By Nina Starner

Copyright slashfilm

Any time anyone won an award for “The Pitt” during the main Emmys ceremony on September 14, 2025, they made sure to thank real-life healthcare workers. Katherine LaNasa gave a shoutout to “all the nurses that inspired Dana.” Noah Wyle began by thanking his wife and collaborators before concluding his big Emmys moment with a message to all those people working long, hard hours in emergency rooms: “And mostly, to anybody who is going on shift tonight or coming off shift tonight, thank you for being in that job. This is for you.” R. Scott Gemmill, the showrunner who accepted the award for Best Drama, was also quite clear. “And I want to dedicate this, on behalf of everyone, to all the health care workers, frontline first responders,” Gemmill said to the audience in person and everyone watching on television. “Respect them, protect them, trust them.”

Healthcare workers have dealt with some truly wild and deeply difficult situations throughout the past five or so years, particularly after bad actors encouraged people not to trust them during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s genuinely beautiful to see a show like “The Pitt” make sure to drive that point home. Anyone who’s ever seen even one episode of “The Pitt” knows that it depicts some of the darkest moments one can experience while working in a busy ER, and the series’ cast and crew are just as committed to representing this at a major awards show as they are within the stories they craft and perform on screen. “The Pitt” is familiar, fresh, perfectly executed, and an ode to a community that works hard to keep us safe. We’d be lucky to see more shows like it, and its big win at the Emmys might signal that we will.

“The Pitt” is streaming on HBO Max now.