through. We can’t expect them to be perfect because they’ve been through so much and it’s been so traumatizing.

Kirsten: These are real humans. When you’re crafting a character, you’re modeling them after a human. I think those moments of empathy come so naturally because of that. Sometimes I feel like you’re writing yourself into a corner, but then you write into a door or a window, and you figure it out.

Vince: It kind of surprised us when we started hearing Carol in Pluribus. She’s kind of prickly and a curmudgeon. The trouble is I can’t see the forrest though the trees because Carol is so sweet, lovable and adorable. It surprised me when people said she was unlikeable.

More: Joe Sachs On The 15-Hour Relentless Medical Drama ‘The Pitt’

Discuss the memorable one liners that make each show.

Vince: I try not to get too hooked on it. It’s like a piping bag when you’re making the icing on a wedding cake. I love coming up with stuff like that – the fourth in the trilogy [referring to Carol’s book].

I love fun dialogue. The structure and the characters create plot. That to me is a less fun part. It’s more fun putting all the gargoyles in. And we always say in the writers’ room, ‘There’s too much salt on the french fries.’ We try not to overdo it and stuff like that.

Valerie: I feel like the gems come from Scott. Scott’s voice is so unique and there’s so much comedy.

But the joy of being in a writers’ room is that everybody has different strengths. I feel like all the best zingers in my episode were Scott lines, like, ‘Always listen to the nurses.’ I think that’s the wonderful thing about being part of a 12 person room and the brilliant brains that make magic happen.

by Staff Writer

From our in-house editorial team.