Patrick Ball paid off $80,000 student loans after landing The Pitt role

3 hours ago 4

As I’ve previously bemoaned, watching season two of The Pitt in real time, week-to-week, is not as satisfying as last year when I stumbled upon the show late and was able to binge season one. (I know I know, the struggle is real.) So I’m still watching, but am eagerly awaiting the season finale so I can go back and give season two a proper binge. Thankfully, we’re only one week away! Meanwhile Patrick Ball, who plays Dr. Langdon, is already on to his next project. He just made his Broadway debut in Becky Shaw, a big deal for any actor, and especially for Patrick who’s spent most of his career working in regional theater. Patrick just did an interview with Cultured magazine, and a very emotional part has been making headlines: the fact that he was able to pay off his debt of $80,000 in student loans after landing his role on The Pitt.

“I paid off my student loans like three months into The Pitt, and that was a really profound moment ‘cause I thought I was gonna die with it,” Ball said, pausing as he began to cry. “It’s a huge burden to carry, and a lot of people carry it.”

The actor said the financial strain had long weighed on him, even affecting his personal life.

“I was $80,000 in debt and I had been through a series of failed relationships where my financial insecurity was a real problem,” he explained. “I had just thought that was going to be my life forever, and that is a really heavy thing to live with.”

Paying off the debt marked a turning point for him. “Man if this show works, great. If it doesn’t work, they can’t take that away from me,” he told Cultured. “I am out of debt. No take-backsies on that.”

…Before booking the role, Ball, 36, said he was considering stepping away from acting altogether.

“About six months before The Pitt came in, I was living in New Haven with my ex,” he told Cultured. “We’d been together for three years and we were really struggling with coming up with a vision of the future. Working as an actor, you don’t know what’s coming, have no money — the financial outlook can be bleak.”

At the time, he explored other career paths, including potentially joining the FBI or the Merchant Marines, and even considered working at a fishing camp in Alaska. After his relationship ended, he returned to North Carolina and was offered a fundraising job at High Point University.

“I was like, ‘Well, this is a $100,000 a year job. I’m gonna have to wear a suit and go to fundraising dinners for a living, which I hate because there’s nothing more inauthentic to who I am, but it’s a job, it’s a life, and I cannot be too broke to marry again,’” he said.

Instead, Ball chose to pursue one more acting opportunity after being invited by Moisés Kaufman to perform in a play in Miami. … During that time, he met his partner, Elysia, who also went on to appear in an episode of The Pitt, and the two traveled together before he returned to New York, where he worked multiple jobs to get by.

“I was working at a coffee shop, I was working at a restaurant, I was working as a wardrobe assistant for And Just Like That… I was doing these corporate coaching seminars,” he said.

Those seminars came with an unusual twist. “They would bring me in as an actor so that these administrators could get practice firing someone,” Ball said. “So I have been fired more than anyone you’ve ever met, I promise you. I’ve been fired thousands of times.”

[From People]

Oh man, those corporate gigs can be so trippy. A friend of mine did something similar, he worked for a med school playing a patient for student doctors. They’d give him an ear piece and tell him symptoms to exhibit. It was actually an invaluable education: if those student doctors could handle my friend, they could handle anything! As for Patrick’s story, it’s the classic actor’s tale of one call changing your life. The extremes most actors live through are awfully punishing, all in the hopes of being one of the 2% who eventually get that life-changing call. I hadn’t read many interviews with Patrick before this one with Cultured, and it was great to get to know him through the piece. The biggest takeaway is how much of a theater nerd he is. Funnily enough, though he and Isa Briones (Dr. Santos) are at loggerheads on screen, they both share the theater kid gene, and Patrick talked glowingly about seeing Isa recently in Just in Time, also on Broadway now. I won’t get too spoilery, but I do wish there had been even more Langdon-Santos drama this season, just cause they’re both so good.

PS — Patrick worked as a wardrobe assistant?! That makes the fit of his suit at the Critics Choice Awards even more of a fashion crime.