The Pitt has just wrapped up its first season, and fans are already thinking about the second one. The Max medical drama, which brings ER vet Noah Wyle back to the genre and surrounds him with a cast of less familiar faces, has left people interested in absolutely every character. One of the characters that people have connected with the most is that of Dr. Jack Abbott, played by Shawn Hatosy.
Hatosy might not be as well-known as Wyle, but he’s anything but new to Hollywood. He’s had roles in the films In & Out, The Faculty, Anywhere but Here, and Alpha Dog, among others, and he starred as Detective Sammy Bryant on the TNT crime drama Southland and Andrew “Pope” Cody in the TNT crime drama Animal Kingdom.
It’s his role as Dr. Abbott, and particularly, the revelations about his character in The Pitt season finale, that have people wondering about Hatosy, however. Particularly after the revelation that Dr. Jack Abbott is a single-leg amputee. Is that true for Hatosy as well? Does Shawn Hatosy have an amputated leg in real life?
Does Shawn Hatosy have an amputated leg in real life?
The answer is no. Hatosy is not an amputee in real life, like his character. The actor, who has also appeared on Chicago P.D. in a recurring role this season as Deputy Chief Reid, however, knew this fact about his The Pitt character from early on. Speaking to US Weekly, Hatosy said, “I knew from the beginning. This revelation at the end is a big surprise to many of our characters who just met Abbott that day. But it’s also a big surprise for the audience.”
Of course, the reveal is only possible because the entirety of the first season of The Pitt takes place in one day, with every episode going over what happens in one hour in the emergency department of the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital.
Producer R. Scott Gemmill told The Hollywood Reporter that Abbott’s military past was also something they kept in mind when the hospital faced a mass casualty event. “We wanted to make Abbot a vet, and his experience in those scenarios, those situations, inform him somewhat as a doctor.”
“And when we got to see how well he performed during the mass casualty because he’s been in, unfortunately, those kinds of situations before, and that seemed like if he suffered an injury, a pretty significant one, as a result of that, I think it makes for a more interesting and a more sympathetic character.”
The plan was always to reveal Abbot’s military past and his prosthetic leg at the end of the season, according to Gemmill. “So we knew that that was going to be a reveal from the get-go but also not going to be revealed until the very, almost the last moment of the show.”
It happens exactly so. Robby and Abbot join some of the others in the park for a beer, with Abbott taking off his prosthetic leg. This is where fans find out his right leg has been amputated from the knee down. Considering the surprised looks, this isn’t exactly a well-known fact.
“Certainly it’s in the last scene, and that was really just to see that he’s a physician who has lost a part of his leg. He’s not a guy with part of his leg who became a physician,” Gemmill also said. “So he really, it’s really just more about who he is. And we didn’t want to make a big deal about it. It was just to show that, you know, so that nobody judged him ahead of time. And at the end, it’s a big, hopefully a good reveal, and you realize it has never slowed him down one bit.”
