Nina Ruscio, production designer on the Max drama The Pitt, meticulously designed a set that would accurately depict an emergency room. “We never wanted to set up a dynamic where there was something you couldn’t look at or there was something that was inaccurate, because if any of that took you out of the immersive experience of the show, it would’ve been on us,” she tells THR. “We were very careful.”
THE GROUNDWORK
Ruscio was asked to conceptualize the production design for The Pitt while she was staffed on another project. During her holiday break, she designed this blueprint before a single script was written. The screenwriters then used it to concoct storylines. “From day one, they would assign patients and people to every single space on my layout,” says Ruscio, who came fully on board four months later. Because The Pitt unfolds in one place for 15 episodes, she designed a set that would never have a dead end. “The curve of the hallway was my solution to making it feel like it had continuous movement,” Ruscio says. “You could [always] cycle back to where you came from.”
Courtesy of HBO
REAL-DEAL GEAR
Ninety percent of the medical equipment used on the show was purchased, not rented. This trauma tower — a heavy-duty suspended arm that holds all the equipment needed for critically ill patients, without taking up precious ER real estate — is one example of real, working medical equipment Ruscio and her team sourced to make the set authentic. Set decorator Matt Callahan found two that were imported from Canada, and the 2,000-pound pieces had to be rigged to the top of the stage to accommodate their 6,000 pounds of torque. Around the trauma tower, a blanched color scheme is used throughout. “It’s a bleached palette, because, really, most all of your hospital experiences are sterile like that,” says Ruscio.
Courtesy of HBO
CEILING AS CANVAS
Ruscio peppered some design elements specific to the architectural heritage of Pittsburgh buildings into the set, like the marble columns in this photo, to really ground it to a place. She also played with the design of the ceiling. “The ceiling has this dynamic geometry to it that keeps your eye buzzing,” she explains. “It’s not all linear, and that was intentional.” Ruscio didn’t put lighting on the floor and instead integrated lighting only into the ceiling to add to the “sterile” feeling of an actual ER.
Courtesy of HBO
A “LONG CHECKLIST”
Before production began, Ruscio told her team, “We’re going to choose the floor, we’re going to choose the palette, and we’re going to choose the ceiling. Those things are going to be our forever choices.” Everything from the pods to the nurses’ hub was custom-designed and built. Ruscio visited multiple hospitals and did hospital industrial design research to learn what goes into crafting such a space. “I had a very, very long checklist of essential needs,” she says.
THE SUPER GRID
The emergency room was built fire lane to fire lane on a 24,000-square-foot set in 10 weeks. The wooden sub-grid, dubbed “the Super Grid,” at the top is a structure to hold up the ceiling of the set. Ruscio built ceilings to add to the feeling of claustrophobia one would experience inside of a real ER. The space was also designed to ensure fluid motion so that the use of handheld cameras would make the show feel more like a documentary, rather than a narrative series, says Ruscio. The sets for the waiting room and the staircase leading to the administrative offices were built on a separate stage.
Courtesy of HBO
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
