Emmys-winning medical drama The Pitt has finally arrived in the UK, introducing audiences to Noah Wyle’s Dr Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch and his overworked, underpaid, and resource-strapped Pittsburgh emergency department.
The Pitt has been praised for its realistic take on the healthcare crisis in America with season one tackling the opioid epidemic, unfounded fears around vaccines, and gun violence, and it stars British actress Tracy Ifeachor as Dr Heather Collins, a final-year resident who has a history with Dr Robby, and whom we discover in the opening episode, is pregnant.
Tracy auditioned and won the role in 2024; it was a big year for the 41-year-old, as the same year she tied the knot with Adeyemi Eruola, a production manager and broadcast engineer based in London. The pair have remained private, but she tells HELLO! that marriage “is the best”.
“Wait for the right person – it is so worth it, even if you’re asked to wait till you’re 50,” she says. “He is the most amazing husband. He would stay up all night sometimes so I wouldn’t come home to him asleep [during production], or he would fly across the world.”
The pair met during a women’s conference at their London church, where they had mutual friends but had never met. “I really wanted someone who is kind and loves people, and has really kind views of the world and other people, and that’s him,” she says.
“We had mutual friends but I didn’t know him, and then we ran into each other at the women’s conference. Isn’t it crazy how God works that way?”
© Getty ImagesTracy and Adeyemi married shortly after meeting, with Tracy joking that he “basically proposed to me on our first date”.
The 15-episode season of The Pitt starts at the beginning of attending physician Dr. Robby’s shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s emergency room – the same day as four new trainee doctors join the team, and on the fourth anniversary of his mentor’s death, which happened during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Each episode plays out across one hour, and over the next 15 hours, Dr Robby must guide his staff, including Charge Nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), and Dr Collins, as he struggles with his own PTSD.
Collins is a doctor known for her competence and resilience under pressure, although on the day the viewers meet her, she has her own medical concerns which she navigates with quiet strength.
“Dr Collins was a character that we hadn’t seen before on screen which is what really drew me to the project,” Tracy says. “Working on The Pitt has given me such a healthy respect for all the people in the health service; those who put their lives and their mental health at risk every day.
“Someone came up to me and said, ‘I recognize myself in your character as Dr Collins,’ and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, all the things that we as a cast put into that foundational series, it’s so worth it.'”
Tracy’s experience on the show allowed her to learn “so many things” about herself, and how, as a woman, it was important to “not to be too hard on myself”.
“As women, we carry so much. We’re always nurturing, and caring,” says Tracy. “We don’t spend enough time looking after ourselves and saying, ‘We are enough, we are OK, we matter.'”
Noah had written a mission statement for all actors who auditioned, which read, in part: “This is a very specific type of show. It’s intense. It’s fast-paced. It’s like theater. We are a group of players. If you can be a team player who is ready to lock in with a family, then this is the place for you.”
The cast spent two weeks in boot camp, learning medical techniques, language, and the correct ways to navigate a hospital from three ER doctors, before they went into production.
Working with Noah, whom she calls a “legacy actor” was, she says, a “masterclass”.
“Noah is dedicated to what he does, and he wears so many different hats; sometimes he’s the writer, and he has a vision of how it should be, and then he’ll talk with the director, and then he’s also the executive producer,” she tells HELLO! “It’s a master class on how to do all of those things.”
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