‘The Pitt’: Sepideh Moafi Details What Was Cut From the Finale
The Pitt manages to pack a lot into the 15 episodes exploring 15 hours of a shift each season, but still, some things don’t make the final cut. Sepideh Moafi, who joined this season as new attending Al-Hashimi, set to fill in for Robby (Noah Wyle) during his sabbatical, shared one such moment with TV Insider as part of our Post-Op: The Pitt Aftershow for the finale.
In the finale, Robby told Al-Hashimi that her plan for double coverage to treat patients due to her seizure disorder wouldn’t work. When she left, she was still upset with Robby, and while she started driving, she stopped, realizing she couldn’t (after having two seizures during her shift). It was during that scene that something was cut, Moafi revealed.
When Al-Hashimi stopped driving, “she imagines her son in the passenger seat of the car, and that makes her lose it. And there was a portion of that scene that was actually omitted, which was her calling her ex and saying, ‘Hey, I’m having some car trouble. Is it OK if you watch our son overnight?’ And he says to her, he says, ‘Are you OK? Do you need me to come get you?'” Moafi said. “And that’s when she starts to crumble because more than anything else, she needs love and comfort and warmth and company really, but she doesn’t trust anyone in that moment. And so she needs to contain it and keep it for herself.”
View this post on Instagram
According to Moafi, she also hasn’t told her ex about her seizures. That’s something “I was also playing with,” she explained. “She was seizure-free for 11 years after the laser ablation and you would have to be seizure-free in order to be able to be qualified to work with an NGO like Doctors Without Borders. So she was seizure-free. She had her kid.”
But heading into that car scene was the last time we see Al-Hashimi onscreen in Season 2, after the tense conversations with Robby, “that triggers this eight-year-old girl who is full of rage and feels the injustice of her condition and her life, and she stomps her way to her car and says, ‘Yes, I can drive.’ Of course, this isn’t how it’s played, but in her mind, she’s like, ‘F**k him. F**k them all. I can do it,'” Moafi admitted.
Thinking about filming that scene made her emotional. After the technical aspects of her walking to the car and getting in, it only took two takes. “John [Wells] is a sniper as a director. He’s so efficient and he’s so good. He knows exactly what he wants,” Moafi told TV Insider. “And so he told me what the scene was. We did it for the first take and he said, ‘Do you want to just go again?’ And I felt like there was more. I did it, but I was tired and I was in this technical place. And then so we did it again and it was much fuller and he wanted to wrap it. And I said, ‘That’s it?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, do you want to go again? We can, but you don’t need to.’ So I said, ‘I trust you.'”
The Pitt, Season 3, TBA, HBO Max
Watchlist Easy access to only the shows you care about — all in one simple place
Alerts Only important notifications — when a show is returning, when it becomes available to stream, and more.
Special Offers Exclusive products we release related to your favorite shows and streaming services