Given The Pitt takes place entirely in the hospital, playing out in real time across a shift, there’s not much time for the personal lives of the staff. But throughout its first season, we got bits and pieces about Robby (Noah Wyle) and Collins’ (Tracy Ifeachor) history, and Episode 11 revealed a part of it that even he didn’t know.
When the season began, Collins was pregnant, but in Episode 7, she had a miscarriage, which was portrayed viscerally onscreen. (Ifeachor reveals to us that she thanked the crew for their kindness and the care they took with her after filming the miscarriage and immediate aftermath.) She then returned to work, until after she had to deliver a baby in Episode 11. Following that, Robby found her sitting on the back of an ambulance outside, and what followed was one of the most powerful, most important character-driven scenes of the season.
After discussing her loss — not the first but probably the last, she admitted, given the cost of IVF — Collins revealed to Robby, without actually saying it directly, that she had been pregnant when they were together. She hadn’t been ready to be a mom then, hadn’t even been sure of the relationship, and never told him. She was afraid he’d hate her for being selfish, and he assured her she wasn’t, he forgave her, and she should forgive herself.
“This is one of my favorite moments in Collins’s journey in the show,” Tracy Ifeachor shares with TV Insider as part of our Scene Study, breaking down this scene and her character’s arc of the season. (She admits to getting “a little teary” watching it back.) “I just felt in that moment, Dr. Collins has been carrying such a weight, and that weight has affected every single moment of the entire season for her — it’s all set on one day — and then just to have that kind of lifted was really important. It’s almost like she’s finally letting everything go and letting it all be released.”
The scene itself is one about loss. “It was really interesting to explore loss and what that’s like when you lose your dream and you have your hopes pinned on something and it doesn’t work out,” says Ifeachor. Collins doesn’t seem ready to try again the last time we see her, which is also why we could understand her staying at work rather than going home to face that immediately following the miscarriage.
“Who wants to go home and face that?” Ifeachor agrees, detailing the IVF process (including the pain and cost). “Collins takes care of people all day. She wants to come home to something really wonderful and invest because when people come into the ER, you get invested in them and then they’re gone and you never hear what happened. It is just this train, this constant train that keeps coming. So how lovely would it be for Collins to be able to have this wonderful moment with this child that’s hers and she gets to put in the values and put in goodness, and then that child grows up and goes out into the world and you leave it behind? But it was not to be, unfortunately, in that moment.”
Watch the full Scene Study above with Tracy Ifeachor on Robby and Collins in this scene and in general, unscripted moments, Collins’ journey this season, and more.
The Pitt, Season 2, TBA, HBO Max