HBO Max’s Emmy-winning medical drama The Pitt is all about saving lives onscreen—and redefining them offscreen. The TV series revived the star of Noah Wyle, who plays Dr. Robby on the show after an 11-season run as Dr. John Carter on E.R. in the 1990s and 2000s, and introduced talents like Patrick Ball, who plays Dr. Frank Langdon in The Pitt’s currently-airing second season.
Ball makes his major Hollywood debut playing a young doctor who works in the Pittsburgh emergency room. But the project has been more significant for the previously struggling actor than one could imagine. During a recent interview with Cultured magazine, Ball revealed how the series helped save him from $80,000 worth of student loan debt.
“I paid off my student loans like three months into The Pitt, and that was a really profound moment ’cause I thought I was gonna die with it,” Ball said, pausing as he began to cry during the interview. “It’s a huge burden to carry, and a lot of people carry it.”
The actor said the financial hardships had also taken a toll on his personal life. “I was $80,000 in debt and I had been through a series of failed relationships where my financial insecurity was a real problem,” said Ball. “I had just thought that was going to be my life forever, and that is a really heavy thing to live with.”
Paying off the debt has lifted a long-held burden from his shoulders. “Man, if this show works, great. If it doesn’t work, they can’t take that away from me,” Ball told Cultured. “I am out of debt. No take-backsies on that.”
It was a relief that allowed him to enjoy with a clear mind the many other joys derived from the series, such as a Critics’ Choice Television Award nomination for best supporting actor in a drama series and winning a SAG Award as a member of the series’ ensemble cast.
Elsewhere in the Cultured piece, Ball shared that because of his financial situation, he considered quitting acting and joining the FBI, becoming a Merchant Marine, or working in a fishing camp in Alaska and “dropping off the grid entirely.” As Ball put it: “Working as an actor, you don’t know what’s coming, have no money—the financial outlook can be bleak. I was looking for an off-ramp.”
Fortunately, Ball persevered, and after starring in a play in his home state of North Carolina, Ball moved to New York City with a new partner, where he worked four jobs. “I was working at a coffee shop, I was working at a restaurant, I was working as a wardrobe assistant for And Just Like That, I was doing these corporate coaching seminars,” Ball continued. “I don’t think I’ve told anybody this story, but I was doing these seminars where they’d bring me into Blackrock and Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, and they would want to teach these young administrators how to have difficult conversations, à la how to fire somebody. They would bring me in as an actor so that these administrators could get practice firing someone. So I have been fired more than anyone you’ve ever met, I promise you. I’ve been fired thousands of times. And then the call for The Pitt came in and everything was different.”
Originally published by Vanity Fair Italy.
