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Bryan Cranston's Daughter and Other Familiar Faces In 'The Pitt' Cast

By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 17, 2025 |

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Header Image Source: Max

I love The Pitt. The Pitt is exhilarating television. When I’m watching The Pitt, I feel like I’ve had two extra cups of coffee. Sometimes I check to see how much time is left in the episode, and I’m always so frustrated that there isn’t more time. The Pitt is meant to be Max’s attempt to emulate the network television model, so please just give us 22 episodes a year! I can’t get enough. There’s so much energy. The Pitt is life.

And the cast is fantastic and, in many cases, familiar, even aside from Noah Wyle, who I weirdly feel sad about not being able to watch work as a doctor for the last fifteen years. I love, for instance, seeing Mackenzie Astin, Sean’s brother, look like Eric Stolz if Eric Stolz worked as a middle manager.

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I mentioned Brandon Keener last week, who I always notice (he’s also in this season of Sex Lives of College Girls) because I used to watch him on stage during college productions at our alma mater, but his wife in The Pitt is played by Samantha Sloyan and it took me forever to realize that I knew her from all of the Mike Flanagan series (Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and Haunting of Hill House).

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Some of you may have been kicking yourselves trying to figure out where you have seen Mika Abdalla before, but I know from my review of it that it’s probably from that very charming movie Snack Shack that you stumbled upon (Honestly, she also looks like she should be the final girl in half a dozen teen slasher films, too).

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Joanna Going may not be immediately recognizable to many, but she was a series regular in The Kingdom, the MMA series starring Frank Grillo, Nick Jonas, Matt Lauria, and Jonathan Tucker. (She also played the First Lady in House of Cards.)

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But there are also series regulars that may look familiar. Actually, you may have never seen Fiona Dourif before, but you may recognize her father in her facial expressions. Her Dad is Brad Dourif from Deadwood, among other things, as well as the voice of Chucky in the Child’s Play franchise.

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She’s not the only nepo baby in The Pitt. There’s also Taylor Dearden, whose full last name is Dearden Cranston, as in Bryan’s daughter, who actually appeared in an episode of Breaking Bad when she was younger.

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Finally, she’s not a nepo baby, by any stretch, but Katherine LaNasa — who plays the charge nurse — is probably quite familiar from decades of acting work and over 80 credits in film and television. She also married Dennis Hopper when she was in her 20s and he was in her 50s. She would later marry French Stewart from Third Rock from the Sun and Grant Show (Melrose Place), to whom she is currently wed. She’s my favorite character after Wyle’s.

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Here she is in 1991. Wow.

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