The Pitt: Shabana Azeez Breaks Down Dr. Javadi's Complicated Relationship With Her Mother, and How Episode 12 Changes the Show(Exclusive)

The Direct spoke with Shabana Azeez, who plays Dr. Javadi Azeez in The Pitt, and the actress helped break down the complicated relationship Javadi has with her mother.

In The Pitt, Dr. Javadi always has a heavy weight of pressure weighing her down throughout the shift—namely that of her mother, Eileen Shamsi (played by Deepti Gupta), a highly successful and well-known doctor. She's also an overbearing mother with sky-high expectations for her daughter.

Shabana Azeez Explains Dr. Javadi's Relationship to Her Mother In The Pitt

"I'm Not Going to Live My Life Trying to Be Impressive to You and Your Friends..."

• The Direct: "Dr. Javadi has a strenuous relationship with her mother, to say the least. In your own words, can you explain how that has affected how she performs throughout the hospital, both professionally, but also just on a social level?"

Shabana Azeez: I think I have this head cannon, I guess that, like Javaini, she graduated high school at 13, she started college at 13, and then she's sort of done med school and college at the right pace instead of accelerating them.

And I think that's really her putting her foot down with her mom and going, I'm not going to live my life trying to be impressive to you and your friends. She just wants community. She wants to have peers, but she's so isolated and lonely. And also because the drinking age is 21 in America, and she's 20.

And so I think for me, that their relationship is really her biggest battle of like, becoming an adult and trying to stand up for herself, and especially in an environment like an ER, which is so intense, I think her mother, and that pressure being there constantly is a real like, it paralyzes her, in a way, I think, and I hope Season 2 shows her break me out of that a bit.

• The Direct: "Do you feel like she wears a mask of sorts because of that pressure? Like, even with her co-workers—have we seen very little of her actual self? Is she kind of scared to be herself?"

Shabana Azeez: I think she doesn't quite know who she is yet. I don't think she's ever had enough freedom to explore if that makes sense. So, I think she's not hiding anything. I think she's too transparent... I think she's been too open to be hiding anything. I think she's just so stunted.

• The Direct: "I know there are often a lot of times where there are those parents that pressure their kids into certain careers or paths, especially if it was something they have done themselves. Is being a doctor something Javadi definitely wanted on her own accord, or did she kind of start down this path because of her mother?"

Shabana Azeez: I think it's so tangled up together. I think she's got a natural aptitude for it, and so, therefore, she likes—it's nice to be good at things, right? But also that pressure from her parents is so intense that I don't know that she ever consciously chose medicine.

And actually, that was a conversation we had before we started shooting of like, maybe this is Javadi's last day as a doctor. Maybe she's not super stoked about the blood everywhere.

• The Direct: "Episode 12, you finally snap, and you put your mother in her place. Can you kind of walk us through her mentality in that moment and what led her to finally just be like, Look, this has got to stop."

Shabana Azeez: I think that Javadi maybe, except when she faints in Episode 1, has risen [to the occassion] today, right? She's not fainted any other times [even if she had] plenty of reason to. [There are] tubes down throats, blood everywhere, etc.

And I think her mom never quite sees how impressive she is and how much she's trying, and also what is the right thing in the moment? I think in that moment, it was really something to yell at somebody in that situation. I was like, how am I gonna do this?

And the director kept being, like, be louder. Like, you need to be loud to stop everybody. It needs to be so many years of pent-up anger and exhaustion...I think perfect is the enemy of good. And I think Javadi knows that, and I think Eileen doesn't. I think she wants Javadi to be perfect at every term, but Javadi is, like, I'm doing this test.

It's so important. The stakes for doctors are so massive, and to prioritize the parent-daughter relationship time like that is insane, and you can tell her, I said that.

So yeah, I'm really proud of Javadi for, like, even if it wasn't very mature of her, even if she maybe should have been more diplomatic about it. I do think that in heightened moments, she's just a kid. She's like, 20.

• The Direct: "I can imagine it probably felt like, once you got into that, and you know, did the performance, it must have felt pretty good to to really put your foot down."

Shabana Azeez: I am not very good at raising my voice. And it was a very like, you know, you're mic'd up. I don't know, I actually really loved the scene in Episode 8 where I was right about the the Dilaudid, Diazepam, the drug—the spider bite, was really satisfying because Javadi was right.

I think there's something about her blowing up that was really difficult for somebody who's so held and like, beat down in so many ways, and small in so many ways. I think, hopefully, in Season 2, we get to explore more of her coming out of her shell in that way, and that might be fun, but it was scary. 

Shabana Azeez on How Episode 12 Changes the Show

"It's a Completely Different Show..."

• The Direct: "Episode 12 finally sees this big, intense event open up with this mass casualty. How did that change the vibes on set at all, just for you as an actor, and affect the way you approached your own performance? When it goes okay, instead of a casual ER, now it's like a mass casualty. It's 10 times worse. How did that change everything?"

Shabana Azeez: It's a completely different show... Because, you know, every day is the same day. So all of our background, the 100 background we had every day, were the exact same. And then on one Thursday, they were just wheeled out ne by one, and we never saw them again.

And then 100 new people came, and they were all half naked, with tubes in them. And we didn't know these people. And we've gotten so comfortable. We have extra cameras, so new crew, like, it was just a completely different place. And also, it was just covered in blood. I'm like, not slipping over the  blood, it was fake blood. It was real liquid on the ground.

And there was fake, there's mats of liquid on the ground. I don't even know how they did that stuff. It was crazy. And so it was just like chaos. It felt like, I mean, it wasn't like the real situation, obviously, but it was, going to work was a different beast.

• The Direct: "Your character also comes up with some unconventional methods on the show, just in terms of treating patients in just the moment. I was curious, what do some of the real doctors [think], because you guys have consultants on set and all that. What do they think of some of those things? Were those suggested by them? What were those thoughts?"

Shabana Azeez: Yeah, they were. Are we talking about the tube in Episode 12? That episode was written by our showrunner and by Joe Sachs, our head doctor, and MedTech, and yeah, he had all these great thoughts for me about the ways that she would laterally think and be really fun with. It was awesome having those doctors. 

• The Direct: "[This] question is going to be, it's going to be a softball for you. What makes Dr Javadi a great doctor?"

Shabana Azeez: What makes Dr Javadi a great doctor? She's so smart, but she's not egotistical. She's happy to do the things she's the worst at... She's happy to go into a room full of blood, even though she can't handle that, she's happy to try to [try] all the things she's horrible at, she doesn't shy away from [them].

And I think that's what you want in a doctor, because you take that issue, she's not going to hide away from the bit she's uncomfortable with. She might faint, but...

The Pitt's Shabana Azeez on Her Hopes for Dr. Javadi In Season 2

"I'm The Only Person On The Cast Who Didn't Get a Patient All Season..."

• The Direct: "We've mentioned it a few times, but just with Season 2, [which is renewed and happening], just hypothetically, what do you want to explore most with Dr. Javadi, with the new season? Is there an element of her life that we haven't seen yet that you would really love to get a glimpse into?"

Shabana Azeez: Yeah, I actually there were some scenes that have been cut with Javadi trying to make friends, and I think it's really important as much as like we, you know, the Mateo scenes didn't get cut, like her trying to have a connection with Mateo, but she really does make a real effort with Samira in Season 1 that we don't see and a few other people, but mostly with Samira. And I love Supriya [Ganesh], and so it would be really nice to watch Javadi try socially in other ways, learn socially in other ways, and have that inform how she deals with patients.

Because I am also the only doctor or med student, but I'm the only person on the cast who didn't get a patient all season, walking in on day one and seeing all those massive boards and being like, one day Javadi's name will be up there like never happened. And so Season 2 [I hope] she's gonna get a patient, and she's gonna make a friend.

The full interview can be viewed here:

The Pitt is now streaming on Max.

Be sure to check out some more of The Direct's conversations with the cast of The Pitt:

• The Pitt Star Patrick Ball Explains the Real Reason Why Dr. Langdon Stole That Medicine
• The Pitt Episode 10's Big Dr. Langdon Twist Explained by Actor (Exclusive)
• The Pitt Star Reveals Why Dr. King Is So Good at Dealing With Problematic Patients (Exclusive)