Patrick Ball is opening up about the life-changing impact of The Pitt.

In an interview with Cultured magazine, the actor became emotional while reflecting on how landing his role on the series allowed him to pay off $80,000 in student loan debt.

“I paid off my student loans like three months into The Pitt, and that was a really profound moment ’cause I thought I was gonna die with it,” Ball said, pausing as he began to cry. “It’s a huge burden to carry, and a lot of people carry it.”

The actor said the financial strain had long weighed on him, even affecting his personal life.

“I was $80,000 in debt and I had been through a series of failed relationships where my financial insecurity was a real problem,” he explained. “I had just thought that was going to be my life forever, and that is a really heavy thing to live with.”

Paying off the debt marked a turning point for him. “Man, if this show works, great. If it doesn’t work, they can’t take that away from me,” he told Cultured. “I am out of debt. No take-backsies on that.”

On The Pitt, Ball plays Dr. Frank Langdon, a young doctor working in a Pittsburgh emergency room. The character initially charms his colleagues before it’s revealed he has been stealing drugs from the hospital to support an addiction. He returned in season two in January, following a stint in a treatment program.

Before booking the role, Ball, 36, said he was considering stepping away from acting altogether.

“About six months before The Pitt came in, I was living in New Haven with my ex,” he told Cultured. “We’d been together for three years and we were really struggling with coming up with a vision of the future. Working as an actor, you don’t know what’s coming, have no money — the financial outlook can be bleak.”

At the time, he explored other career paths, including potentially joining the FBI or the Merchant Marines, and even considered working at a fishing camp in Alaska. After his relationship ended, he returned to North Carolina and was offered a fundraising job at High Point University.

“I was like, ‘Well, this is a $100,000 a year job. I’m gonna have to wear a suit and go to fundraising dinners for a living, which I hate because there’s nothing more inauthentic to who I am, but it’s a job, it’s a life, and I cannot be too broke to marry again,’ ” he said.

Instead, Ball chose to pursue one more acting opportunity after being invited by Moisés Kaufman to perform in a play in Miami.

“‘I need to make this change. But I feel like I need to go do this one last play,’ ” he recalled telling the potential employer.

During that time, he met his partner, Elysia, who also went on to appear in an episode of The Pitt, and the two traveled together before he returned to New York, where he worked multiple jobs to get by.

“I was working at a coffee shop, I was working at a restaurant, I was working as a wardrobe assistant for And Just Like That… I was doing these corporate coaching seminars,” he said.

Those seminars came with an unusual twist. “They would bring me in as an actor so that these administrators could get practice firing someone,” Ball said. “So I have been fired more than anyone you’ve ever met, I promise you. I’ve been fired thousands of times.”

Shortly after, he got the call that changed everything.

“And then the call for The Pitt came in and everything was different,” he said.

Since then, Ball has earned a Critics’ Choice Television Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and won an Actor Award as part of the show’s ensemble cast.

He has also made his Broadway debut as Andrew in Becky Shaw, a production directed by Trip Cullman of Gina Gionfriddo’s 2009 Pulitzer finalist play.

The Pitt is now streaming on HBO Max.