Emotional Farewell: ‘The Pitt’ Cast Discusses the Profound Role of Nurses in Guiding Patients to the Afterlife

This week’s fresh installment of HBO Max’s The Pitt delivered a distinct experience. In Season 2, Episode 6, titled “12 PM,” the narrative shifts from the familiar faces of doctors like Robby (Noah Wyle), Langdon (Patrick Ball), Mel (Taylor Dearden), and Santos (Isa Briones) to spotlight the unsung heroes: the nurses who tirelessly and silently support the medical team.

The episode brings head charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) to the forefront, while also delving into the lives of nurses Donnie (Brandon Mendez Homer), Princess (Kristin Villaneuva), Perlah (Amielynn Abellera), Emma (Laëtitia Hollard), and others who form the essential backbone of the emergency department.

“The nurses serve as the connective tissue throughout the scenes, offering a more intimate look into the compassionate care they provide,” said Noah Wyle, star, executive producer, and this week’s director of The Pitt, in an interview with DECIDER. “From offering a warm blanket to changing a bedpan, holding a hand, or cleaning a body, this is the essential, personal, and dedicated work they do.”

“We’ve certainly mastered the art of empathy,” remarked Brandon Mendez Homer to DECIDER. “Our strength lies in our ability to empathize, and it influences everything we undertake.”

**Spoilers for The Pitt Season 2 Episode 6 “12 PM,” now available for streaming on HBO Max**

One of the heartbreaking reasons why The Pitt Season 2 Episode 6 needs so much empathy is because it marks the death of beloved patient Louie Cloverfield (Ernest Harden Jr.).

“Louie’s family. Louie is family and he’s my favorite patient,” Amielynn Abellera told DECIDER. “He’s minutes away from being discharged — minutes — and this happens.”

This week’s The Pitt picks up immediately where last week’s left off, with Langdon and Robby desperately trying to keep Louie alive. Perlah is the first nurse on the scene.

“I think at the start of Episode 6, in the two minutes of his demise, even while we’re working on him, I think all three of us know that it’s over,” Abellera said. “And we still keep going because he’s our family and it’s awful.”

Throughout the rest of the episode we see how news of Louie’s death ripples through the ED, affecting the many nurses who cared for him over the years.

“Completely blindsided for Donnie in that moment about the loss,” Mendez Homer said. “And as is the nature in the ED, you’re constantly in motion, constantly thinking about what’s the next thing and the next patient. But it is something that hits him hard.”

What makes a loss like Louie’s even harder for the nurses in the ED is the fact that it’s up to them to clean the bodies and prepare them for viewing and whatever’s next. While Perlah initially volunteers to clean Louie’s body, Dana steps in and uses the opportunity to teach new nurse Emma how to properly care for the dead.

“I mean, it’s a huge experience and responsibility for nurses to guide people to the afterlife,” Laëtitia Hollard told DECIDER. The young actress admitted that she had never even considered that nurses are responsible for caring for the dead, but that it was “really cool to learn about.”

“Then, shooting it, Ernest was there the whole time, which was really nice,” she said. “It was just really helpful to have a body there to touch, to imagine more viscerally. It’s a really sad scene.”

“And it was just really helpful to have Noah and Katherine, two actors that I really respect and love, be there, mentoring and grounding the process.”

The Pitt Season 2 Episode 6 ends with the “Pitt crew” convening in the viewing room for an emotional debrief to bid farewell to their friend. It’s a beautiful and tender scene, where Robby reveals that Louie was once happily married to the love of his life. However, she died, pregnant with their child, in a brutal car accident. Louie’s alcoholism was how he handled the pain.

All of the actors DECIDER spoke to about this week’s episode shared that there was a fascinating juxtaposition between how the cast felt off-camera — Harden Jr. had brought his daughter to set that day and everyone was sharing funny stories — and the “heartbreaking” experience of filming the scene.

“I think it really brings this family emergency room department energy, because we all are so close and living, breathing, reacting to this heartbreaking story,” Abellera said. “Everyone in that room — as a character and as a person — has a different level of knowing that story already and to sense someone else’s new discovery of that and to also to feel someone’s depth of despair of Louise story and his demise of why he behaves like that…”

“I do remember, it’s coming back now,” Mendez Homer said, “Noah in all his actor wisdom saying to the room, like, ‘Listen, you know, the crying choice is there, but you don’t have to go to it. You know what I mean? Like, there’s a whole bunch of choices and reactions there to be had.’”

“And then, you know, cameras start rolling, and just the nature of the scene, everybody starts weeping,” he said, laughing. “Everybody just felt it, you know? So something really took over.”

Hollard pointed out the significance of the characters passing the photo of Louie and his wife around before Donnie lays it on their dearly departed friend’s body.

“That was a really magical moment of just everyone looking at this photo and I think the importance of seeing someone who’s passed and realizing how much more there is to their life than what you even get to see in an ER,” Hollard said. “Then that special like button that Brandon had of like the connection of the hospital, his hand in the photo and to his body, it was just really magical.” 

“Yeah. It’s another bunch of arrivals, departures, and returns,” Mendez Homer said. “And that was like one of those returns that just sprang out of nowhere.”

According to Hollard’s Emma’s decision to hold Louie’s hand also came out of nowhere and wasn’t intended to pull focus.  

“I realize there’s no family coming for Louie. That we are the family,” Hollard said. “So I think Emma was trying to discreetly do it. And I hope it looks like I’m discreetly doing it, because she’s not like the loud and bold person.”

Besides the emotional journey the nurses go on this week on The Pitt, there’s also at least one moment where their specific sets of skills get to stand out. Much has been made of how the cast is put through intense medical “bootcamps” to familiarize everyone with emergency room procedures. Some of the actors playing doctors have even said they could confidently intubate someone for real. However, the actors playing the nurses also have game.

“I feel like in a lot of my scenes, I have to put in an IV and I’ve gotten really good at pretend looking like I’m doing IV,” Abellera said. “Knowing exactly the tourniquet and how to palpate for a vein and like making that Tegaderm, which is the thing over the needle.”

“I think also just like a body scan, being able to figure out does someone have a stroke,” Hollard said. “Like nurses have to be able to, while they’re walking to their patient, be able to see like a behavioral and just like a physical scan while they’re going towards them.”

Hollard was quick to joke that she’s worried she might be “too confident about this.” She smiled and said, “Maybe they should go to a real professional.”

“Sutures, I was probably really the master of the wound sutures for a very brief period of time, where I was super focused on getting blisters and doing it every single day,” Mendez Homer said, referring to a scene where the younger doctors actually want to see Donnie’s suture game.

“So, if we had a face off, I would have took on anybody for that moment,” he said. “But I think long term, retaining that information, I’ll put my bid on maybe Taylor or, of course, Robbie probably has it hands down.”

Mendez Homer then added, “But you know, definitely in terms of empathy, I think we are the go to.”

“No, we’re winning. We’re winning,” Hollard said.