We Need To Talk About How ‘The Pitt’ Treats Black And Brown Women

There are only two episodes left for this season of the HBO Max series The Pitt, and despite everything we’ve seen so far (Robby’s deteriorating mental health, one of the nurses being arrested and taken into custody by ICE, Emma being physically assaulted by a patient on her first day as a nurse, Langdon back at work after ten months away in rehab, Baby Jane Doe!), the biggest shocker for the show’s viewers has nothing to do with the upcoming season finale, but with the show’s cast.

Last Wednesday, it was announced that Supriya Ganesh, who plays Dr. Samira Mohan, would no longer be a cast member on the show after this season, and Ayesha Harris, who plays Dr. Parker Ellis, was being promoted to series regular.

From Variety, who broke the exclusive news:

According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, Ganesh’s exit is a story-driven decision. Given that Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is a teaching hospital, it is normal for residents to come in and out. Dr. Mohan has also spent part of Season 2 trying to determine what the next phase of her career will be once her residency ends.Harris appeared in four episodes out of 15 in Season 1 of “The Pitt” and returned for Season 2. In addition to her work in the hit HBO Max medical drama, she is known for her work in shows like “Daisy Jones and the Six” at Amazon Prime Video and “Glamorous” at Netflix. Her other credits include “This Is Us,” “The L Word: Generation Q,” “Abbott Elementary,” and “Good Girls.”

Harris expressed her joy about the casting news via her Instagram page, with the first comment to her post coming from a very supportive Ganesh (“They are so lucky to have you 💜”).

Fans were understandably upset about the news that Ganesh will no longer be on The Pitt, as her character Mohan quickly became one of their favorites. Thye’ve watched her ambition and desire to become a great doctor; her willingness to go the extra mile for her patients in caring for them, even though Dr. Robby frowns upon her approach and expresses that frustration through her nickname ‘Slow-Mo,’; her growing bond with Dr. Abbot, best highlighted in the “I’ll pay for it” scene from earlier this season; and her attempts to figure out what her next step will be in her medical career. Many of those same fans were also happy and excited to be getting more of Harris as the sharp-minded, no-nonsense Dr. Ellis, who won’t hesitate to tell her colleagues what they need to hear, whether it’s letting them know that their exhaustion is less important than how the patients are feeling, or breaking down all the necessary facts of a past case as a confidence booster right before they walk into a deposition that could affect their career.

It has become impossible for some of those same fans to not take notice of the fact that The Pitt and its producers have seemingly developed a questionable habit of firing their Black and brown female cast members, replacing them with other Black and brown female actors as if they’re interchangeable, and using “This show takes place at a teaching hospital, and it wouldn’t be realistic for the same doctors to always be present” as an excuse. And this is one aspect of The Pitt where fans would like the writers and producers to not strive so damn hard for realism, and just let these actresses stay on the show without feeling the need to constantly kick them out the door.

Last summer, it was announced that Tracy Ifeachor, who played Dr. Heather Collins in the show’s first season, would not be returning, and that it was a creative decision by the producers. Ifeachor played a substantial role on the series, in that she was a highly skilled senior resident who worked well with her colleagues, and who wouldn’t hesitate to call Robby out on his sh-t. Her final scene on the series was a heartfelt conversation with Robby (with whom she had a past relationship) in which she confessed that she aborted their child, before Robby kindly told her to go home early so she could recover from her miscarriage that occurred earlier in the season.

There were many rumors and theories as to why Ifeachor was fired from The Pitt. One theory was that Ifeachor was strongly opposed to her character having had an abortion, which her publicist stated was completely untrue. Another theory was that the producers discovered that she was a member of a conservative church in London called Jesus House that is strongly opposed to marriage equality and abortion, which Ifeachor’s publicist also denied. There was also a theory that she and Noah Wyle didn’t get along and had butted heads on set, hence why Wyle referred to Ifeachor as simply “the actress” and not by her name when asked about her exit. (For some fans with long memories, this particular theory reminded them of Wyle’s unpleasant behavior towards his castmates on the set of ER, specifically Kellie Martin and Goran Visnjic.) However, Ifeachor still appeared on stage with the cast and producers of The Pitt at the Emmys, where they won several awards, including Best Drama Series, and earlier this year at the Screen Actors Guild awards (I don’t give a sh-t that they’re now called the Actor Awards, I’m still not calling them that), where it won for Best Ensemble in a Drama Series, and Wyle won Best Male Actor in a Drama Series. There appeared to be no tension or hostility between Ifeachor or anyone else, at least not on camera or on stage, at both events.

For many of the show’s devoted fans, they have no interest in losing characters from underrepresented communities like Collins or Mohan. Not just because they bring unique perspectives to the show, such as how they approach their patients and their colleagues (examples of this include Collins speaking to McKay about her unconscious bias towards a plus-sized patient, and Mohan revealing that her father’s death was likely a result of medical racism), but also because any television show that boasts of having a diverse cast can easily lose the trust of its viewers if they realize that non-white cast members are considered to be disposable and replaceable. Firing one Black or brown woman from your show, and then replacing her with another Black or brown woman is definitely not the flex that The Pitt producers would like to think it is, because again, they’re not interchangeable, nor should they be treated as such, and it doesn’t eliminate the need to ask why they seem to always be first on the chopping block when it comes to who stays and who goes.

Now that Collins is gone, and Mohan is soon to be next, who should we start worrying about if and when this happens again? Garcia? Santos? Javadi? Do we ever need to worry the same way as to whether Abbot will be gone, or McKay, or Langdon, or Whitaker, mainly because Whitaker has been set up to be Robby’s protégé? (Yes, the same can be said about Mohan, which is why Robby is so hard on her, and why he holds her to such high standards, but now it seems that when it comes to who Robby takes under his wing, there can be only one.) And why should viewers continue to watch and grow attached to its characters if that’s the case?

There’s no denying that Supriya Ganesh is an immensely talented and gorgeous actress, and that she deserves to remain booked and busy in Hollywood once her time on The Pitt comes to an end. But Hollywood has proven time and time again that it isn’t entirely fond of recognizing or caring about talent and beauty presented to them in the form of anyone who isn’t white, as evidenced by what Simone Ashley has dealt with since her time as a series regular on Bridgerton ended after Season 2. Not only has Ganesh spoken out in support of Palestine (which we know Hollywood just loves and appreciates from actors in the industry), but she has also shared her concerns about Black and South Asian actors being pitted against each other by the media. (Hence why people expressed confusion and frustration about Ganesh’s exit and Harris’ promotion being announced simultaneously, as if to tell us “We’re firing one woman of color, but we have this Black woman here that we’re promoting, so you can’t get mad at us! We did it before, and we did it in reverse, when we hired Sepideh Moafi as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi after Tracy Ifeachor left, so we’re willing to do it again!”) There isn’t exactly an abundance of quality roles for actors like Ganesh and Ifeachor, so to watch them lose two roles of high quality on an acclaimed and popular television series is upsetting to see.

If the producers of The Pitt are so fond of pointing out that the show takes place at a teaching hospital, which is their reasoning for why characters will come and go from season to season, then why not just allow the students to become the teachers at this teaching hospital instead of kicking them to the curb? We’ve seen Whitaker taking Ogilvie and Joy under his wing, and teaching them what they need to know to become good doctors, so why not allow Mohan to do the same, or for Collins to do for them what she was able to do for McKay? (As we saw this season, McKay took Collins’ lessons to heart, as she made sure to check Ogilvie for his dickish attempts at fat-shaming a patient.)

There are two shows that producers of The Pitt may want to keep in mind when it comes to how they proceed with their treatment of Black women and women of color on their show. One of those shows is Lost, and as journalist Maureen “Mo” Ryan wrote in her book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse not only clashed with Black cast members and Black staff writers, but they seemed to have a greater preference in giving the best and most interesting storylines to the white main characters. The other show is Orange Is the New Black, and the moment that made a lot of Black viewers turn their backs on the series was the sudden death of Poussey (played by Samira Wiley), and the cruelty with how the character was killed off. Granted, none of the characters portrayed by Black women and women of color on The Pitt have been treated as harshly and violently (though some fans have practically been cursing out Robby in their sleep after his treatment of Mohan during her recent panic attack), but it hasn’t stopped viewers from feeling like Mohan and Collins, and the actresses who play them, have been treated with disrespect.

Some of the people reading this, and the rest of the online discourse about these casting changes, may not see what the big deal is, and their response is probably similar to what The Pitt producers have been saying: Cast changes at a show that takes place in a teaching hospital should be expected, and that we shouldn’t expect characters to appear in every season, and they might even go the extra mile in saying that there’s nothing racial about any of this. But viewers of The Pitt, especially those who are non-white, have every reason to express their concerns about how actors and characters who are Black and women of color are being treated on the show, and they don’t deserve to have those concerns belittled or minimized just because they’re not your concerns, and don’t mean anything to you. And exactly how many times does this need to happen before those viewers are allowed to say something about it, and say things about your favorite show that you don’t like to hear?

As I previously wrote, there are only two episodes left before this season of The Pitt comes to an end. Which will then be followed by all of us playing the waiting game until next January, when Season 3 is likely to premiere on HBO Max, and the cast once again goes on a press tour to promote and discuss the series. And I have all fingers crossed that at least one journalist gets the chance to speak with Wyle, creator/showrunner R. Scott Gemmill, or executive producer John Wells, and ask them point-blank why Black women and women of color are the first to be shown the exit before anyone else.