Going into season two of The Pitt, Noah Wyle felt that all the characters were a “little too perfect,” says Katherine LaNasa, who plays Nurse Dana. “He really wanted to flip that and show people being more just burned out and frustrated and not doing their best and having conflict. So there was definitely an effort to show that more human side of people.”

Dana’s emotions have been clear since the start of the medical drama, but her arc this year focused more on her anger at the hospital due to trauma from her assault, mentoring the new nurse Emma, and her ongoing concern for the abandoned baby, a.k.a. “Baby Jane Doe.”

Here, LaNasa reveals what’s going through Dana’s mind in the season two finale, what it meant to her filming the rape kit scenes, and what she’s hoping for in The Pitt season three.

The final shot we see of Dana this season is her on the roof watching the fireworks with her fellow nurses. What was filming that scene like?

That [we filmed] right after the Emmys. We all went to Pittsburgh, and all I had to do in Pittsburgh was that shot. I was probably there about two days and we all went out one night and we had dinner. Another day, Fiona [Dourif, who plays Dr. Cassie McKay] and I went shopping, I bought myself this little pinky ring. By the time we got to shooting that night shot on the third day, I was like, “I don’t want to go to work. I’m just hanging out in Pittsburgh with my friends!” It was really cool to have a field trip. After we won, we got to all go hang out. The work isn’t too rigorous usually in Pittsburgh. It’s just a lot of connective tissue.

Dana is quite emotional on the roof. What do you think is going through her mind after this very long day?

There’s a lot going on. The ICE thing is really heavy; it’s the Fourth of July and probably, like a lot of other people, [Dana is] really overwhelmed about the state of the country. That’s probably really hard. And, being unable to really reach Robbie—and to feel confident that he’s going to be okay. He’s a partner, almost like a spouse that she’s had for so many decades. It’s a little bit of, “If he’s not okay, I’m not okay. And if he’s not here, I don’t know what this place is.” It’s a very interdependent relationship. When we were in those scenes when Dana got really upset with him in [episode] 12, there was a feeling of abandonment—the concept that he would possibly do something to himself and leave [Dana alone]. It’s very disturbing.

Do you think Dana believes Robbie won’t return from his “sabbatical”?

Yeah, I think she’s genuinely upset about it and he just feels very untethered. I don’t think she thinks it’s a great idea for him to go out there alone. It’s like an Anthony Bourdain situation. You know what I mean? You shouldn’t be out there all by yourself.

Now you’ve played Dana for 30 episodes. What’s your favorite thing about her?

I like that I get to bring the perspective that I have as a woman of 59 years that’s raised children, that’s lived a lot of life, that’s been with family members while they died, that’s had disease and loss. There’s an understanding that I have as a person and a perspective that there’s room for me to draw upon in Dana. When you’re younger, because you’ve lived less time, not because you’re less smart, the perspective is narrower. When you’re older, it’s bigger and problems have a different size. So to be able to support and make decisions based from this broader perspective is something that Dana does with the younger nurses and doctors. I really like that part of her.

And then I like the ragtag street fight impression of Dana. I like the lack of preciousness and the imperfection. I like the anger that creeps through. I like that I get to play someone that’s so complicated that she’s not in a box of “here’s the compassionate, nice nurse that we can always depend upon.” Sometimes she is, and sometimes she’s yelling at you. She just feels like your mom, or your grandmother. I feel like everybody’s got one of these women in their life.

The scenes in which that Dana’s doing the rape kit are some of the most impactful of the whole series so far.

The nurses that I studied at the Rape Treatment Center in Santa Monica, it’s part of UCLA Health, were really remarkable. They also have the Stewart House, for juvenile victims of sexual assault, they’re just across the street from one another. The whole building is designed in a very thoughtful way. It’s all very patient centered, and the way that they approach doing the rape kits and everything was very patient centered.

I visited and then I went back again once I got the rape kit to have them go through the rape kit with me. So I really had some technical knowledge of how to do it. And when they were doing it, the way that they talked about why they would do this and then they wouldn’t do that. “You wouldn’t say that to the patient, wouldn’t say that in front of the patient. You would cover them like this, you would do that.” There was a lot of understanding about how they put the emotional state of the patient at the forefront of taking the kit and how thoughtful they were. Sometimes when you ask medical professionals how they feel about something, they can’t answer you very well. But when you ask them what they do in these situations, they’ll say, “I do this because…,” and so then you understand their psychological process because they’re not thinking about how they feel. They’re thinking about how the patient feels or they’re thinking about what they need to get done in the situation. But when you ask them, “What would you do here? And what would you do here?” There was so much compassion coming out of these people and so much thoughtfulness that I’m really glad that people have responded. I honestly just try to depict the truth as I see it.

What was it like filming those quieter scenes, instead of being in the busy emergency room main set?

Oh my god, you have no idea. I was sick; I had a root canal and a tooth pulled. So I had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off, and then we shoot triage is on a different stage. So everything we shoot in triage, we shoot in one or two days per episode. So I had a couple of days off, which is rare for me. And then on that, and I had spent the time at the dentist having all this work done in my mouth. It all happened at one time. And I had some kind of head cold, like bad flu. And then I worked Thursday and Friday doing these scenes, and then the Emmys were Sunday.

It was this really, really energized, taxing experience all around playing this thing. So [those scenes were] this nice, quiet bubble in a way, but the girl that played the victim was a girl named Tina [Ivlev], and she was such a beautiful actress and she was so emotionally full at every moment and a very sophisticated actress, I might add, that I personally felt so protective of her. It just fed into it. The pot was boiling just right; I was like, “Nobody come in here and make too much noise. Nobody poke at this person. Does she feel secure? Does she feel well taken care of, protected intimacy-wise? What do we do to just protect what’s going on here?” So it fed really nicely into each other.

We had a wonderful female director, Uta Briesewitz, she was a DP and she really cares about these details. Some of the moments we just found on the day when the patient leaves and Dana’s really upset, I didn’t even know that was going to happen. They just kept the camera on and we got to have those moments. So the whole thing was nice in the sense that we’re on this swing stage, nobody’s around. It’s just us for three days. So it really served the nature of the scene.

You mentioned you felt protective of Tina, just like Dana felt protective of her character Ilana; how much has playing Dana bled into your real life? What attributes of Dana have stayed with you?

Playing the character, you’re always playing against someone that is in trauma. And so you’re bringing up this compassionate and open part of yourself. It’s really made me more compassionate and aware on the daily that you don’t know what people are going through. We are constantly looking at storylines of people that can’t afford healthcare, that have a dying loved one. And it’s allowed me to give people more grace out in the world because every day Dana is dealing with a story of someone having the worst day of their life. So if you were reading a book like that for seven months straight, you would be thinking about that, about your fellow man. It’s helped me in that way.