Shawn Hatosy from ‘The Pitt’ appreciates Dr. Abbot’s support for Robby in tough times: “It’s great to have a colleague and equal by your side.”

MAX‘s The Pitt has been in crisis mode for the past two weeks, with victims of the PittFest mass casualty event flooding the emergency department of the Pittssburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. While Dr. Robby’s (Noah Wyle) no good, terrible, awful day has been swiftly catching up with him, Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy), the night shift attending doctor we met briefly all the way back in Episode 1 has taken control. Dr. Abbot returns to the ED on his day off, having first heard the news of a mass shooting incident on the police scanner he apparently has at home.

“He’s a guy that even when he’s off, he’s sitting there listening to his police scanner,” The Pitt star Shawn Hatosy told DECIDER with a chuckle, after noting that Abbot is “addicted to the work.”

If it’s not obvious to the audience by now, Dr. Jack Abbot’s path to the Pitt started in the military. It’s that wartime medic experience that gives Abbot an edge in leading the ED during the mass casualty event, but it’s also left him with “a lot of hidden trauma,” according to Hatosy.

DECIDER spoke with Hatosy this week about his character’s backstory, what it’s like watching Dr. Robby break down, and what he thinks of the fact that some of us (ahem) thought Abbot’s act of donating blood while still saving lives was kind of, uh, hot.

DECIDER: One of my favorite things about this show is how every character has this rich backstory that gets, like, teased out over the course of the 15 episodes. I’m curious with your character — you know, he’s obviously a military vet and he has wartime medic experience — what is your understanding of like where he toured, what he experienced, and is there anything about his backstory that you think might surprise audiences?

SHAWN HATOSY: So when I first started talking to [executive producers] John [Wells] and [R.] Scott [Gemmill] about joining [the show], they presented me with a pretty extensive backstory about Abbot, his history, which which kind of goes into how he was a military medic and kind of discovered his talent for emergency medicine in that setting and that sort of led him to med school and his path. Within that history, there was also some personal stuff. He has experienced some — You know, he’s got a lot of hidden trauma, let’s say, that he’s sort of wrestling with. So much so that he’s become addicted to the work. He’s a guy that even when he’s off, he’s sitting there listening to his police scanner. [Chuckles] You know, it’s so helpful when you have a writer who can give you these little things for your character. You know, that sort of show us exactly who he is without having to say so much. So whether or not we’ll get into all of that stuff in the history, I mean, I hope we do. But it’s very, very good. And so I look forward to digging in further and sharing it with the audience.

Digging into last week’s episode, I guess there’s a moment that — I mean, I’m not the only one, I’ve seen people talk about it online — where he’s donating blood while he’s working on a patient. Just sort of like the selflessness of that and also the strength is, I will admit, a little sexy. Did it occur to you that it might be a turn on for some people? And what do you think that tells us about the character that he’s willing to just, like, put a bag of blood in his cargo pants and just go.

Well, you you have hit the hammer on the head. As an actor, it’s important to love your character or to find a way to love your character. And sometimes that’s not easy to do. You could be playing the bad guy or a murderer or something who is not easily lovable, but you always go in there and sort of break the character down. If there’s some trauma or pain that created him, and you can find it. And with Abbot, for me, that little thing with him donating blood in the midst of, on the fly, while still working, while still leading, that was it for me. I just knew I was all in. It’s such a great character and it was not difficult to find that thing that I loved.

This upcoming week’s episode is a very fascinating one because Robby has his breakdown after losing Leah. Your character has to sort of like watch him kind of start to unravel and he has to kind of confront him about giving Leah more blood than the plan was for. What do you think Abbot is making of seeing Robby unravel in real time like that?

I think, first of all, he’s seen it before. He’s seen this kind of combat fatigue in people. Understanding the strength of his relationship with Robby and knowing Robby as well as he does, I believe that Abbot identifies it as something that’s fleeting and then will pass. It more becomes about the order of the emergency department and what using our very limited resource of blood and his actual physical presence, you know, it’s having an effect on other patients that we can save.

So it is nice for our show because Robby is so expertly drawn in that he’s our leader. He’s the boss. He’s the teacher at times. He’s, you know, maybe he’s a lover of one, maybe he’s a mentor to another. He’s been being pulled in so many directions and leaned on and needed, so that when you get a character who’s a colleague, who is an equal, he’s also been there and experienced similar things. It’s just nice for our show that in Robby’s lowest moments, that he has somebody that he can lean on.

Before I go, often when I talk to people, I’ll look on their social media before I talk, just to see if there’s anything relevant. I saw this adorable rabbit cartoon that’s a “Dr. Jack Rabbot.” And it was so adorable. I’m just curious, is there any backstory to that and why you posted it?

What that came from was, and I don’t know the name of the artist, but she’s on our crew. And I’m going to get eviscerated for not knowing, but I don’t know. But she basically wrote those, created those cartoons for all of the cast and put them on the wall. It just showed up at my door one day, but I loved it. So I took a picture of it. (I think her name was Shay!)

What are some of the other animals for the other cast members? I’m curious.

Oh, gosh, I don’t know. They all, I’m sure they all have them, because they’re so cool. I took it home. I don’t usually take those kinds of things, but I took it home. I left the name on my door, but I took that. I keep it in my script.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.