After Dr. Heather Collins had a miscarriage on The Pitt, fans may be surprised at season 2’s potential plans — or lack thereof — for her motherhood journey.
During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, Tracy Ifeachor explained her takeaway from Collins‘ story line in season 1, saying, “There’s going to be a lot of surprises [in season 2], I’ll just say that. But I try to look at it like she is a person who is a representative of women across the nation who are trying to conceive. Many — I would hope all — at some point will conceive and go on to have children. But some won’t.”
Ifeachor, 39, argued that it wasn’t about the destination but the journey for Collins.
“I feel like whether she does or she doesn’t [have a baby] in the future isn’t necessarily important. It’s that in the moment that we meet her, she’s gone through what so many have — one in four women have miscarriages,” she noted. “In this moment, what is important for me is that she will be someone that can help comfort, can help validate, can help strengthen, can help give hope and can help remove that stigma and that blame that a lot of women feel when they go through this tragic thing.”
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Season 1 of The Pitt, which premiered in January, started a 15-hour shift in the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital with Collins’ secretly celebrating a pregnancy via IVF. Halfway through the day, however, Collins suffered a miscarriage and had to continue working as a senior resident despite the heartbreaking loss.
“The thing that’s the most important to me is that she will encourage people. Because I think I watched something like 300 hours of testimonials of women who’d had miscarriages and were trying and going down the IVF route [or] blastocyst and all these amazing journeys. Because any way you do it, it’s still a miracle,” Ifeachor explained. “It’s still a miracle and there’s so many women hoping for that. So I hope in this season it won’t be about whether she does or she doesn’t go on to [try IVF or have a baby] again. It’s that in this moment it hasn’t worked out. It’s not her fault.”
The actress continued: “She feels all these emotions. Hopefully women across America and the world will be able to relate to her and can take some form of comfort in the fact that they’re not going through this alone. Even people who look like Collins — someone who has everything together and rising to the top of her profession and really accomplished. She’s a medical person who knows how to take care of her body but these things can still happen even to people like that. I hope that that strengthens them and encourages them. I just try to focus on what we’ve seen so far.”
While reflecting on the first season, Ifeachor broke down the information she was given about Collins and how it helped shape her performance.
“I was told she comes from finance and that after the [stock market], there was just a feeling that she needed a change. There was a mentor called Dr. Adamson who died of COVID. We touched on that briefly and she just decided to make that switch later on in life,” Ifeachor recalled. “For me, that really gave me a very black and white pursuit of excellence. Because in finance, there’s a number that you arrive at because 2 plus 2 is 4. There’s a pursuit of excellence that she has that I feel like hopefully we brought to Dr. Collins in both the writing and in the performance.”
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Ifeachor also spent time building out Collins’ interest in becoming a mother, adding, “I really had to look at why people decide to have children. I am from a Nigerian background and it is just what you do. Where are your 10 kids? Everybody has at least four. My auntie has one and people would stop her on the street going, ‘Oh, what happened? How can we pray for you? Obviously there’s been some tragic mistake here.’”
She continued: “So when you look at that, a lot of people feel — and I share this thought and this wouldn’t be my reason — but there’s so much [going on] in the world, why not bring a little more good into it and leave something behind as well? So when you are constantly pouring out to other people and you’re literally saving lives every day you go to work, sometimes that doesn’t work out and sometimes it does.”
The Pitt‘s structure of an hour representing an hour of a shift doesn’t always allow the audience to spend too much time in a character’s state of mind. But Ifeachor could see why Collins was at a place in her life where she wanted to expand her family no matter what.
“Sometimes you just want a little piece of yourself that is yours. You just want this person that’s yours that you take care of. When you feed into this person, they don’t just get well and walk out the door and you never really see them again,” she told Us. “You want that person to hold onto you. You want that little piece of yourself. I feel like for Collins, she definitely wanted that. She didn’t have that and she decided to take matters into her own hands and try to create a family and create this wonderful bundle of joy herself, which unfortunately didn’t work out.”
Ifeachor went on to explain the collaborative experience that came with bringing Collins’ voice to life.
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“I’m a big believer in a person just being a person and then letting the audience decide how they want to receive them. So oftentimes in my career, I don’t tend to typically play that kind of person. I want to play the content of that character. Then when that’s not talked about, we then are now able to invite an audience to ask questions,” she detailed. “Whereas if we are always hammering over people’s heads, it also doesn’t feel true to a lived experience that I’ve lived — but it then doesn’t give the audience an opportunity to ask. There’s a line in the show where Collins says, ‘The risks are not the same as they are for you.’ Originally that was written a little differently and my hat off to [creator] R. Scott Gemmill, he listened to what my thoughts were on the situation. It was a lovingly respectful conversation.”
She added: “I said, ‘I feel like, would it be this way? What are we really asking here? Is it that she’s a woman? Is it that she’s a Black woman? Is it about education levels? What is it?’ He was like, ‘Well, it’s all of those things.’ I said, ‘Great but if we reduce it down to one thing and label it and name it then we are not giving the audience the credit that we both know that they deserve and they need.’ It’s going to really enhance and lift the show, the character and the scene if we are not labeling the why. We are just leaving it open to other people to decide, ‘Well what does she mean?’ Then we invite conversation.”
Ifeachor’s commitment to enriching Collins’ story line has only made fans — and Us — more excited to see more of her in season 2. Despite Collins being a fan-favorite, no returns have been confirmed ahead of the second season.
“Listen, there is going to be an amazing cast in season 2 — just as there was in season 1. I’m just going to leave it there,” Ifeachor teased. “I’m not a [plot] ruiner. I’m not even going to tell you who is or is not going to come back. I’m just going to say I want you to watch season 2 and just enjoy it as much as you’ve watched season 1. Hopefully there’ll be seasons 3 and 4 and 7.
The Pitt has been renewed for season 2 and is currently streaming on HBO Max.
