{"id":733961,"date":"2026-06-17T21:30:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/sepideh-moafi-says-the-frustration-around-the-pitt-points-to-a-bigger-hollywood-problem\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T21:30:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:30:35","slug":"sepideh-moafi-says-the-frustration-around-the-pitt-points-to-a-bigger-hollywood-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/sepideh-moafi-says-the-frustration-around-the-pitt-points-to-a-bigger-hollywood-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Sepideh Moafi Says the Frustration Around \u2018The Pitt\u2019 Points to a Bigger Hollywood Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tPerforming, at times, can mirror the energy of a busy emergency room in Pittsburgh\u2019s North Side, making endurance and stamina key. Both are something The Pitt <\/em>actress Sepideh Moafi says she picked up early as a stage performer before she became a fixture of the popular HBO series<\/a> as attending physician Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi. \u201cI think whenever you train in theater and opera, you know how to explore and express in a much more athletic, muscular way,\u201d she says. \u201cWith television and film, it\u2019s all distilled for the size of the camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the days before her TV career took off, her stage work \u2014 which she recently returned to for a monthlong run in the off-Broadway production of New Born<\/em> at Audible\u2019s Minetta Lane Theatre \u2014 was a defining experience. \u201cIt immedia<\/a>tely gave me a sense of belonging that was not attached to what I looked like. It was linked to my work ethic and natural talent,\u201d Moafi says. \u201cBut natural talent is not enough. You have to train, and I loved the training. I loved the falling and getting up and being humbled by this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, Moafi didn\u2019t realize how that training would lay the groundwork for a career mainly in TV and film. Shortly after getting her MFA from UC Irvine, she booked her first onscreen credit, a guest stint on CBS\u2019 Blue Bloods<\/em>. Other roles steadily followed, first a string of broadcast procedurals (Elementary<\/em>, The Good Wife<\/em>) and later streaming dramas (Black Bird<\/em>, The L Word: Generation Q<\/em>, Class of \u201909<\/em>). It was booking David Simon and George Pelecanos\u2019 HBO drama The Deuce<\/em> that gave Moafi her first sense of visibility on a set.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEverybody had the same intention, which was that we\u2019re all there to do the best work possible, and this is a team,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI work well in those kinds of environments, when people put their egos at the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a fledgling performer, Moafi says series like The Wire<\/em>, The Sopranos<\/em> and Six Feet Under<\/em> showed her real people. \u201cThey were mostly white people, but they were worlds that felt accessible. People who were explored through an untraditional lens, or people living on the margins \u2026 who are repressing, hiding. That\u2019s something I\u2019m interested in,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d always associated film and TV with celebrity, with beauty, whiteness and glamour. These genres really opened my eyes to my own potential in this medium.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tSepideh Moafi as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi on The Pitt.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarrick Page\/HBOMAX<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe Pitt<\/em>, then, is a fitting gig, with its gritty portrayal of a hustling ER full of vulnerable patients and clinicians collectively muscling through. Fans of the show, however \u2014 and its particular representation of women of color \u2014 have called into question whether a series of cast departures (Tracy Ifeachor, Supriya Ganesh) indicate a kind of treatment on the HBO medical drama. For Moafi, the answer lies within the very foundation of the series.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve known since season one that Dr.\u202fRobby [Noah Wyle] is our anchor in the show. \u2026 The world has always lived around him and through his point of view, and that\u2019s been television since I\u2019ve been here,\u201d she says. \u201cRecently, Cate Blanchett said something like, \u2018There are still 10 women on set against 70 men.\u2019 It\u2019s disproportionate. So this is not about this show. It\u2019s about the culture. It\u2019s a system in which misogyny and patriarchy are baked in so well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress is firm in that \u201cthe setup for The Pitt <\/em>wouldn\u2019t have been made without Noah Wyle and Dr. Robby\u201d but adds, \u201cThe people who feel a similar frustration around the way that Hollywood expresses itself over and over again, we [need to] sit down with our fucking pens and our computers and become the solution, like Issa Rae, Michaela Coel and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, because there are certain ideas about women and their place that are subconscious, especially for women of color.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMoafi has, in her own way, been doing that for years. The Iranian actress says she\u2019s felt proud \u201cevery time I got to change a casting director or producer\u2019s mind about if this character\u2019s supposed to be this color or this shape.\u201d She\u2019s also helped define other aspects of characters\u2019 identities. For example, for Dr. Al-Hashimi, Moafi tapp<\/a>ed into her experience as a child of\u00a0refugees\u00a0and as an International Rescue Committee ambassador\u00a0for her character\u2019s work with Doctors Without Borders. She also helped the writers capture the nuance of a multicultural doctor with temporal lobe epilepsy.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tMoafi\u202fwith Shawn Hatosy (center) and Noah Wyle, who star as Drs. Jack Abbot and Michael \u201cRobby\u201d Robinavitch.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cDr. Al-Hashimi was written as being of Iranian descent, but she had an Iraqi or an Arab name. So I asked if we could do half-Iranian and half-Iraqi,\u201d she says. \u201cI have friends who are half-Iranian and half-Iraqi living with that cultural similarity but also dissonance. The way that these two countries have been at war with each other, both have been bombed by the U.S., both have lived with war, displacement and collective trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s entry points like this that have given Moafi a pathway to generate the visibility viewers often yearn for.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEven though I haven\u2019t lived with some kind of disability, I have lived with lifelong shame and hiding and being embarrassed and being othered and being told I don\u2019t belong or being discriminated against,\u201d she says. \u201cI haven\u2019t lived in war, but my parents have. They\u2019ve lived under revolution, under political persecution. It\u2019s in my DNA. Tapping into that, it\u2019s almost like shining a light on certain parts that exist inside and bringing that out so that these specificities become more of the collective experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Performing, at times, can mirror the energy of a busy emergency room in Pittsburgh\u2019s North Side, making endurance and stamina key. Both are something The Pitt actress Sepideh Moafi says she picked up early as a stage performer before she became a fixture of the popular HBO series as attending physician Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi. \u201cI…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":733962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Pitt_Publicity_120725_RK_0378v1-credit-Richard-Knapp-H-2026.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[5519,22333,162523,162860,149486,162072],"class_list":["post-733961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-awards","tag-emmy-awards","tag-emmys-2026","tag-sepideh-moafi","tag-the-pitt","tag-thr-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}