Jennifer Stone: Wizards of Waverly Place star turned nurse auditioned for The Pitt

The Pitt audition was a little too real

Stone, who played Harper Finkle in Wizards of Waverly Place from 2007 to 2012, began working as an ER nurse in 2022 and added a role as a disaster relief registered nurse in 2023.

Speaking on the CHEERS! with Avery podcast, she said she read for one of the series regulars when the show first came out — squeezing the script in mid-shift.

“As I often do, I was reading the script and working on lines while we were waiting for a patient to get admitted, kind of in those brief little pockets of time that you have.”

- Jennifer Stone

Jennifer Stone says The Pitt is 'too close to home'

The audition did not come easily. Stone said the show was so true to her day job that reading the pilot's final pages, in which Noah Wyle's character suffers Covid flashbacks, left her close to panic: “I started having, like, the heavy breathing and I started having to do the, OK, this is the floor, that's a table. Like, I started having to like talk myself down.”

“I have a hard time watching it 'cause it's too close to home a little bit,” she added, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Stone recently returned to acting alongside the day job, reprising Harper for the final season of reboot Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, proof the nostalgia boom is in full swing, with an Inbetweeners reunion also reportedly in the works.