Shawn Hatosy Says Emmy Nomination Won’t Change Him: “I Still See Myself as a Working-Class Actor”

In 2006, Shawn Hatosy guest starred on an episode of ER, directed by executive producer John Wells, as a patient with dissociative identity disorder. “You have to take big risks when you’re playing that type of character, to show the contrasting personalities, and John was very open to me trying things and letting me fail at times; he was patient and helped me get there,” Hatosy recalls. After they wrapped, he delivered a handwritten card to Wells’ office with a heartfelt message: “I really enjoyed this collaboration, and I really hope we get a chance to do it again.”

Since then, Wells and Hatosy have made 100-plus episodes of TV together. The writer-producer fought to include the then-little-known character actor as a lead in Southland and Animal Kingdom. Then last year, around the time that he enlisted Hatosy to direct and recur in Rescue: HI-Surf, Wells offered his longtime utility player the role of Dr. Jack Abbot, a combat medic turned emergency physician at a beleaguered Pittsburgh hospital, in The Pitt.

Although Hatosy admittedly struggled at first to see himself as a TV doctor, the creative team knew they wanted him to play an equal and foil to Noah Wyle’s Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch. “Noah is a deceptively extraordinary actor in the sense that he’s unbelievably powerful and yet reserved. It takes a lot to go head-to-head with Noah all the time, and we knew that Shawn could do it,” Wells tells THR. “He just has command presence; he can step into a room and take charge.”

Wyle and Hatosy had crossed paths numerous times over the years — they shared an agent and a publicist early in their careers and would often catch up at Wells’ holiday parties. “That history and affinity shows in the bromance we have onscreen, which is great,” says Wyle. “I think the world of him.”

When he joined The Pitt, Hatosy received a two-page backstory that showrunner R. Scott Gemmill created about the character, something the actor describes as “a treasure chest filled with hidden trauma.” From the outset, Hatosy knew that Abbot was an amputee — his prosthetic leg is only revealed in the final minutes of the finale — who would be clocking out from the night shift in the pilot and then voluntarily return for a mass casualty event later in the season. “I knew that he’s the sort of guy who is very measured, very confident and very calm in the face of chaos,” he remarks. Abbot’s to-go bag and tendency to listen to the police scanner while off-shift only helped Hatosy better understand his character’s addiction to the adrenaline rush of saving lives.

“Early on, [Abbot] leans over the edge and says [to Robby], ‘I don’t know why I keep coming back here.’ By the end of the day, when the roles are reversed, he says, ‘I know why I keep coming back — we’re the bees that protect the hive,’ ” Hatosy explains of the bookending rooftop scenes. “That line is pure Abbot. It’s not just something he says; it’s who he is. There’s a deep comfort in playing a character who understands his purpose, and that clarity really shaped how I approached him.”

After years of embodying morally complicated men, Hatosy admits that playing a character who is “across-the-board likable” is a nice change of pace. But he laughs sheepishly at the suggestion that Abbot has made him a heartthrob in his late 40s. “The part that’s most flattering is I see Abbot as an extension of me in many ways, both in his personality and just how he holds himself physically. I wasn’t too worried about what I looked like when I filmed it,” he says. “On other shows, I’ve spent a lot of time killing myself trying to get the body and figuring all that shit out. And with this one, I was just like, ‘No, just let him be … me!’ And the idea that it’s landing is wonderful.”

Although Wells insists that Hatosy’s future involvement with The Pitt will boil down to his own availability as an increasingly in-demand actor, Wyle flat out confirms in a separate conversation that Abbot will appear in season two, which takes place during another 15-hour shift during a Fourth of July weekend.

Wyle, Wells and Gemmill all tell THR that the second season will inevitably tackle the current social and political climate, including the “Big Beautiful Bill” and other cuts President Trump has made to Medicaid spending and veterans’ agencies.

Hatosy believes that Abbot would “of course” take those attacks on his own people personally. “He’s a guy who believes that if you serve your country, your country should have your back. Whatever your politics, cuts are the opposite of support,” he says. “But I think Abbot is decidedly not political. He’s not one for speeches or headlines. He’d just carry that quiet anger into every shift. If a vet needs care, he’ll get it for them. If the ER’s short on supplies, he’ll find them. And if the rules get in the way of saving someone, the rules are going to lose. He’s a fighter through and through.”

Hatosy has brought that same fighting spirit to his own 30-year acting career. After falling in love with musicals and community theater as a teen, his first professional credits (Homicide: Life on the Street, Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays) came from productions that shot in Baltimore, near where he grew up in Maryland. He has been able to support himself and his family ever since, with a steady number of roles across film (In & Out, The Faculty, John Q.) and TV (Dexter, Fear the Walking Dead, five Law & Order shows).

But, much to his own chagrin, Hatosy has yet to book a job on the strength of a self-tape, going literally 0-for-80 since the start of Animal Kingdom. The leanest years of his career, ironically, came after his six-season run on the show, which has been experiencing a kind of streaming resurgence because of The Pitt. “I feel like he’s now going to start getting his due retroactively from roles that he’s been really crushing for years but maybe audiences haven’t been able to see yet,” Wyle says.

Earning his first Emmy nomination may change Hatosy’s life, but he insists his approach to the work remains the same. “I’m still going to fight for the things that I want, and I still see myself as a working-class actor,” he says. “That’s what I am, and there’s a responsibility there. I take pride in it.”