The Pitt fans have fallen in love with Katherine LaNasa following her heartbreaking performance as Nurse Dana Evans in the Emmy-nominated HBO drama.
As Dana, Katherine pulled off a remarkable performance, introducing a hardworking nurse of decades who underneath her tough exterior was struggling with the overwhelming mental toll of leading a team short-staffed post-COVID pandemic.
Her work garnered her an Emmy nomination, but there was a more personal challenge also fueling her performance: a 2023 breast cancer diagnosis that saw her undergo surgery and radiation.
Early years with Dennis Hopper
Born in 1966 in New Orleans, Katherine was a dancer as a teenager who toured professionally for the Salt Lake City Ballet West and the Armitage troupe. In Los Angeles 1987 she met Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper, and the pair married in 1990.
Katherine had pivoted to acting during this time, and she appeared in the 1992 film Backtrack with Dennis and Jodie Foster. The pair welcomed a son together, Henry Hopper, but divorced in 1992, and Katherine continued to work on her acting career, landing roles on shows including Seinfeld, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Touched by an Angel, and The Practice.
© Ron Galella Collection via GettyIn 2001 she underwent a mammogram that came back “inconclusive,” but after a biopsy she was given the all clear however told she had dense breasts.
Dense breasts contain a higher proportion of fibrous and glandular tissue compared to fatty tissue, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and studies have shown that dense breasts can lead to a higher risk of developing breast cancer.
© Getty Images‘Better than ever’
Katherine’s career began to stall around that same time, and she also battled alcoholism and stress, two factors that Katherine attributes to the cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 2023, during a period of time when she was “feeling better than ever”.
“I was coming off the third season premiere of the TV series Truth Be Told, and when the red carpet photos popped up online, I thought I looked happy and healthy. Due for my annual mammogram, I went in to see the doctor. After two mammograms and two biopsies, the results, this time, came back cancerous,” she told Women’s Health in an op-ed in early 2025.
© Getty ImagesKatherine underwent surgery and about three weeks of daily radiation but during this time she began to question her future, and whether acting was in it.
Prayers to God
Yet after praying to God, she was cast in Daredevil: Born Again, and then received the scripts for The Pitt, a new TV show from Noah Wyle and John Wells (ER and The West Wing).
© HBOWhen filming began in October 2024, Katherine quickly realized that her own experiences in hospital during treatment were leading her performance as Dana; in one scene, Dana slips into a ward and quietly adds a blanket around a patient’s feet, and this was based off her own experience of a nurse who wrapped her up during a scan.
She also used similar experiences from her time in hospitals with her family and ex-husband Dennis to “channel into Dana”.
A love letter to nurses
“My goal was for Dana to be a love letter and a thank you to all the people who treated me so kindly, so lovingly, and so thoughtfully when I had cancer,” she concluded.
Katherine will return to The Pitt for season two, currently filming.
The Pitt is available on HBO Max.
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