‘The Pitt’ Star On Being Destined To Play Dr. McKay

Fiona Dourif stars as Dr. Cassie McKay in HBO Max's Emmy-winning medical drama "The Pitt." Warrick Page/ HBO Max

It’s a sunny January afternoon in Burbank, California, and Fiona Dourif greets me with a warm smile and a noticeable pep in her step as we meet up on the Warner Bros. lot.

It’s wrap day for Season 2 of “The Pitt,” HBO Max’s pulsing hit hospital drama, and its usually bustling Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center set — modeled after a real Pittsburgh hospital — is surprisingly empty, so the actor pulls out all the stops to give me a full behind-the-scenes tour.

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Dourif stars on “The Pitt” as the empathetic Dr. Cassie McKay, the 40-something single mother and former addict, now a third-year resident still juggling a hectic work-life balance.

We’re barely a minute into our golf cart ride before Dourif slips effortlessly into tour guide mode, gesturing toward the soundstages we zip past as she steers through the lot like she practically grew up there. Every so often, she pauses our small talk to wave at a crew member or two, her face full of glee as she soaks in her last day on set — for now, at least. She’s slated to return once production begins on the already-renewed third season.

After a few extra detours, Dourif and her buddy, production designer Nina Ruscio, guide me to the ramped entrance of the pitt, where the show’s staple emergency room awaits. I’ll admit, crossing the threshold feels uncannily like stepping into an actual functioning hospital — from the accurately built waiting room to the pristine floors of triage to the fully-stocked trauma rooms in the emergency department, where Dourif jokes she’s “fake saved many lives.”

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“It’s a shame we can’t have people here when we’re shooting, ’cause it’s wild to watch,” Dourif said of the carefully orchestrated dance the cast and crew perform each time they clock in to the fictional ER.

At one point, she likened the collaborative energy behind “The Pitt” to that of an ant colony, the way everyone works together in sync to keep the whole operation running smoothly.

“It’s like a hundred people who are the best at their jobs,” Dourif remarked.

And she happens to be one of them.

After a whirlwind awards season for "The Pitt," Dourif knew expectations would be higher for Season 2: "I think there was a pressure that everybody felt of, 'Can we do it again?'" Lindsey Byrnes

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This time last year, Dourif’s breakout series — created by R. Scott Gemmill and led by “ER” alum Noah Wyle — was still flying under the radar as a modestly-watched procedural trying to find its place in an overcrowded streaming landscape.