The internet can be a strange place.
Toxic fandom is real, and social media will run with the most unfounded rumor when fans love (or hate) the trajectory of a show’s central character. One of those rumors has been circling since Season 2 of “The Pitt,” the HBO Max medical drama that returned in January, with unsubstantiated claims that star and executive producer Noah Wyle had a behind-the-scenes feud with the newest cast member, Sepideh Moafi, who plays Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, the attending physician who arrives as Dr. Robby’s interim replacement ahead of his sabbatical. The fan-fiction theory held that Dr. Al-Hashimi’s arc was a form of retribution for the supposed off-screen rift.
Speaking with Variety on Zoom from her apartment in New York City, Moafi shuts it down without hesitation.
“Absolutely not,” she says. “I do not have that power. We’re really great colleagues. Noah and I have always had a great working relationship, which is why it actually felt safe to do the darker, dirtier work in episode 15, particularly because, between setups, we were shooting the shit and laughing. So that’s completely false that there’s a personal sort of beef or rivalry between us, at least not that I’m aware of. You can check with Noah, but I don’t know about this.”
Nonetheless, the point matters because Moafi is coming back for more emergency room chaos, confirming she will return for Season 3, which is currently being written and slated to begin filming later this summer. However, how much she’ll be featured or how large her arc will be is still up in the air.
“At the moment, I am. I’m not sure to what capacity,” she says, before laughing. “I’m positive, I think? Nothing is clear to me as to what’s happening with the story, how many episodes, all that, but I am coming back.”
That news lands at the front end of what’s shaping up to be Moafi’s breakout year. “The Pitt” has been one of the undisputed hits, coming off winning five Emmys for Season 1 including outstanding drama series, along with trophies for Wyle in lead actor, Katherine LaNasa in supporting actress, guest actor for Shawn Hatosy and casting. The sophomore outing is walking into the current TV awards season as the frontrunner, heavily agreed upon by pundits. A win would make it only the fifth drama to take the top Emmy for both of its inaugural seasons, following “Hill Street Blues,” “Picket Fences,” “The West Wing” and “Mad Men.” If nominated in the supporting actress category, Moafi would become the first Persian actress and the first Middle Eastern performer overall recognized in the category.
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Asked what that recognition would mean, one name comes to mind: Toni Morrison.
“As Toni Morrison says, this is not a grab bag candy game,” Moafi says. “It’s not about me, and I get this, and look at how great I am. For me, it’s so much about showing what the next generation, showing what with girls in Iran, showing girls in Afghanistan, showing girls in the U.S., like we are visible, we are here, we’re unstoppable, and we’re fucking good.”
She continues: “We want the visibility that we exist, that we’re here, that we are the DNA of, in this case, the United States. What it means to be American is to look like me, and to look like you, and it’s not a monolith.”
Moafi was born in West Germany in a refugee camp after her parents fled Iran following the Islamic Revolution, and immigrated to the United States as a young child. The Iranian American actress has long brought a quiet ferocity to her work, in series including David Simon’s “The Deuce.” Still, Dr. Al-Hashimi is the role that putting her in the awards conversation.
The character’s storyline cracks open in the back half of Season 2. It’s revealed that Dr. Al-Hashimi has lived with a chronic seizure disorder — focal impaired awareness seizures — since contracting viral meningitis at age 5. During high-pressure shifts, her seizures present subtly: she suddenly “zones out,” stops speaking or stares blankly, behaviors most colleagues had read as her being thoughtful or deep in concentration. In the Season 2 finale, she confides her medical history to Dr. Robby. She shows him her charts after he has begun piecing together what’s happening. Robby presses her to officially disclose her condition to the hospital. She reveals she already has a medical plan in place.
That arc, Moafi says, is the one she most wanted to fight for.
“People with disabilities, people with health conditions, are not disposable, and let’s just be clear about that,” she shares. “They are not fucking disposable, and the idea of you did this, and so now you’re gone is outrageous and cruel.”
Sepideh Moafi
Richard Knapp
Moafi has been the stoic, mesmerizing counterweight to Wyle’s reactive Dr. Robby all season, most notably in scenes where Robby appears to shame Dr. Mohan for having a panic attack. That stillness comes from somewhere. Moafi originally trained as an opera singer, and her mother cried when she told her she was switching from music to acting.
“She started crying, and she’s like, ‘No, but your voice,’” Moafi recalls. “But she also said, ‘You can’t take your shirt off.’”
She has always marched to the beat of her own drum. Moafi says she was bullied relentlessly in grade school, but that didn’t stop her from doing things people assumed she wasn’t capable of, like joining the junior high wrestling team.
“I went and I tried out for wrestling, and I remember the coach was like, ‘You know, volleyball’s in the other gym,’ and I said, ‘I know.’ And he’s like, ‘OK, OK,’” she says. “I made it co-ed because I was the only girl on the team.”
She has also become an unexpected internet favorite. One meme circulating on social media positions Dr. Al-Hashimi’s curly hair as the medical-drama answer to Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel Green on “Friends,” nodding to the ’90s sitcom hair phenomenon. Moafi is ecstatic about the comparison.
“Oh my God, I did not see that. I’m obsessed, and I’m so honored, because growing up watching ‘Friends,’ the Rachel Green hair was everything,” she says. “How many people throughout my career, when I wear my hair curly, have said, ‘Oh my God, you’ve inspired me to wear my hair curly.’ It’s crazy to me that we have any shame or hesitation, because we’ve been told that this is what beauty looks like.”
Up next, Moafi will star opposite “A Separation” actor Shahab Hosseini in a Farsi-language Iranian film “Wild Berries,” which was announced in May 2023. “I am such a Shahab Hosseini fan,” Moafi shares. “It’s an Iranian film with an Iranian filmmaker.”
The screenplay, written and directed by Soudabeh Moradian (“Polaris,” “Doomsday Machine”), is adapted from “Language of Wild Berries,” written by the playwright Naghmeh Samini (“Mainline,” “Three Women”).
But the political moment weighs on her. With war raging in Iran and an Emmy nomination potentially within reach, Moafi describes feeling something close to survivor’s guilt. She answers it with seven words of her mother’s wisdom.
“Don’t ask why, just say thank you.”
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