Writers of the hit HBO show asked Dr. Wendy Ross how to avoid stereotypes when crafting the script. Here’s what she said.
[Photos: HBO]
When Dr. Wendy Ross logged on for a Zoom meeting in early 2024, she wasn’t sure who to expect on the other side of the call.
It was a digital writers’ room, Ross tells Fast Company, “and in the upper left-hand corner—I’ll never forget it—was Noah Wyle.”
Ross, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician and the director of Jefferson Center for Autism & Neurodiversity in Philadelphia, had received a request to lend her expertise to the writers of a new medical series—but they told her only that it was set in an emergency room and would potentially feature an autistic doctor. “I had no idea what was going to happen, but I thought it sounded kind of cool,” she says.
That show went on to become HBO’s hit drama The Pitt, which won three Emmy Awards and averaged 10 million viewers an episode in its first season. Wyle is an executive producer and a star of the show, making his return to medical dramas 30 years after his breakout role on ER. (Ross recalls that show airing at the same time she was first studying medicine: “In my fangirl world, we went to medical school together,” she says—though when meeting him over Zoom, she kept her cool.)
From the get-go, Ross says, The Pitt’s writers “were very serious about not portraying a stereotypical situation” regarding autism. “That was in the original request that was posed to me,” she says.
Her advice eventually helped shape fan-favorite character Dr. Mel King (played by Taylor Dearden), a bright-eyed resident new to the ER in the show’s first season.
AUTMel exhibits many autistic-coded traits, like self-soothing, the occasional dropped social cue, and a knack for repetitive, focused tasks. But notably, she’s never confirmed on the show to be diagnosed as neurodivergent. Instead, viewers get to see many sides of Mel as the season unfolds: her compassion as she comforts a child losing her sister, her earnestness as she befriends her fellow doctors, her eccentricity as she calms herself by repeating Megan Thee Stallion lyrics like a mantra.