The Pitt season one was ripe with famous faces taking on guest roles, including Fiona Dourif's father Brad Dourif, who played her character Dr Cassie McKay's father. So it won't surprise eagle-eyed fans to note there are, by my count, at least two familiar faces in the first nine episodes of The Pitt season two – the real-life partners of Shawn Hatosy and Patrick Ball.
Kelly Albanese, Shawn's wife of 15 years, makes a brief appearance in episode one as the wife of a patient, while Elysia Roorbach, whom Patrick met in 2023, has a multi-episode arc as a patient who is suffering an unfortunate eye incident.
"It was a dream," Patrick told HELLO! of getting to work alongside his girlfriend; his character, Dr Frank Langdon, is called on to treat Elysia's character.
However he insisted that he had "nothing to do" with her getting the role, and that she "auditioned the old-fashioned way and got the job and it was a real dream come true".
Patrick and Elysia met in 2023 when they were both working in Miami with Moises Kaufman on the stage adaptation of Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard. "Elysia played the femme fatale that gets sucked into the Venezuelan underworld of crime and I played her loser boyfriend back home – and I still get to be the loser boyfriend!" quipped Patrick.
"Then we get to turn around and play pretend together again: I get to be her doctor, and [her character] wanted nothing to do with me, and that also felt right."
Shawn, who plays Dr Jack Abbot, added: "My wife Kelly auditioned, and happened toget the part; she has her stage name which is different than my last name.
"I didn’t get to work with her, though because Abbot for some reason doesn’t appear in the first couple of episodes!"
Season two of The Pitt premiered on January 8, 2026 on HBO Max and will once again drop viewers into one 15-hour shift at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. It is set 10 months after the events of season one's mass casualty incident that saw 112 victims brought to the ER over a span of just three hours.
But as the new shift unfolds, the impact of that mass shooting continues to reverberate throughout the departments, impacting and affecting changing dynamics between characters including the loss of trust between Dr Langdon and his mentor Dr Michael 'Robby' Robinavitch, and the growing pains for Dr Trinity Santos and her new roommate Dr Dennis Whittaker as they learn to get used to one another.
The success of the first season of The Pitt placed a lot of pressure on the writers for season two. HELLO! has seen the first nine episodes, and season two takes a second to warm back up, but by the second or third episode, the show settles back into itself, with even gorier procedures, laugh-out-loud moments, and surprisingly tender friendships being formed between the staff.
"What I think is better about season two is that it has gore that I wasn't expecting. I think it's gorier, and it's funnier. It's an even sharper, higher roller coaster," star Fiona Dourif told HELLO!
"We were all scared that we weren't going to be able to match season one which was such a runaway success! But then I saw the second episode of season two, and I was like, 'Oh, it's funny!'" I know we want to keep the PR happy but I think we can make the title a bit more exciting as it gives it all away - opens up about working with real life partners / reveals what it was like