\n
Clearly<\/span><\/em>, \u201cThe Pitt\u201d was a certified smash across the board. But there was really no denying it once even medical professionals began approaching Dourif about her lauded series in real life.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really cool when they thank me,\u201d she said, although \u201cit always feels like that\u2019s a misguided thank you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Portraying a doctor on a fictionalized TV show, even one that captures the intense realities of emergency medicine, isn\u2019t nearly the same as doing the lifesaving work real health care workers do every day. Dourif and her castmates train alongside actual doctors and nurses on set, even enduring a two-week medical boot camp before each season. Still, the actor hardly takes credit for the heroism of those she\u2019s portraying.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not an emergency room doctor. I\u2019m, by far, a fake doctor,\u201d Dourif pointed out. \u201cI have a lot of respect for how hard and long those people work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
That\u2019s what makes the gratitude from medical professionals particularly humbling. For Dourif, she\u2019s just thankful to be part of her slice-of-life series showing the gritty inner workings of an ER. Any impact her own performance has beyond the screen, well, that\u2019s just an added bonus.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI feel like I kind of won a lottery to be a part of [\u2018The Pitt\u2019]. The best job I\u2019ve ever had by leaps and bounds, and I\u2019ve had <\/span>really<\/span><\/em> good jobs,\u201d Dourif said matter-of-factly, although her role on Syfy\u2019s \u201cChucky\u201d <\/span>\u2014 on which she plays final girl Nica Pierce from the \u201cChild\u2019s Play\u201d universe \u2014 comes close. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cExcellent job also,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Still, <\/span>Dourif\u2019s whirlwind experience on \u201cThe Pitt\u201d thus far has been \u201cbeyond my wildest imagination.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cJust to be on a show that\u2019s this much fun to make, it\u2019s beyond great,\u201d <\/span>she said. \u201cThe whole thing is wild.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nAfter “The Pitt” introduced the world to McKay’s messiness in its first season, Dourif says her character’s “personal chaos” finally calms down a bit in Season 2.<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n\n
After an hour or so of roaming the <\/span>Warner Bros. lot, Dourif and I finally duck into a semi-busy Starbucks on the property to dig into her life-changing turn on \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
As I quickly learn during our candid half-hour chat, <\/span>that sentiment about her role goes beyond the literal upheaval that followed her casting as McKay \u2014 the native New Yorker moved from Lisbon, Portugal, back to Los Angeles to be on the show. It also speaks to the personal journey that Dourif took to meet this particular moment in her career, which didn\u2019t happen overnight.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cIt took me a <\/span>long<\/span><\/em>, long time, which I\u2019m almost grateful for, because I have so much appreciation for what this is. I really understand that it\u2019s lightning in a bottle,\u201d she shared.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
That goes for her role, too. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
On \u201cThe Pitt,\u201d each member of the sprawling ensemble \u2014 which includes Wyle, Katherine LaNasa, Patrick Ball, Isa Briones, Gerran Howell, Taylor Dearden, Shabana Azeez, Supriya Ganesh and Sepideh Moafi \u2014 fills a unique role within the show\u2019s hectic fictional hospital. Among them is Dourif\u2019s McKay, <\/span>whom we met in Season 1 as the oldest among her resident peers, still dealing with skeletons from her past (including a pesky ankle monitor) and a custody battle with her ex. However, Season 2 finds her in a much different headspace.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cA lot of the personal chaos in her life has settled down, and so the ankle bracelet\u2019s off,\u201d Dourif explained of her character\u2019s arc. \u201cThe custody has been sorted out, and she\u2019s lived through the mass casualties [of the Pitt Fest shooting]. I think all the doctors are dealing in their own way. But I think McKay, because of how much she\u2019s lived through before medical school, had a familiarity with tragedy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nEven as the child of a horror icon, Dourif didn’t try to pursue acting professionally until her early 20s.<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n\n
That\u2019s something Dourif said she could relate to. As a self-described \u201crebellious teenager,\u201d the actor saw even more of herself in her former wild child character, recognizing the challenges she had to overcome before finding stability in her own life again.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI was expelled from a few schools, and it took me a long time to get on my feet,\u201d Dourif divulged. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Unlike most young aspiring actors chasing Hollywood from the start, Dourif didn\u2019t try to break into the industry until her early 20s, several years after enrolling in community college somewhere in Ireland. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a whole story,\u201d she explained, <\/span>not elaborating further. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
One of her first industry gigs was working as a production assistant on HBO\u2019s Western series \u201cDeadwood,\u201d which also starred her father, <\/span>Oscar-nominated actor Brad Dourif, the horror legend best known as the voice of the killer Chucky doll from the iconic \u201cChild\u2019s Play\u201d franchise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
As she tells it, the <\/span>on-set job was also one of her most challenging.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI was getting people coffee and turning the air conditioners on and off, and my dad was on the show, so I was treated very nicely. But the hardest job on set, I\u2019d say, is being an AD [assistant director], because they\u2019re to blame for everything that goes wrong,\u201d Dourif shared. \u201cBeing a PA for the AD department was probably my hardest job. And I was like, \u2018Maybe I don\u2019t want to do this. I want to do something else.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
That\u2019s when Dourif got an interesting proposition from \u201cDeadwood\u201d creator David Milch, who offered her acting classes for free, \u201cwhich he does for hundreds [of actors],\u201d she clarified.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cHe was a really generous, interesting person, and he thought that I could be an actress,\u201d said Dourif. \u201cI went into this acting class, and everybody there just had David Milch paying for them to do it. I remember I did a comedy improv about this girl getting pizza or something. And there\u2019s this thing that can happen in a performance where you feel like you\u2019re flying.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really exhilarating, and I could tell that I wasn\u2019t bad at it,\u201d she added, reminiscing on the feeling. \u201cI was like, \u2018God, if I could do that, that would be wild.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Although she was the child of a working actor, Dourif surprisingly didn\u2019t seriously consider acting as a career in her youth.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI was very aware of the perils of it, where you can have no money and then a lot of money and then no money,\u201d she remarked. \u201cThere was one time when my dad\u2019s agent didn\u2019t call for a full year. It\u2019s a very unstable life. I was scared of that, too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Yet, after her PA stint on \u201cDeadwood,\u201d she stuck it out, taking on work as a segment producer for documentaries on The History Channel and TLC, which she thought was \u201creally interesting work.\u201d Still, something within the actor kept beckoning her to be in front of the camera. And so around age 24 or 25, Dourif relocated to New York City, got a job waitressing and bartending, got into acting school and secured an agent.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Before long, she made her debut on the second season of \u201cDeadwood,\u201d this time as talent, and the rest, as they say, was history.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI remember making the decision to pursue acting just because I thought it was the braver thing,\u201d Dourif said. \u201cI was like, \u2018If I\u2019m going to take a chance, I might as well do it now\u2026\u2019 For 10 years, I was in the service industry, and I would get just enough work from auditioning to realize it wasn\u2019t a fool\u2019s errand. I\u2019d get one guest star or a movie that doesn\u2019t pay anything, but\u2026\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cThere were little confirmations that you were on the right path,\u201d I interjected.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she continued, \u201cThen when I was 34, I made my first real paycheck. And from then to now, at 44, I\u2019ve been working solidly. It\u2019s just been this kind of gradual unfolding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nAccording to Dourif, McKay marks the first time the actor has played a character that so closely resembles her real life.<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n\n
Over the course of her career, Dourif has starred in a variety of television projects, from dramas like \u201cTrue Blood,\u201d \u201cThe Blacklist\u201d and \u201cShameless\u201d to BBC America\u2019s surreal comedy \u201cDirk Gently\u2019s Holistic Detective Agency.\u201d She also spent a stretch in horror, appearing in multiple installments of the \u201cChild\u2019s Play\u201d franchise, including 2013\u2019s \u201cCurse of Chucky,\u201d 2017\u2019s \u201cCult of Chucky\u201d and the \u201cChucky\u201d TV series.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
For a while, Dourif got into a pattern of playing \u201cslightly scary, unpredictable women.\u201d \u201cI was hired a lot for characters that were kind of unsettling. The word that kept coming up was \u2018feral,\u2019\u201d she said, a trace of bemusement in her voice.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
That is, until a new opportunity arose in early 2024: a role in an upcoming medical drama that seemed to mirror her own personality perfectly.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI read this character breakdown of McKay and thought to myself that if they\u2019re looking for somebody who looks like me, I will absolutely [get the part],\u201d said Dourif. \u201cI just knew that I was, and it was effortless. I came back [to LA] \u2014 I had to fly myself back from Lisbon to the audition, which was really expensive \u2014 and then just got the part.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cEver since then, it feels like I\u2019m on this wild roller coaster,\u201d she added. \u201cBecause I didn\u2019t expect it to happen. It\u2019s not like I\u2019ve reached some echelon, and this is it [for me] forever. But I never thought that I would be a part of something that\u2019s <\/span>this<\/span><\/em> wild.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nDourif believes it was her own life experiences with her late mother that helped her land her role on “The Pitt.”<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n\n
When \u201cThe Pitt\u201d put out the casting call for McKay, she was described as \u201csomebody who took a long time and a lot of twists and turns to get into medical school\u201d and \u201chad a full and complicated life.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI think the sentence was, \u2018No matter how bad it gets in the hospital, she always knows it could be worse,\u2019\u201d Dourif recalled reading. \u201cWhen I read that, I was like, that\u2019s something that I have.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Sure enough, McKay is a character who feels closer to Dourif\u2019s own life than any she has ever played before, particularly in the ways she gets knocked down by hardships and still finds the will to keep going. That includes when the actor lost her late psychic mother, Joni Dourif, in 2015 to mental illness. Being her sole advocate \u201ctook over my life for 11 years,\u201d said Dourif, she believes that tumultuous experience is the very thing that helped her eventually land the role of McKay on \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a crazy experience to play something that feels like it reflects my own life as much as it does. When I read her character, I was like, \u2018Oh, this is me, and this is because of what me and my mother went through,\u2019\u201d the actor reflected. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of language I have in the show that feels dead-on to who I am and to what I went through.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
She added, \u201cIt feels like a gift, and it also makes it feel very vulnerable.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
It\u2019s for that reason that Dourif does her best to avoid her show\u2019s fervent fandom on social media whenever she can help it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ll go on once in a while, but what I don\u2019t do is scroll,\u201d she shared. \u201cI post things and then sometimes when somebody writes me, I\u2019ll write them back. But I try not to go down [my timeline] too much because I think it\u2019s bad for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cWhen people talk about how much they like McKay or dislike her, it feels almost like they\u2019re talking about me,\u201d she continued. \u201cYou can hide behind larger characters, but this show, I think, has accidentally cast people who are very close to who they actually are. So, this [role] feels like a dedication to Joni Dourif, who I loved, who was a wonderful mother and ultimately had a very difficult end of her life. And then 10 years later, I get to act out one of the more positive things that having a really difficult situation in your life gives you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cThere were eight years in which I had to figure out how to grieve her and pick myself back up, and I get that,\u201d Dourif remembered. \u201cIt left me with a quality that I think they couldn\u2019t really put their hands on. But I remember Noah said to me, \u2018You were the actress that we believed would have been an addict or would have been somebody who\u2019s been through a lot.\u2019 And that\u2019s true.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nWith her Season 2 arc on “The Pitt,” Dourif feels even closer to her character as she navigates an existential crossroads.<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n\n
It\u2019s funny how life works out like that sometimes. This character that Dourif has now turned into her own seemed destined for the actor all along, in a way that\u2019s been both affirming and healing for her.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cThere were real gifts involved,\u201d she surmised of being cast on \u201cThe Pitt,\u201d after the show \u201cauditioned the entire world for McKay.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cThere was nobody that I know that\u2019s my age that didn\u2019t go in for this part,\u201d she continued. \u201cBut I think that I got it because I was the right age and had the right conditioning. Just from what I lived through, and that I had some kind of unique [quality] that you had to put your finger on, but it was tragedy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
It\u2019s not unusual for the characters and storylines on \u201cThe Pitt\u201d to strike a deep chord with the cast. Again, this is a series where art often imitates real life in truly resonant ways, which is why, even as Season 2 continues to unfold, Dourif feels even closer to her character\u2019s journey. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u201cA lot of McKay this season is her dealing with an existential [crisis]. What she wants her life to be,\u201d the actor explained. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit more of these questions of how short life is. I think she\u2019s been taking care of a lot of other people for most of her life and has not really looked at what\u2019s fun for her. When was the last time she had somebody who wasn\u2019t her son hug her? The last time she got laid?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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