April 22, 2026 • 11 mins
Walden School and Stage One Family Theatre grad Emma Pfitzer Price jumped back onto WHAS Radio with Terry Meiners to update her life. She currently appears as Dr. Hannah Clark on "DOC" (2025, Fox TV) and has many other prominent roles on stage and screen.
Emma is coming home to help Walden School celebrate it's 50th anniversary. Congrats to Emma as her star keeps rising!
Emma is coming home to help Walden School celebrate it's 50th anniversary. Congrats to Emma as her star keeps rising!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
First, though, we want to talk to another prominent Louisvillion
making her mark around the world. Emma Fitzer Price. Welcome
to Whas.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
It's good to have you on. You're back on in
your hometown.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I know it and for everyone listening. Terry and I
did an interview. I guess it was ten years ago.
It was like this time of year, ten years ago.
But that yeah, we were doing that to celebrate Walden
Theater and our American Shakespeare Festival, and I was I
had just found out I had gotten into Juilliard. So
(00:40):
it's just so serendipitous ticket to you know, it's very
full circle.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Well, you're one of the few people I know who's
ever made it to Juilliard. So first off, I have
a couple of questions about that, you know, I mean,
here you are going to this this mecca for actors,
you know, artists. Do you pack your life lunch to
your brown bag? How does that work? At Juilliard?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So you know, they combine bfas and MFAs. You're all
in one class of eighteen actors and for the bfas
something that they do to kind of help with that transition.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
From high school.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Or from wherever else you were. They have you live
in the dorms that first year, and it's actually right
on top of the School of American Ballet. Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
So you and the ballet dancers, you know, go to
the cafeteria.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And you meet all these really really cool artists in
New York, these young people, and it really helped that
transition that that first year coming from Kentucky to the
huge Yeah, Mecca is a great bard and for New
York City itself, you know, it's a big transition.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I would say. So, yeah, that's a little culture shock here.
By the way, in your bios off times they mentioned
Kentucky and West Virginia. Were you born in West Virginia
and then moved over here.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, I was actually born in Huntington, West Virginia, and
I moved to Louisville when I was eight, and then
I think I had a lot of speaking of transition blues.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
It was a really difficult.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Move for me as a kid, and you know, I
in school, I kind of got bullied.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
People would call me a haill billy. I wore pants
to school.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
You know, I was kind of this this outcast kid,
and my parents plunked me into Walden, and I think
it was just such a great place to celebrate the
imagination and like the great parts of having a really
(02:50):
boundless imagination. But my mom my mom always calls it
like a blessing and a curse. You know, if you
have a big imagination, you can.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Lead a really createive, artistic life.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
But the achilles heel of it is you can also imagine,
you know, the worst case scenario, and you can be
prone to anxiety. And I had really bad OCD as
a kid, and Walden was just this incredible conservatory for
children ages eight to eighteen that helped me foster my
(03:26):
imagination and feel a sense of belonging in Louisville and
the sense of community. I think at one point my
friends and italianated together and we were like, I think
we spend more time at Walden than we spend in
our own homes.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But I mean, the place is legendary and it has
it's nurtured a lot of really creative people. And I
know the fiftieth anniversary is coming up. That's why you're
coming home right May seventeenth.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yes, exactly, I'm going to be there. And the artistic
director and I Charlie Sexton to do a Q and
A for the community, which I'm so excited for. And yeah,
it's just a really great reason to come back home
and celebrate, celebrate what's going on there.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
That's fantastic. All right, let's talk about your busting into
show business because obviously you're here and you know, you
never know what's going to happen. When did the first
door open where you thought, oh, I'm on something here,
something's happening. I mean, was it a commercial?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I actually, I hate to say it, but there was
a lot of adversity, There were a lot of roadblocks.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
I graduated.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I graduated Juilliard in twenty twenty, and I had a
really incredible experience in the program. But we graduated in
May to a full blown pandemic.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
There was no work happening.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Oh yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Know, so we had a zoom graduate.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Everything we had trained for in pursuing a career to
be actors, everything was paused. So it was really it
was a really difficult time for me and.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
For my class. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Well, as being as young as you are, you you
could have thought that this is the way the rest
of my life's going.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
To be right, right, and I you know, we got
through that, and I think I learned a lot about
how you handle moments like that and how you keep
yourself focused on you know, this isn't a sprint.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
This is a marathon. Like I'm trying to pursue this
in a lifelong way.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I want to be an actor when I'm when I'm
ninety years old, you know. And we finally things started
coming back, and I did my first TV show it's
like a year after graduating, called American Rust. And actually
another Louisville native, Jennifer Carpenter, was a nut show too.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
We were filming in Pittsburgh and I got to run
into her, but.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Charlie Uh called me and he said, can can you
believe that you all are both Louible Natives and you
know your first TV show you all are.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
On the same screen.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah all right, Well, so you got this role anyone
on this Fox show? And that had to be big.
I mean, I guess some agent or somebody contacts you,
right and says you got this you audition or something,
and then somebody gives you this opportunity and then you
start working in your head. This is so weird. Are
you ever standing in front of a camera on a
sidewalk somewhere in a in this setting, your a hospital,
(06:36):
let's say, and you're just thinking, I can't believe I'd
do this for a living.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Oh yeah, every every single day, and also pinching myself like,
I'm so, I'm so grateful that, you know, despite the pandemic.
And then you know, there was an actors strike and
the writer's strike, so Hollywood was shut down for all
of that time too, So these were two huge, you know, roadblocks.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
So any opportunity I.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Have to get to be an artist and to do
my work, I'm so I'm so grateful because of all
the especially because of all the adversity and all the
hurdles you know, thrown this way. But it's fun.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
It's fun to get out and then stretch your creative
muscles and do all that. But it's you learn so
much with each experience because other people's brains are all
working on scripts, sets, all the other things, the you know,
the narrative of whatever the messaging is that you're you're
putting together, and so you're you get taken in a
(07:34):
new dimension every time there's a new project that's the
fun part about showbiz.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Exactly, you can it's the you know, we say as
actors were studying humanity. And it was so fun playing
a doctor because I I think, you know, my mom's
a doctor, and she always I think in the without
forcing me or applying pressure in the in the recesses
of her brain. She was really really hoped I'd get
(08:01):
into healthcare work and to be able to like do
this on a on a screen and kind of step
into the shoes of what it means to be a
healthcare worker in America right now. And it was really
really special.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, your show is called Doc and you're you are
doctor Hannah clark On there. Are you a rat sometimes
and a good person other times? Or you're a little
bit of everything, aren't you?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Exactly?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
In the in season two, you know, I come in
as a very high, strong, eager young intern, and it
turns out the the the character the show is based on,
doctor Amy Larson, who's played by the brilliant Molly Parker.
She I I realized that my I sort of have
(08:51):
this vendetta against her because I think she's at fault
for my dad's death, and.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
So I still, you know, I slowly but surely. It's
a great art.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
She starts to become the antagonist of the season and
seeking out revenge and being very impulsive about it.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
And then she has.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
This change of heart when she realizes doctor Larsen has
grief in her life, just like I do, and she
starts to feel incredibly guilty and remorseful and.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And yeah, and then it and then the two of you.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Being arrested like justice is served, and.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Then the shoot is over, and then everybody goes out
and has drinks and laughs about it.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
And we try to diagnose each other playing a doctor's
but you know, it gets you in your head about
you kind of get this.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
We're working with actual healthcare workers and.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Medical experts who are helping us put these medical sequences
together and advising us, and so you can't help, but
kind of you start to diagnose your friends.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
You're like, oh, oh, I think you should take this
and this, but it's what a real doctor first, of course.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Of course, not a doctor. Well, Emma, I'm so excited
for you that you get to come home and this
is fun, for your career is really blossoming, and I'm
just happy to see you. You know grow through these
stages of your career. I know more great things are
ahead for you.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Great talking to you again, em the Fitzer Price. You'll
be home on May seventeenth. You said you're going to
do a Q and a there for the Walden School's
fiftieth anniversary. This is an association with Stage one, of course,
and so this is just going to be a wonderful night.
And people can go to their website and a Walden
School and get tickets.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, if you go to Stage one dot org you
can you can buy a ticket, or you can make
a donation and help support, you know, another fifty years
of Walden. And it's something that's so important to me,
is funding the arts, and this is a great way
to to do it in your community.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
All right, what are you working on this week? Are
working this week? Or is this playing with the dog week?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Right now, I'm doing some prep work for I'm actually
doing a I guess a performance piece in Chicago that
is for Juilliard's free tuition campaign and I'm performing a
and Deverer Smith speech for that. So I'm learning a
(11:31):
long body of text and that's what I'm doing today.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
You are a good alum. All right, keep making us proud.
We're proud. I'll be here in louisvilemma. Great talking to
you again for having me. You bet you, Bud. Emma
Fitzer Price, she's on the TV show doc That's on Fox.
Back in a minute on news radio, waight forty wha
s
First, though, we want to talk to another prominent Louisvillion
making her mark around the world. Emma Fitzer Price. Welcome
to Whas.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
It's good to have you on. You're back on in
your hometown.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I know it and for everyone listening. Terry and I
did an interview. I guess it was ten years ago.
It was like this time of year, ten years ago.
But that yeah, we were doing that to celebrate Walden
Theater and our American Shakespeare Festival, and I was I
had just found out I had gotten into Juilliard. So
(00:40):
it's just so serendipitous ticket to you know, it's very
full circle.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Well, you're one of the few people I know who's
ever made it to Juilliard. So first off, I have
a couple of questions about that, you know, I mean,
here you are going to this this mecca for actors,
you know, artists. Do you pack your life lunch to
your brown bag? How does that work? At Juilliard?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So you know, they combine bfas and MFAs. You're all
in one class of eighteen actors and for the bfas
something that they do to kind of help with that transition.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
From high school.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Or from wherever else you were. They have you live
in the dorms that first year, and it's actually right
on top of the School of American Ballet. Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
So you and the ballet dancers, you know, go to
the cafeteria.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And you meet all these really really cool artists in
New York, these young people, and it really helped that
transition that that first year coming from Kentucky to the
huge Yeah, Mecca is a great bard and for New
York City itself, you know, it's a big transition.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I would say. So, yeah, that's a little culture shock here.
By the way, in your bios off times they mentioned
Kentucky and West Virginia. Were you born in West Virginia
and then moved over here.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, I was actually born in Huntington, West Virginia, and
I moved to Louisville when I was eight, and then
I think I had a lot of speaking of transition blues.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
It was a really difficult.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Move for me as a kid, and you know, I
in school, I kind of got bullied.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
People would call me a haill billy. I wore pants
to school.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
You know, I was kind of this this outcast kid,
and my parents plunked me into Walden, and I think
it was just such a great place to celebrate the
imagination and like the great parts of having a really
(02:50):
boundless imagination. But my mom my mom always calls it
like a blessing and a curse. You know, if you
have a big imagination, you can.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Lead a really createive, artistic life.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
But the achilles heel of it is you can also imagine,
you know, the worst case scenario, and you can be
prone to anxiety. And I had really bad OCD as
a kid, and Walden was just this incredible conservatory for
children ages eight to eighteen that helped me foster my
(03:26):
imagination and feel a sense of belonging in Louisville and
the sense of community. I think at one point my
friends and italianated together and we were like, I think
we spend more time at Walden than we spend in
our own homes.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But I mean, the place is legendary and it has
it's nurtured a lot of really creative people. And I
know the fiftieth anniversary is coming up. That's why you're
coming home right May seventeenth.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yes, exactly, I'm going to be there. And the artistic
director and I Charlie Sexton to do a Q and
A for the community, which I'm so excited for. And yeah,
it's just a really great reason to come back home
and celebrate, celebrate what's going on there.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
That's fantastic. All right, let's talk about your busting into
show business because obviously you're here and you know, you
never know what's going to happen. When did the first
door open where you thought, oh, I'm on something here,
something's happening. I mean, was it a commercial?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I actually, I hate to say it, but there was
a lot of adversity, There were a lot of roadblocks.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
I graduated.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I graduated Juilliard in twenty twenty, and I had a
really incredible experience in the program. But we graduated in
May to a full blown pandemic.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
There was no work happening.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Oh yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Know, so we had a zoom graduate.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Everything we had trained for in pursuing a career to
be actors, everything was paused. So it was really it
was a really difficult time for me and.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
For my class. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Well, as being as young as you are, you you
could have thought that this is the way the rest
of my life's going.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
To be right, right, and I you know, we got
through that, and I think I learned a lot about
how you handle moments like that and how you keep
yourself focused on you know, this isn't a sprint.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
This is a marathon. Like I'm trying to pursue this
in a lifelong way.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I want to be an actor when I'm when I'm
ninety years old, you know. And we finally things started
coming back, and I did my first TV show it's
like a year after graduating, called American Rust. And actually
another Louisville native, Jennifer Carpenter, was a nut show too.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
We were filming in Pittsburgh and I got to run
into her, but.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Charlie Uh called me and he said, can can you
believe that you all are both Louible Natives and you
know your first TV show you all are.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
On the same screen.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah all right, Well, so you got this role anyone
on this Fox show? And that had to be big.
I mean, I guess some agent or somebody contacts you,
right and says you got this you audition or something,
and then somebody gives you this opportunity and then you
start working in your head. This is so weird. Are
you ever standing in front of a camera on a
sidewalk somewhere in a in this setting, your a hospital,
(06:36):
let's say, and you're just thinking, I can't believe I'd
do this for a living.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Oh yeah, every every single day, and also pinching myself like,
I'm so, I'm so grateful that, you know, despite the pandemic.
And then you know, there was an actors strike and
the writer's strike, so Hollywood was shut down for all
of that time too, So these were two huge, you know, roadblocks.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
So any opportunity I.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Have to get to be an artist and to do
my work, I'm so I'm so grateful because of all
the especially because of all the adversity and all the
hurdles you know, thrown this way. But it's fun.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
It's fun to get out and then stretch your creative
muscles and do all that. But it's you learn so
much with each experience because other people's brains are all
working on scripts, sets, all the other things, the you know,
the narrative of whatever the messaging is that you're you're
putting together, and so you're you get taken in a
(07:34):
new dimension every time there's a new project that's the
fun part about showbiz.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Exactly, you can it's the you know, we say as
actors were studying humanity. And it was so fun playing
a doctor because I I think, you know, my mom's
a doctor, and she always I think in the without
forcing me or applying pressure in the in the recesses
of her brain. She was really really hoped I'd get
(08:01):
into healthcare work and to be able to like do
this on a on a screen and kind of step
into the shoes of what it means to be a
healthcare worker in America right now. And it was really
really special.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, your show is called Doc and you're you are
doctor Hannah clark On there. Are you a rat sometimes
and a good person other times? Or you're a little
bit of everything, aren't you?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Exactly?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
In the in season two, you know, I come in
as a very high, strong, eager young intern, and it
turns out the the the character the show is based on,
doctor Amy Larson, who's played by the brilliant Molly Parker.
She I I realized that my I sort of have
(08:51):
this vendetta against her because I think she's at fault
for my dad's death, and.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
So I still, you know, I slowly but surely. It's
a great art.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
She starts to become the antagonist of the season and
seeking out revenge and being very impulsive about it.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
And then she has.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
This change of heart when she realizes doctor Larsen has
grief in her life, just like I do, and she
starts to feel incredibly guilty and remorseful and.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
And yeah, and then it and then the two of you.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Being arrested like justice is served, and.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Then the shoot is over, and then everybody goes out
and has drinks and laughs about it.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
And we try to diagnose each other playing a doctor's
but you know, it gets you in your head about
you kind of get this.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
We're working with actual healthcare workers and.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Medical experts who are helping us put these medical sequences
together and advising us, and so you can't help, but
kind of you start to diagnose your friends.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
You're like, oh, oh, I think you should take this
and this, but it's what a real doctor first, of course.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Of course, not a doctor. Well, Emma, I'm so excited
for you that you get to come home and this
is fun, for your career is really blossoming, and I'm
just happy to see you. You know grow through these
stages of your career. I know more great things are
ahead for you.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Great talking to you again, em the Fitzer Price. You'll
be home on May seventeenth. You said you're going to
do a Q and a there for the Walden School's
fiftieth anniversary. This is an association with Stage one, of course,
and so this is just going to be a wonderful night.
And people can go to their website and a Walden
School and get tickets.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, if you go to Stage one dot org you
can you can buy a ticket, or you can make
a donation and help support, you know, another fifty years
of Walden. And it's something that's so important to me,
is funding the arts, and this is a great way
to to do it in your community.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
All right, what are you working on this week? Are
working this week? Or is this playing with the dog week?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Right now, I'm doing some prep work for I'm actually
doing a I guess a performance piece in Chicago that
is for Juilliard's free tuition campaign and I'm performing a
and Deverer Smith speech for that. So I'm learning a
(11:31):
long body of text and that's what I'm doing today.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
You are a good alum. All right, keep making us proud.
We're proud. I'll be here in louisvilemma. Great talking to
you again for having me. You bet you, Bud. Emma
Fitzer Price, she's on the TV show doc That's on Fox.
Back in a minute on news radio, waight forty wha
s
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