THE PITT: R. Scott Gemmill on Season 1’s Unexpected Success and Early Season 2 Plans

As new episodes of THE PITT’s first season dropped weekly on Max, it achieved what feels increasingly rare in the modern television landscape: A true word-of-mouth hit, with new viewers posting about starting the show every week—encouraged by the enthusiastic reviews, fan raves (and fan-created memes and fancams), and general discussion about the Noah Wyle-led medical drama.

“It’s been really funny,” a beaming R. Scott Gemmill, who created the series, tells Give Me My Remote with a laugh. “I mean, I’ve been doing this my whole life; I think this is the fourth show I’ve done with [executive producer] John [Wells]. The most I ever hope for is that the show doesn’t suck and we don’t get crucified in the press. That’s all I ask. And I don’t even care about getting crucified if the show does suck. But you just want to try and do the best show you can. You always do. Whether it’s received well or not is always out of your hands.” 

“That’s the one thing about the television landscape: It really is pretty egalitarian, because it’s a crapshoot no matter who you are, how much money you’re spending—you can have a big success or you can have a huge flop; we see [it] constantly, on TV and in the theater,” he continues. “So this has been delightful. I really just didn’t want it to suck, and I didn’t want people to say, ‘Oh, we’ve seen all this before.’ So to see the word-of-mouth [buzz] is phenomenal because a lot of it has been…from professionals within the medical field, which is even more satisfying because then you know you’re doing right by them, which is really important to us. A lot of what you see is because of our real attempt to be authentic and honest to the craft and the people that apply it. So it’s really great.”

But the overwhelming enthusiasm as the show heads into its Thursday, April 10 season finale is “blowing us all away,” Gemmill acknowledges. “Nobody expected this. And I think anyone who says otherwise is full of it because we were all so delighted. And it just keeps going! We keep getting things, day after day, from people. And it’s like Christmas every day.”

It’s especially sweet considering the early doubts the team had. “We weren’t even sure the show was going to work, I’ll be honest, when we started,” Gemmill says. “And I wasn’t even convinced until I saw the first cut—and then I knew that it was working. Whether people responded to it was another thing, but at least you knew what we had was solid.” 

Through the first 14 episodes of the Pittsburgh-set series—which is told in real time, through the course of a shift in the emergency department—the Max series has introduced a gaggle of characters in memorable guest spots, including those assigned to different shifts in the hospital. And in an era when most networks/studios try to expand and series whenever possible, could there be some sort of spinoff or companion series in the cards for THE PITT, too?

“I had people mention it and people mention the night shift,” Gemmill acknowledges. “And look, if they want to do a day shift followed by a night shift, and do 30 episodes, sure, sign me up.” 

However, the showrunner cautions, “I would like a little bit of time before we do that,” he says with a laugh. “Just to prep for it. But anything’s possible. I know…world-building is a thing these days. But, for now, we’re just focused on [THE PITT]. The show is challenging as it is. Our guys got really great about it, in terms of my crew and how fast we move and how efficient we are.”

“But, yeah, I don’t know; I’m up for anything,” he continues with a laugh. “I’m just so delighted that we’ve had so much success and had so much fun and that it worked and people actually liked it. There’s nothing else to ask for. I’m just very blessed, very lucky.”

The writers are already hard at work on season 2, which was ordered in February. And after the emergency department survived, well, everything they endured in the first season, they’ll have their work cut out for them in the sophomore year: It’ll be set on the Fourth of July weekend.

“We’ll do a full shift again, because that, in part, is necessitated by what we’re asked for, which is 15 hours, 15 episodes,” Gemmill says. “So there has to be a full shift, and it has to be a full shift that gets a little extended or… I mean, people do come in early, for an hour and people stay, unfortunately…[because] there’s so much charting that has to be done…Some people choose to go home and some would rather get it done before they go home. So, there’s always ways to swing to get our 15 hours in.”

“There’ll be mostly the same shift [workers],” he continues. “Some people might be working nights, who might show up a little later [in the season], but, yeah, we’re going to start pretty much the same [time of day] as we did last year because it worked. And if something’s working, I don’t like to d— with it too much.”

And the change of calendar season will also allow the writers to tackle new kinds of storytelling, too.

“All kinds of things happen [in] summer,” Gemmill points out. “We did fall last year, so summer seemed like a good choice because [there are] certain things that are unique to summer, injuries and such. So it seemed like a good [plan]. One day we’ll do a winter [set-season]. But no one’s in a hurry to go to Pittsburgh in the winter time to shoot…in success, a few years down the line, maybe we’ll do a winter episode. But right now we’re sticking with summer and fall.”

THE PITT, Thursdays, Max

RELATED:

• On The Set of THE PITT Finale
• Max Renews THE PITT
• THE PITT’s R. Scott Gemmill on the Importance of the Medical Drama’s Abortion Storyline
• THE PITT Creative Team on the Show’s Unconventional Production Approach and the On-Screen Building Pressure in Season 1
• THE PITT: Max Sets January Premiere Date
• THE PITT: Max Releases Teaser for New Noah Wyle-Led Medical Drama
• THE PITT: Max Orders Noah Wyle-Led Medical Drama

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