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KATHERINE LANASA: A lot of tears!
So it was a very quick turnaround.
Image by Jefferson Chacon
But I’m from Louisiana, and people get our accent wrong all the time.
It’s like, Any old southern accent will do!
So,I wanted to honor the people of Pittsburghby at leasttryingto do their accent.
Image via Warner Bros. Television
I’m very detail-oriented.
I really thought, What am I doing?
Most actors would just let this be, just do the regular accent, and just leave it be.
But I really felt like I should do it.
I’m like, No.
And she was like, So just keep going.
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But it was very hard.
East Coast accents don’t come that easily to me.
ButI did learn a Polish accent forImposters, and so it helped me conquer my fearsin terms of accents.
you might kind of break it down into sounds, and almost break each word down.
But there’s a lot of musculature.
It’s almost like muscle memory in your mouth.
That really takes time.
What I did was I started to watch shows with good Pennsylvania accents.
She’s from Pennsylvania.
I really give her all the credit.
She didn’t walk in the woods with a mask on so no one could see her mouth move.
[Laughs] I just looked like I was talking to myself all the time.
I took a lot of hikes, and I would just say the lines over and over again.
I thought, I’ve got two more weeks.
I’ll be fine.
So I just kind of was quiet.
But honestly, I take that as probably the biggest compliment I’ve gotten.
You’re not having to do this big backstory infodump right at the top of the first episode.
LANASA: French Stewart and I used to call it Little Timmy.
LANASA: It’s funny.
Then the next day, they took some more people.
They never took me!
I’m like, When am I gonna learn?
We already started, guys!
I had thought that she had a father who had died when she was young.
They had her have a mother who died.
Somewhere, I like to think that the actress subconscious and the writers subconscious hooked up.
She had three daughters.
I think that might have even come out of our conversation.
Her husband’s an electrician, and she’s been with him a long time.
She had a period of wildness.
One is from the patron saint of nurses, and it says, Live holy, the present moment.
It says, to get to heal the future, we must heal the present moment.
We incorporated those into her.
We made up these tattoos.
They made them for me.
That was all kind of part of it.
I have an aunt, and her son wrote me.
He used to be in the Special Forces, but he’s actually an E.R.
I had an aunt who was the youngest of eight.
There were things that I could relate from my own family that felt right for Dana’s family.
I’m from a big Catholic family from New Orleans.
This is a big Catholic family from Pittsburgh.
I’m Italian, they have a lot of Italians.
They just have a vibe.
They both have a strong accent, and a lot of city pride.
It’s not over dramatic, it’s a sad reality.
When were you told about how this storyline would play out?
LANASA: It really came through the makeup department.
But honestly, I trust them so much.
I trust Scott Gemmill so much.
He’s such a master writer.
You even remarked on something it’s just little breadcrumbs.
He isn’t doing this big Little Timmy dump, this big exposition dump about your past.
This has got a great structure to it, and I kind of like to just trust.
I’m not counting my lines.
I’m not counting how many scenes I’m in.
In general, I’m working with really good people.
So, I was actually really excited about whatever it was going to be.
She says, But that guy today, that was different.
That guy wasnt high or drunk or suffering a mental health crisis.
He was just angry.
And that’s that kind of, What am I doing?
When am I going to save myself?
We’re just fodder.
We’re just out there.
Thats the longer part of that line.
It’s this feeling of, I dont know… despair.
I think there was a difference, and it had been delineated in the writing.
Its illuminating the pressure that the E.R.
department is under because that’s what’s going on in the whole show, right?
They don’t get any relief.
They can’t send people upstairs.
There are 15 episodes this season, and you don’t know why, at the time.
How is it going to be extended?
LANASA: I felt thatthat punch just set off an existential crisis for her.
I feel like he took her dignity, and he took her place from her.
How do you do that?
There’s a picture of [Dana’s] granddaughter on her desk.
It’s my actual daughter, but she should be my granddaughter.
He just put that in there.
It wasn’t in the script, me looking at them.
So, that’s what’s weighing on her through a lot of it.
How do I represent how to take care of yourself?
How can I come back here?
Right when shes having that moment is when the E.R.
gets word that something’s happened at Pitt Fest, and it has to be all hands on deck.
It does feel like Dana’s able to really shift into crisis mode.
Even in the midst of everything else going on, she puts the vest on.
That’s an emotional, spiritual decision that doesn’t need to be made in the next 90 minutes.
I think she can definitely stay there and venture to save these people.
There are two doctors out, as far as she knows, before Langdon shows back up.
This storyline starts in Episode 12 and then carries over through 13 and 14.
I know that you have a dance background.
Were you trying to rehearse any of those sequences ahead of time, or was there room for improvisation?
They’re just not used to the flow, and they’re not used to us.
It was a lot.
It was a lot on everybody to keep that running smoothly.
They don’t need us to be really neat.
They don’t want the product to look super neat.
They want it to feel real.
They want to feel like you’re inside it.
Thats what John said to us from the beginning.
We get that choreography usually at least a scene before.
It’s emotional, with the two of you standing there looking at the wall of photographs.
He even says, as she walks out, See you Monday.
Where do we leave off with her in this finale?
LANASA: To be honest with you,I don’t think Dana knows.
Like the character, I’m distracted.
Dana hasn’t wanted to go home.
She has to face telling her daughters.
Dana has gotten her whole sense of herself from working at the hospital.
I think working at the hospital saved her after her mother died.
There’s so much to unpack in going home.
That was my truth when I was playing that.
I think it broke Dana.
It’s time to go.
So, I think she’s terrified of leaving.
All episodes ofThe Pittare available to stream on Max.
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