Australian actor Shabana Azeez says the most disgusting thing she saw on the set of The Pitt was American coffee, describing it as “bad over there”. In a video interview for the 10 Chaotic Questions series, she also discussed posing as a patient for medical schools, having multiple birthdays on The Airport Chaplain and her love of a lesser-known Strokes song.
Drilling into a skull on set
Asked about the most disgusting thing she witnessed on The Pitt, Azeez said: “I mean, American coffee. It’s bad over there. The de-gloved leg was gross. I saw a full vaginal birth. I drilled into a skull!”
She admitted she enjoyed the experience, saying: “I did like that. I really liked that. But, actually, I broke the rig. I haven’t spoken about this publicly, actually. It was, like, a US$75,000 rig.”
Explaining what happened, she said: “When you shoot, you shoot the same thing over again … and we’re shooting my coverage on my face. We’re not looking at the rig, so I have to fake it, right? So I faked it a bunch of times. And then we were shooting the rig’s coverage, and they went: ‘Do it.’ And I only knew how tough it is to drill through an actual human skull because I’d talked to a bunch of doctors [about] how much force I should be putting on it. So I start doing it like I would a human skull. But this thing on the inside is made of styrofoam or something. So I go clean into that guy’s head. And it’s just silent.”
She added: “It was horrible. In a car crash, I wouldn’t have that much adrenaline. I regret everything.”
Airport seatmates and celebrity encounters
In her new show The Airport Chaplain, Azeez runs an airport. Asked who would be the worst two people to sit between on a plane, she said: “Sorry, Elmo. I love Elmo, I really do. But imagine that guy laughing for 15 hours straight from one side of you. Kermit on the other side – no no no no no. Kermit and Miss Piggy. And they’ve just had a divorce.”
Her most cringe-worthy run-in with a celebrity happened while shooting The Pitt season one. She said: “I’d never been to LA before. I didn’t know celebrities were real … It was post-strike, post-Covid. It was empty. Then Abbott Elementary started shooting, and I love Abbott Elementary. Quinta Brunson makes that show, she’s amazing. She just worked really hard, and she represents really good stuff to me. And she walked past me one day. I came out of the sound station, she walked past me, and I went, ‘Ah!’ I screamed, and I fell to my knees. And Jalen [Thomas Brooks, who plays Mateo] came running out of his trailer and was like, ‘What happened? Who died? Who’s hurt?’ And it was just Quinta Brunson walking past me.”
Asked if she could shrink any person to sit on her shoulder for life, she chose Martin Scorsese, saying: “And then I start directing, and I’m really good.”
Simulated patient and secret talents
Azeez said her most recently played song is Machu Picchu by the Strokes, explaining: “I get really obsessed with songs. I’ll just listen to one song for two weeks straight. Right now, one of my favourite songs from my childhood is Machu Picchu by the Strokes. Nobody likes that song by the Strokes. It’s not one of their most popular songs but, for me, it tickles a part of my brain.”
Her strangest job was as a simulated patient for medical schools. She said: “It was different every day. Some days you have appendicitis, so you’d have reflex pain or tenderness. When they figured out I could cry on cue, they’d give me a silicone baby, and my baby would be sick, and I would just cry. You’d be in a room with a one-way mirror, like an interrogation room. All the students would sit in the tutorial room, and I would sit in the other room, and students would come in three at a time and try to navigate the situation. Everybody thinks they can handle it, and then you start crying in front of them, and they panic. It was really fun.”
Asked about a nemesis, she said: “Honestly, me from five minutes ago. It’s so hard being alive, and I have to live with me.”
Birthdays and pop culture opinions
On the last time she lied, she said: “I lie all the time. I love it. I think it’s so fun. Never genuine lies. But I’ll just be like: ‘I’m 45 years old.’ And I’ll double down until they believe me. I actually had three birthdays on the set of The Airport Chaplain. That was fun. That was a good week. I had three birthdays in one week. And eventually I was the boy who cried wolf. By the time it was actually my birthday, nobody cared.”
Her most controversial pop culture opinion is that people should care less about pop culture. She said: “I’m so sorry, but what is it contributing to us? There’s war, there are things happening in the world that matter. And then there are people being like, ‘Who wore this dress better?’ Who cares? Who actually cares?”
She added: “Comedy has a place. Art has a place. I don’t want to do pop culture a discredit by being like, ‘It’s all vapid’, because it’s not. Pop culture can illuminate our culture in a way. It’s like holding up a mirror to who we actually are. What do we care about? What are we doing? We can have genuine conversations about this. But, ‘We like this girl because she is pretty’, is a waste of everybody’s time.”
Reflecting on her own work, she said: “I’ve been very lucky. My bigger projects have been really impact-driven. My first film was about coercive control and gendered violence in domestic relationships. My second film was about queer joy. It was really fun and silly, and a different way of having impact. My first big TV show is about gun control in season one, and then violence against healthcare workers in season two. So there’s a real political impact-driven statement there.”
The Airport Chaplain is on SBS and SBS On Demand in Australia and Netflix globally from 26 August.
