A missed opportunity turned into the biggest break of her life! 😳 Sepideh Moafi thought she was out, only to receive THE call that would change her fate forever.

The Pitt‘s Sepideh Moafi Details Her ‘Kind of Crazy’ Journey from a Refugee Camp to Hollywood (Exclusive)

Sepideh Moafi remembers the exact moment she landed her role in the second season of HBO Max’s The Pitt.

The actress, 40, was preparing to travel from New York to California to partake in a weeklong personal-growth retreat that required participants to give up their electronic devices, and she had yet to hear back from her big audition.

“I was resigned to the fact that maybe I didn’t have the role,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. But at 7 p.m. the night before her flight, she got the call. “I was elated, and I frantically packed even more, because I was going to be in California for not one week, but eight months.”

Moafi finished her retreat on a Saturday and began “medical boot camp” for the Emmy-winning drama two days later. “It was crazy but also just perfect,” she recalls.

Moafi has found inspiration in her character Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, a strong-willed physician who’s poised to replace Dr. Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) during his planned three-month sabbatical.

“She leads with pure intentions and she’s able to empathize with patients in a very personal way, and yet diagnose and see beyond what’s in front of her,” the actress says. “She can zoom out and zoom in quite beautifully—and sometimes I get stuck in the zoomed-in part.”

But that focus and persistence has also served Moafi, whose acting career began with an interest in opera when she was a teenager. “It grabbed my heart and pulled me forward,” she recalls. As she faced doubt from people in the industry — including her first agent — Moafi wouldn’t allow it to hold her back, and her “natural curiosity” drives her still.

Moafi was a baby when her parents came to the United States after fleeing Iran following the Islamic Revolution in the early 1980s. “For any refugee family, it’s rarely a choice. The circumstances were so dire that they were forced to leave,” she says of her parents’ journey, noting that they first went to Turkey and then refugee camps in Germany, where she was born in 1985.

“We were very lucky to have a community when we came here, but it’s a loss of identity in so many ways,” says Moafi, who considers English as her first language but also speaks Farsi.

Motivated by her early interest in opera, Moafi attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music but admits she grew “frustrated with the lack of priority given to acting.” After a teacher commented on her talent in that area, she became intrigued by the potential in performing “without the responsibility of singing.”

Roles in regional productions of Shakespeare — “my gateway drug into theater,” she says — and an MFA program at University of California Irvine followed.

After graduating in 2013, Moafi landed a guest spot on the CBS hit Blue Bloods, the first in a string of TV and movie gigs. “I couldn’t believe that I was living this life. And then I booked The Deuce,” she says.

The actress starred on the HBO drama for three seasons, and soon after its conclusion, she landed a part in 2019’s The L Word: Generation Q – the sequel to the groundbreaking Showtime hit from the aughts.

“I loved the freedom Gigi unleashed in me,” she says of her character.

Still, Moafi faced detractors. “My first agent wanted me to change my name,” she recalls. “It felt like they needed me to be someone different in order to work or to sell something. But I continued, and I ended up booking my first job and then my second and third and having a beautiful and varied career as a result.”

Next up, Moafi stars in Off-Broadway’s New Born with Hugh Jackman beginning May 8.

“People want dignity and a free future,” she says. “The emotional anchor in my life is my background, my parents and our history. It is a privilege to be of service.”

The Pitt airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.