Jennifer Stone Auditioned for The Pitt — While Working a Real Nursing Shift
Jennifer Stone, who played Harper Finkle on the Disney Channel sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place from 2007 to 2012, auditioned for a series regular role on the medical drama The Pitt. She revealed the audition on the CHEERS! with Avery podcast, hosted by Avery Woods, an upcoming star of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County (The Hollywood Reporter).
Stone has worked as an emergency room nurse since 2022 and took on a separate role as a disaster relief registered nurse in 2023. She told the podcast she studied her The Pitt audition lines during a nursing shift, squeezing in practice during brief pockets of downtime while waiting for a patient to be admitted (The Hollywood Reporter).
The audition hit close to home — almost painfully so. Stone said The Pitt was so similar to her own nursing work that she nearly had a panic attack while reading the lines. She has also said she finds the show hard to watch because it is too close to her lived experience (The Hollywood Reporter).
Stone did not land the series regular role. The Pitt, a real-time emergency department drama, debuted on Max in January 2025 and has been renewed for a second season.
Acting and nursing have run in parallel for Stone, not in sequence. She did not quit acting to become a nurse; she balances both careers (People). She has described the two fields as both empathetic, calling empathy imperative in nursing and essential in acting (People). She began her emergency room nursing work at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a transition she discussed on the friends.and.enemas podcast in October 2025 (TikTok).
Stone also reprised her role as Harper Finkle for the final season of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, the reboot of the original Disney Channel series (The Hollywood Reporter). The reboot wrapped its run while Stone continued to work nursing shifts between filming.
What makes Stone's The Pitt audition striking is the overlap between the role she was reading for and the job she was working between takes. A medical drama that mirrors your daily shift is unusual casting territory — and Stone's account of nearly having a panic attack while running lines makes clear how thin the line was between performance and memory.
