The Pitt Episode 12 “6 PM” is hands down the most intense installment of the MAX medical drama yet. A mass shooting at PittFest has transformed the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospitalâs ED into a MASH unit. Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) and his staff are forced to perform an explosive number of life-saving procedures â and one of the newbies spectacularly rises to the challenge.
Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez) might have started her shift on The Pitt by fainting at the sight of a mangled leg, earning the nickname “Crash,” but her quick-thinking and creativity earns her a far nicer title by the end of Episode 12. None other than her crush, Mateo (Jalen Thomas Brooks), calls her “genius.”
**Spoilers for The Pitt Episode 12 “6 PM,” now streaming on MAX**
Victoria Javadi is introduced all the way back in The Pitt Episode 1 as a 20-year-old med student, meaning she is, yes, a prodigy. She started college at the age of 13 and boasts the spectacular surgeon Eileen Shamsi (Deepti Gupta) as a mother.
Over the course of The Pitt Season 1, we’ve watched the socially awkward girl slowly grow in confidence. She correctly saved the victim of a Black Widow bite from a misdiagnosis and managed to speak up for herself (and another prodigy) when an overbearing father prioritized his son’s baseball career over his health.
With the rush of shooting victims to the ED, Javadi finds herself in the “pink zone,” partnered with McKay (Fiona Dourif). Soon, her mother joins the floor and quickly earns a loud rebuke from her own daughter. It’s a moment that seemingly earns McKay’s respect. Later, her improvisation skills impress Mateo, the hot nurse who makes Javadi especially awkward.
DECIDER got the chance to hop on a call with The Pitt‘s Shabana Azeez this week while she’s working on another project all the way in Melbourne, Australia. Azeez hilariously shared that she had no idea that she and Jalen Thomas Brooks were essentially playing out an adorable rom-com on The Pitt and she revealed her wholesome personal head-canon for Javadi’s off-screen doctor father…
DECIDER: I want to start by going all the way back to the first episode, because one of the first things that happens to your character is she faints at the sight of blood. We know she’s a prodigy. We know she’s so smart. But what has drawn this person to medicine? Is it something that her family has foisted upon her? Or does she have a deep passion to get into this field?
SHABANA AZEEZ: I think she’s figuring that out, if she has a deep passion for this field. Because I do think both her parents are doctors, it’s a very nepo baby situation. But I think also because she grew up, she graduated school at 13. And so there is something about she had an aptitude for something that she got validated from by her parents. And there was a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure that I think she sort of falls into medicine in a way that isn’t necessarily healthy. And I think that it’s cost her a lot. Like, she has very few friends. She’s peerless. She’s quite isolated and lonely and confused. And so I think that this being her first day at her ED rotation is really interesting to me.
We’ve seen Javadi’s confidence grow over the course of this season. Do you think that there’s a certain case or moment where she starts to feel herself?
I really think that the lateral canthotomy, the baseball scene with the eye, really made an impact because McKay sees Javadi and really, like, validates why Javadi’s behaving the way she’s behaving. And I think that that’s really lovely. I think Javadi’s been pushed and pushed and pushed her whole life and hasn’t really learned to emotionally regulate and see things for herself. So I think that was a really big one. And also Murphy and the Minnesota tube, because she’s afraid of blood. Like being afraid of blood, or just having a physical reaction to blood, is such an overwhelming thing, period. And then to like be working on cases that are so bloody. I think the fact that she overcomes it is like massive for me.
Well, in this week’s episode, there is sort of a really interesting scene with Javadi and her mother where Javadi finally kind of puts her mom in her place and seemingly earns her mom’s respect. Was it cathartic for you to have that moment where she tells her mom and read the room? And how do you think the relationship will kind of evolve from this moment on?
Oh, God, I love this mother/child relationship very much. I’m very excited for Eileen to start seeing Javadi as like an adult person. I think there are lags happening with that because Javadi is so childlike in so many ways because she was socialized in such a strange way, in that she’s had nobody her age to be with for so long. And, you know, med school is intense. So even outside of school, she hasn’t had time for many friends, I think. So I’m really excited for that to slowly, slowly happen and for them to like refind their footing. And I think also it is this really beautiful thing about like… Javadi kind of loses it in the middle of a mass casualty. That’s not very mature of her, but I think I really appreciate that everybody can see how far she’s been pushed over so many years and the toll that takes. So I’m excited for Season 2.
Furthermore, she also impresses Mateo in this episode.
(Loud giggling.)
Do you feel like that’s a turning point for Javadi and Mateo’s relationship?
Oh, god, it’s really funny. I don’t know! Because I didn’t realize how Jalen was playing it because we both had been playing a lot of it when the other characters not looking. So I spent a lot of the early episodes just looking at his character and seeing if that made it into the edit, and I didn’t know he was doing the same thing. So I’m very â I’m very excited to see these fucking scenes. (Laughs.) Because I have no idea what’s going on with Javadi and Mateo, but I ‘ship it. I’m rooting for them.
I mean, like, talk to me. Like, you mentioned how you guys were doing things without telling each other. So I’m curious, did you talk about how it would progress, or is it that you’re just playing it like two crushes that were not on the same wavelength?
Oh my god, absolutely not! (Laughs.)
(Laughs.)
I had no idea! I had no idea that I asked him out â ever. Because we didn’t get the episodes until, you know, we got them drip fed. I had no idea where Javadi’s arc was going. And [R.] Scott [Gemmill], the showrunner, he was like, “I wasn’t sure about it, if it would seem sensitive to have somebody ask another character out in the midst of this.” This backdrop is so, you know, it requires sensitivity. And so I didn’t know that I asked him out until Jalen, the actor who plays Mateo, told me that his audition scene was me asking him out. And he sent it to me because I begged him for it. And so, yeah, no, they kept me right in the dark. But I think it’s quite funny.
You know, obviously the series has been brought back for another season.
Yay!
What are you excited to sort of delve into with Javadi in the next season? Is there something that you want to see her do, or a certain part of her you want to explore?
Oh my god, there’s so much. But I think I trust Scott. I’m so excited by all our writers. They’re incredible. And I’m really excited to, like, see what they do. I think often as much as an actor, it’s great to be like, “Oh, I want this and I want that,” for me, I go, “I want them to think of something that I could never even think of.” And I bet they will because this is what they’re incredible at. And it’s not what I’m incredible at. That’s why I’m not a writer.
Before I go, I’m curious. We see her and Eileen, we know what their mother/daughter relationship is. Do you have any inkling of what Javadi’s relationship with her father is? Is it different from Eileen? Do you think that’s a different tone or do you think that they kind of are very similar parents who are asking a lot of Javadi?
Oh my god, I’ve made him up completely in my head. I have a whole guy. I think he’s nothing like my mother. Because I think endocrinology, too, it’s like he makes, I think, a lot of money. But he doesn’t do shift work. He does a 9 to 5. There’s, like, I think really different ways that Javadi was parented. I’m not sure that they agree, in my opinion, but I think probably a lot of her emotional connection happens with her dad. If there’s a lot of that, I don’t know. But I think it’s a very different situation. I think surgeons are a separate beast.
This interview has been edited and formatted for clarity.
The post ‘The Pitt’ Star Shabana Azeez is “Very Excited” To See Episode 12’s Javadi and Mateo Scenes: “Because I Have No Idea What’s Going On” appeared first on Decider.
