00:00The first time I knew that Langdon would connect with audiences.
00:03Maybe still waiting? I think the jury is still out.
00:06Hi, my name is Patrick Ball, and these are some of my Hollywood firsts.
00:16The first film or TV show that inspired me to be an actor.
00:20One of the first movies that I saw that made me think that I wanted to do this for a
00:24living
00:24was One Flipper, Cuckoo's Nest.
00:25I was incredibly moved by the story and incredibly moved by R.P. McMurphy and Jack Nicholson and
00:31Billy Bibbett, and then it turns out I get to work with Billy Bibbett's daughter, Fiona Dourif,
00:36so I guess that impression stuck somewhere.
00:40The first job I had for acting paid the bills.
00:44My first taxed job was working at a movie theater back in North Carolina.
00:49The lower tier movie theater, Brassfield Cinema 10, and I tore tickets and I sold popcorn.
00:57And it was kind of a smaller theater, which was actually really nice because not a lot of people
01:02came and it was kind of slow. So I worked there for three years, I think, and I would sneak
01:08into
01:08the back of every movie that came out. And so for three years, I watched literally everything that
01:13came out and I got to watch No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. I ironically snuck
01:19into
01:20the back of all the Twilight movies because they had the best soundtrack. At the end of the movie,
01:24I'd be sweeping up all the popcorn listening to the soundtrack of the Twilight movies, which I will
01:29never forget.
01:34My first time on a red carpet was, I guess, the Emmys last year because we were supposed to have
01:41a
01:42premiere, but season one, we had this crazy moment where we're supposed to be having our premiere and
01:48we're also filming the finale at the same time. And at this moment is when the LA fires happened. The
01:56premiere got canceled and we were driving to set to shoot the finale of season one. And they're like,
02:06people are having to leave their homes and crash on couches and we're driving into work and we're
02:12seeing the smoke on the horizon. And it was just like this unbelievably surreal time. So the actual
02:19first red carpet experience that I had was, I guess, the Emmys.
02:29The first time I got nominated for an Emmy was about a week ago.
02:35And it was perfect. It was perfect. I was on set. I mean, we're already working on season three right
02:42now. And Scott, our showrunner, paused production for a second and brought everybody out to the central
02:47hub and took up the mic and announced all 26 people on the pit that had been nominated for an
02:55Emmy. And
02:55we all got to celebrate as a team and sort of celebrate each other, which felt really right.
03:00It was amazing because I think, you know, getting nominated for an Emmy is one of those like
03:04kind of unfathomable sort of crowning sort of moments for a person that can feel not quite earned
03:11or can actually kind of maybe feel like a daydream in some way. But to be able to step through
03:16that
03:17daydream with my castmates and with the crew and with everybody going through it together felt really
03:24right for the moment and right for this show. Do I remember my first day on set for the pit?
03:31I guess
03:31our first day on the lot was medical boot camp. And I will never forget the first time stepping onto
03:38the
03:38Warren Brothers lot and walking from the parking structure up to medical boot camp and seeing all
03:44the sound stages and seeing the water tower and seeing all the little plaques on the side of the
03:49sound stage. That's like the charge of the light brigade. Casablanca was shot here and see all these
03:54like iconic historic movies that had been shot right here. And Streetcar Named Desire is shot on
03:59this stage that we're on. This being my first ever TV show and my first ever experience.
04:05It's my first time in LA. It just really felt like stepping through the wardrobe, the back of the
04:11wardrobe and entering into an entire new fantasy land.
04:20The first time I knew that the pit would be a hit kind of came in two waves. When it
04:26first came out,
04:27as we were dropping through those first five or six episodes, the healthcare community
04:34kind of started paying attention and kind of started, uh, uh, posting about it. And they would,
04:40they would come online and they'd be like, Hey, there's this new show. And you'd see these like
04:45real life doctors come on or, or these like, uh, healthcare influencers come on and talk about how,
04:50how authentic the medicine was. And that was, I was like, Oh, great, great. This is who we made this
04:56show
04:56before. There was another wave that came kind of after season one had finished where sort of the
05:04general population started paying attention. And all of a sudden I was doing Hamlet at the Mark
05:10Taper Forum in LA. And now all of a sudden I'm coming out after the show. I've got people showing
05:16up
05:16the stage door having flown in from Ohio and Germany and Argentina, having nothing to do with healthcare
05:23that, uh, just, you know, really loved the show and really loved the show from sort of all over.
05:30And that was sort of this moment of like, Oh wow, this thing extends beyond sort of like the silo
05:37of healthcare. And this is actually something that I think may go for a while. The first time
05:43I performed a complicated surgery on the pit, I do a lot of them. I think the first one was
05:52Manu in season one, she comes in, she's had her foot ran over by a train. She comes into the
05:58trauma
05:59room and it's like me and Javadi and we have to pull the foot and sort of reset the bone.
06:05It was
06:05really gnarly procedure and the prosthetic, it was all sort of practical, which was really amazing.
06:10The prosthetic team is so real and so detailed. It'll really put you in the world real quick.
06:17My first scene with Noah Wiley, I don't know what my first scene with Noah was. I think definitely a
06:24memorable early scene in season one. We had a guy come in and we needed to get a, he was
06:30crashing
06:30in one of the trauma rooms. We need to get a breathing tube down him. And for whatever reason,
06:35we couldn't. And so we do this really crazy reverse crike where we sort of cut a hole in the
06:43breathing
06:43tube and we feed a guide wire up the wrong way and then feed the, feed the, the breathing tube
06:51back
06:51down because for whatever reason we, we couldn't get in the front door. And that was, that was one of
06:58those moments where, okay, if we don't, if we don't get this procedure right in the next 20 seconds,
07:04this guy's going to die. And we wanted to capture the stakes of that. And Noah, he's very much a
07:11player coach and very much like, this is how we get the stakes. And so he was pushing it. He
07:16was
07:16pushing it and it got, it got intense and it got awesome. And it was, it was a, it was
07:21a live moment
07:22on set. It was very, very cool. I'm very grateful to have a mentor like him. And I think, you
07:27know,
07:27he's taught me as much as anything to trust the timing of your life.
07:33My first big splurge with my paycheck from the pit was paying off my student loans.
07:39That was a huge splurge. It was one of those things like, uh, I was about 80,000 down
07:47and you know, working as a working class theater actor who goes off and does a play for a couple
07:54months and then comes back and gets a job waiting tables. And, um, I didn't think I was, I was
08:01ever
08:01going to be able to pay that off. I think that was, that was, that was a huge, um,
08:07yoke to carry for a long time. I got to put that down because of the pit and I will
08:12never forget
08:13that moment. And I will never forget thinking like, man, if this show works great, if it doesn't work,
08:20they can't take that away from me. Good. Okay.
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