Jun 2, 2026 · 51 min · 19 segments
What does it take to create culture-defining entertainment that not only attracts loyal viewers but wins accolades as well? We’ve asked Sarah Aubrey, Head of Original Programming for HBO Max. The…
Sarah AubreyGuest
Karen FinermanHost
That is the beginning of every great show, and I think that's one of the secret sauces of HBO Max is that we really take our time with getting a show right on the page before we move ahead.
And recently, we have a medical show called The Pitt that, as we were just talking about-
And I think there are a couple ways in which The Pitt exemplifies the writing that we're looking for.
First of all, um, the creators of the show, Scott Gemmill, John Wells, and Noah Wiley, came to us with a very specific reason for wanting to do the show, which is they had, during COVID and after COVID, been reached out to by scores of medical professionals saying that COVID has fundamentally changed the practice of medicine, and frankly, we are suffering.
Between the number of people that left the profession after COVID, the psychological wounds that were left on the remaining doctors, nurses, orderlies after COVID, and then as we also know, emergency rooms have become the first line of healthcare for many, many people, so the overcrowding of those emergency rooms, and then the corporatization of the medical practice.
So you have these corporate owners of hospitals putting increasing pressures on making a profit while trying to save people's lives.
And so I think the confluence of all of those factors led to these impassioned letters, and I think it made and inspired, um, John and Scott and Noah to go into the show with a very specific lens.
Even if they don't know anything about the subject, the more specific you are, it somehow becomes more universal.
They had a great sense of who these characters would be under this particular pressure.
And then the other piece of it was they wanted to be relentlessly accurate about portraying the medicine.
That is the beginning of every great show, and I think that's one of the secret sauces of HBO Max is that we really take our time with getting a show right on the page before we move ahead.
And recently, we have a medical show called The Pitt that, as we were just talking about-
And I think there are a couple ways in which The Pitt exemplifies the writing that we're looking for.
First of all, um, the creators of the show, Scott Gemmill, John Wells, and Noah Wiley, came to us with a very specific reason for wanting to do the show, which is they had, during COVID and after COVID, been reached out to by scores of medical professionals saying that COVID has fundamentally changed the practice of medicine, and frankly, we are suffering.
Between the number of people that left the profession after COVID, the psychological wounds that were left on the remaining doctors, nurses, orderlies after COVID, and then as we also know, emergency rooms have become the first line of healthcare for many, many people, so the overcrowding of those emergency rooms, and then the corporatization of the medical practice.
So you have these corporate owners of hospitals putting increasing pressures on making a profit while trying to save people's lives.
And so I think the confluence of all of those factors led to these impassioned letters, and I think it made and inspired, um, John and Scott and Noah to go into the show with a very specific lens.
Even if they don't know anything about the subject, the more specific you are, it somehow becomes more universal.
They had a great sense of who these characters would be under this particular pressure.
And then the other piece of it was they wanted to be relentlessly accurate about portraying the medicine.
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