Jennifer Stone, known for playing Harper Finkle in Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place, said she auditioned for a series-regular role in the Emmy-winning medical drama The Pitt. Her experience highlights the unusual overlap between her acting career and her current work as a nurse, as the show’s hospital setting and COVID-related material felt particularly close to her own professional life.

Stone said she studied the audition script during quiet moments on a nursing shift, while waiting for a patient to be admitted. She began working as an emergency-room nurse in 2022 and as a disaster-relief registered nurse in 2023; reading the script’s later scenes triggered anxiety, and she said she finds watching The Pitt difficult because of its realism. Stone starred in Wizards of Waverly Place from 2007 to 2012 and recently returned for the final season of its reboot, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place.