“Give me a call back, HBO!”
Brittany Allen says with a smile, on a Zoom call from the Pasadena backyard where she lives with her husband and raises their 3-year-old son. The cable network hasn’t been in touch since she learned, through her now-former publicist, that she would not be part of its Emmy submission package for the medical drama “The Pitt.”
So she submitted herself.
Allen plays Roxie, a dying wife and mother who arrives in the trauma bay during the show’s second season. The role was written for six episodes, then two more were added, and Allen spent weeks unsure whether she would surface in what would have been Roxie’s eighth, lying in frame as a body after the character succumbs to cancer. Had that scene aired, it could have pushed her past the threshold for guest drama actress and forced her into supporting drama actress, where she would compete against reigning champion Katherine LaNasa and contenders Sepideh Moafi, Taylor Dearden and Isa Briones.
“I was waiting to see if they would include that scene they had shot,” Allen says. “When I saw that they just had her pass away off camera, first of all, I thought that was a beautiful decision creatively. And then it opened the door for me to be eligible, which was, oh my God, exciting.”
