This interview is part of Variety and CNN’s Actors on Actors series. Watch the full video interview now at CNN.com/Watch (or on the CNN app) and on Variety’s YouTube channel starting at 11:59 pm ET.
Paul Anthony Kelly plays his first-ever professional acting role in “Love Story,” where he takes on the role of John F. Kennedy Jr. in his doomed romance with Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon). Meanwhile, Patrick Ball’s character on “The Pitt,” Dr. Frank Langdon, has become a much-debated figure given his Season 2 return from rehab and attempt at redemption after stealing hospital narcotics in the first season. (As the season ends, Langdon urges Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby, his sometime antagonist, to seek help.) After years of searching for the right part, Kelly and Ball have both landed in the right place — JFK Jr. and Dr. Langdon were among the TV season’s defining heartthrobs.
Paul Anthony Kelly: Let’s start it off. I heard that it took you quite a while to break into the industry. You were a theater actor before, correct?
Patrick Ball: I did theater almost exclusively for about 15 years, traveling across the country, doing regional theater and learning how to tell a story with an audience. It took until about a year and a half ago, when “The Pitt” came along, to get my first swing at television.
Kelly: What was that like for you when you got it?
Ball: It was a series of panic attacks for a while. The first time walking onto the Warner Bros. lot — they have these little plaques on the side of each soundstage that tell you all the historic things that have been filmed on that set. I walk onto the set and see that “On the Waterfront” and “Giant” were shot here.
Kelly: Cool.
Ball: It took about three weeks for me to breathe. And then, as I’m sure you know, after three weeks it just becomes the place that you work. We have this in common — this is your first big moonshot moment. And it took you a while.
Kelly: Pretty much the same timeline: It was 13 years of auditioning: A lot of nos, some close-to things, never really locking it in. I was thinking about giving it up and then this opportunity came.
Ball: What did that 13 years look like?
Kelly: A lot of auditions, a lot of silence. I always knew this was what I wanted to do. I knew that if I stuck it out, eventually something would hit. But after about 13 years, you’re like, “Maybe this isn’t for me.”
Ball: And the first thing that fell into place was playing a Kennedy. I don’t even know where to begin. How did you prepare for this role?
Kelly: I had three weeks to prepare from when I was hired, which was not a lot of time. But Ryan Murphy and his team took all the thinking away. Once they hired me, they got me a dialect coach because I’m Canadian — I have a totally different speech pattern to John F. Kennedy Jr. I had to learn everything about him — the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he walks. [They hired] an acting coach, a physical trainer, because I had to get a little bit bigger. John was a very active guy. He was always running, always biking, Rollerblading, working out.
Ball: Which is a stretch for you.
Kelly: Yeah, big-time stretch. But to find his voice — he narrates his father’s book, “Profiles in Courage.” So I listened to that almost religiously. Every morning when I’d wake up, I’d be on the treadmill listening to it, in the shower or whatever. I’d listen to it between takes, just to get into his rhythm and flow and speech patterns. And the way he moved: I was a model before, so I’ve got pretty good control of my body. I would watch old “Entertainment Tonight” clips. And he’s left-handed. So I spent six months being a left-handed individual.
Ball: Did you learn how to write with your left hand?
Kelly: I did everything with my left hand. It’s not very good, but I can do it.
Ball: You can eat with your left hand?
Kelly: Cook with my left hand, eat with my left hand, shake people’s hands with my left hand. All the football stuff was all left-hand. But it was so cool to put the blinders on and focus a thousand percent on one thing. I’d never had that experience of breathing life into an idea; I just wanted him to be a regular guy.
Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety
Ball: So much of the show is about fame and this guy who wants to believe that he’s a regular guy. It blew my mind that you filmed all of this before you became famous. Now that the show has come out, do you find it harder to be a regular guy?
Kelly: Where I live, it allows me just to be home and regular. We’re in the Pacific Northwest. It’s just my wife and our new child — she’s like four months. It’s nice to be able to focus on family.
Ball: You went through a lot of changes all at once.
Kelly: My family are my rock in this whole crazy whirlwind.
Was there anything for Dr. Langdon that helped you drop more into character?
Ball: Season 1, there was very little opportunity for editorial input on a costume level, because we’re all in scrubs every day. One of the few opportunities for detail that we have is what shoes we wear. Season 1, I was in these trainers with a super-curved heel, made for people that are on their feet all day long. The heel was so curved, it gave me this clown-like walk. It felt like a very different gait than in my day-to-day life. But after eight months of clocking in at “The Pitt” on the same soundstage, under the same fluorescent lights, and the whole season is one day — you really do enter this “Groundhog’s Day” alternative reality.
Kelly: There’s not a lot of set changes.
Ball: It’s 99% on that same set. Noah has talked about this — you don’t realize, until you wrap and step out of it and go away for a couple of weeks, you’re like, “Whoa, I have been so depressed. I have been a hot mess for the last eight months and did not even realize it.” And I had a little bracelet that my kid made me. I was like “I think Langdon would have a little gift from his kids. My kid made me a bracelet.” It became this emblem of this guy that despite his circumstances was trying to cling to some sense of whimsy. And then you come back in Season 2 and that dad bracelet has been replaced by this recovery bracelet that is wooden and stark and much more traditionally masculine. And there is this sense that maybe Landon has lost his whimsy in the course of this recovery process. Anybody that has gone through recovery, that is a fear. If I give up my crutch, will I —
Kelly: Be the same.
Ball: Will I be the same? Will people still think that I’m funny? Will they find me interesting? And that can be a real fear, that you’re going to lose an integral part of yourself if you give up these habits. And that was something that I talked about all the way down to the bracelet with [executive producer] John Wells and our costume designer.
I am very excited to have a third act to this story, because I do not think for a second that to get help is to give up your joy. I think the sense of joy that you can have in the healing process of going through recovery is far more profound and far more fulfilling than anything that you could experience hitherto. So I’m very excited for the next chapter of this story.
Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety
Kelly: What was your process like in embodying recovery — and the humility that Langdon goes through on his first day back?
Ball: In Season 1, you have a Langdon that is very confident and moves very quickly. And that clip is informed by necessity that he, at any given moment, has six patients in a state of need at all times. And it’s also a tempo that is informed by the fact that he is outrunning his own shadow and is carrying a lot of secrets. And coming back into Season 2, knowing that he has spent the last 10 months facing that shadow, and not having to attend to all of the fires that you have to attend to in the Pitt — I was very, very interested in establishing a different tempo coming in the door, and then watching the tempo of the Pitt creep in across the season, which comes to a head in the last couple of episodes.
Kelly: The finale of your show — Baby Jane Doe, Dr. Robby. What do you think goes on there?
Ball: We do not get any information. So now that I saw the finale and thought it was amazing, I’m left hanging on the same cliff as everybody else. I have no idea what happens with Baby Jane Doe. Does Robby adopt Baby Jane Doe? That would go against a lot of the advice that he has given to Whitaker [Gerran Howell] early in the year.
Kelly: Does he take his own advice, though? He rides a motorcycle without a helmet, as a doctor.
Ball: He doesn’t make a habit of taking his own advice.
Kelly: What’s it like working with Noah Wyle? It’s so neat for him to have been in “ER,” the quintessential ‘90s show, and now he’s in “The Pitt.”
Ball: He’s an incredible mentor — I want to say quarterback, but he’s more like a player-coach. In Season 1, he was the guy surrounded by a bunch of us that were completely new to this. I showed up Season 1 not knowing how to read a call sheet. And he has been so patient and so generous, offering all of us advice and guidance through this incredible moment — and he’s also been great about leaving space for us to each have our own journey and figure it out our own way, which is a sign of a wise and generous leader. How was it working with Sarah Pidgeon?
Kelly: Working with Sarah is incredible. From the moment we met, there was instant chemistry. We understood the assignment, we had each other’s backs and we went in every day, it was either falling in love with each other or falling out of love with each other. But after every take, it’s a high five. The whole ensemble was people I’ve looked up to for a long time. We have a good group chat.
Ball: Are you going to have a cast vacation?
Kelly: That’d be fun — I don’t think it’ll happen.
Ball: Everybody’s scattered at this point, and you’re in dad mode now.
Kelly: Your parents are both in the medical field, are they not?
Ball: My mom is a lifelong ER nurse. My dad’s a lifelong paramedic.
Kelly: What are their takes on the show?
Ball: They love it. I happened to be with my parents when I got asked to come to L.A. and do the screen test, and I got to read through some of the pilot episode with them. The first thing they said was, “Oh, this medicine checks out. This is real medicine.” And they haven’t always felt that way: Oftentimes in hospital dramas, the demands of entertainment take precedence over the authenticity of medicine.
Kelly: There is a lot of speculation online — fan ideas, conspiracy theories. Do you ever see the memes about the show?
Ball: It’s been a journey for me. Coming out of Season 1, there was a lot of temptation to engage. People are paying attention for the first time and they have all of these spinoff theories — I want to engage and have fun. And then as that public swell continued to grow, it got intense. I realized the necessity of boundaries and putting up walls and maintaining privacy. It can get really scary out there.
Kelly: Everyone has an opinion, and sometimes it’s best not to know those things.
Ball: “Love Story” has similarly had an unbelievable vocal fandom. Playing two iconic characters — they’ve now created this whole moment. Every guy walking around Brooklyn thinks he’s JFK Jr.
Kelly: When we started filming, we did a screen-test to see the coloring; those images were released and there was a little bit of backlash over it. But that was kind of a good thing because it then showed how much people care about these two individuals. It tightened the grip on us to get it right.
Ball: People are completely bought into it. I’m one of them.
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