The Pitt’s Patrick Ball is sharing the significant way the show has changed his life.
Ball, 36, broke down in tears during a recent interview with Cultured magazine as he recalled how he was able to pay off $80,000 in student loan debt thanks to his role as Dr. Frank Langdon in the hit HBO Max medical drama.
“I paid off my student loans like three months into The Pitt, and that was a really profound moment ‘cause I thought I was gonna die with it,” he said in the Tuesday, April 7, interview. “It’s a huge burden to carry, and a lot of people carry it. I was $80,000 in debt and I had been through a series of failed relationships where my financial insecurity was a real problem. I had just thought that was going to be my life forever, and that is a really heavy thing to live with.”
He added, “Paying off those student loans and getting back to zero, I remember being like, ‘Man, if this show works, great. If it doesn’t work, they can’t take that away from me. I am out of debt. No take-backsies on that.’”
Who Plays Dr. Langdon on HBO’s ‘The Pitt’? Meet Newcomer Patrick Ball
The Pitt marks Ball’s first major on-screen role and came at a time when the actor was struggling to justify his career path.
“About six months before The Pitt came in, I was living in New Haven with my ex. We’d been together for three years and we were really struggling with coming up with a vision of the future,” he explained. “Working as an actor, you don’t know what’s coming, have no money — the financial outlook can be bleak. I was looking for an off-ramp. Her dad was ex-military and tried to convince me to join the FBI. I was thinking about joining the Merchant Marines. A year prior to that, I had spent four months in Alaska, thinking about working at a fishing camp, just dropping off the grid entirely. Whenever that relationship in New Haven eventually reached its breaking point, we had been living together, so I was without a home.”
Prior to The Pitt, Ball said he juggled various jobs, including “working at a coffee shop, I was working at a restaurant, I was working as a wardrobe assistant for And Just Like That…”
One memorable job Ball had was acting in corporate coaching seminars.
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“I don’t think I’ve told anybody this story, but I was doing these seminars where they’d bring me into Blackrock and Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, and they would want to teach these young administrators how to have difficult conversations, à la how to fire somebody,” he said. “They would bring me in as an actor so that these administrators could get practice firing someone. So I have been fired more than anyone you’ve ever met, I promise you. I’ve been fired thousands of times.”
“And then the call for The Pitt came in and everything was different,” he added.
The Pitt is streaming on HBO Max.
