When I introduced Katherine LaNasa as a journeyman actor who has turned in the time and been on so many shows and movies that we know, and that we don’t know, she laughed and said she has been called a wilderness actor — someone who has been on so many series without a lot of recognition that she could be a forest ranger at this point. Well, her time has finally come with her Emmy-winning role as Charge Nurse Dana Evans in the HBO and Max uber-hit The Pitt. Now she is nominated again for Season 2 in Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.
LaNasa joins me today for the latest edition of my Deadline video series The Actor’s Side to talk about why so many people have connected with this character and her performance, as well as her long career in and out of the spotlight. That includes a large group of regular roles in TV shows you may not have even seen including Love Monkey, Deception, Satisfaction, Imposters and Three Sisters, and even one HBO series co-starring Lily Tomlin and a stellar cast from Designing Women creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason that was shot but never saw the light of day on HBO, a series she wishes people could have seen called 12 Miles of Bad Road.
Watch on Deadline
We also talk about her movies including acting for Robert Duvall in Jayne Mansfield’s Car; opposite Nicolas Cage and John Cusack in Frozen Ground; and playing Will Ferrell’s wife in Jay Roach’s hilarious political comedy The Campaign, which she notes is oddly even more relevant today in the Trump era than when it came out in 2012.
Of course there is much to say about her work in The Pitt: a rape survivor storyline and the unique nature of the show, its upcoming third season, and being Emmy nominated this year against three of her co-stars among other topics. We talk about her beginnings in ballet, assisting the choreographer of legendary director Robert Wise’s final film Rooftops, and later acting for Dennis Hopper in her first notable role in Catchfire.
She met Hopper at age 20 and later married him (more than 30 years his junior), one of three famous acting husbands with whom she has walked down the aisle (French Stewart and now Grant Show are the others), and she talks about them, as well as her battle with breast cancer just before landing the job on The Pitt.
When I say there is so much more to this interview I mean it, so to watch our conversation and the get the “actor’s side” of things from Katherine LaNasa watch the video above.
Join me every Wednesday this season for a new episode of The Actor’s Side.