After 11 seasons playing Dr. John Carter on the hit medical show ER, actor Noah Wyle thought he was done with hospital scrubs. Then COVID-19 happened. Suddenly, Wyle began receiving letters from first responders, thanking him — and ER — for inspiring them to enter the field of medicine.
Wyle shared the letters with John Wells, the executive producer of ER, along with the hint of a proposal: "If you ever want to make a show about what's happening here, even though we said we'd never do it again, I might be ready to volunteer."
Now Wyle and Wells have teamed up as some of several executive producers of the Max series The Pitt. Each of the show's 15 episodes depicts one hour in the hectic emergency department of a fictional Pittsburgh hospital. Wyle also writes for the series and stars as veteran doctor Michael "Robby" Rabinovitch.
"I spent 15 years avoiding — actively avoiding — walking down what I thought was either hallowed ground or traveled road," Wyle says of his return to a medical drama. "Then finally I had an opportunity to come back and was excited about it, and slipped a stethoscope around my neck and just felt right at home."
The Pitt has gained a following of real-life emergency department workers who praise its realistic depiction of medical conditions and treatments. Among its fans are Wyle's mother, a former orthopedic and operating room nurse who told him recently that the show brought back painful memories of patients she'd lost decades earlier.
Wyle says when asked her why ER hadn't triggered those same memories she responded: "'Well, that wasn't real.' I said, 'Well, this one wasn't either.' And she says, 'But it felt real.' "
Interview highlights
On casting The Pitt
The casting process was laborious. We were looking for people with theater backgrounds, people who were really adept at memorizing lots and lots of dialogue, very good with props, who could do all sorts of things while doing a procedure and walking backwards. And we had to cast the show internationally. We found actors in Australia, we found them in England, we found them on the East Coast, West Coast, but we found tremendous performers. So while you haven't seen them before, I knew early on that I was gonna be a Trojan horse that was gonna introduce all this young talent to your living room.
On getting the medical scenes right
We started with two weeks of medical boot camp for everybody, myself included, to kick some rust off and to re-familiarize myself with how much has changed in healthcare, but also to bring everybody up to speed with where they needed to be by the time we rolled the cameras. And John Wells, who directed the pilot episode and executive produced, said to me, "Don't be too nice to them." And then he sort of segregated us where I was off by myself and I ate lunch by myself. And then the … [actors playing] second-year residents, fourth-year residents and the med students all ate together by themselves and they all sat behind me. ...
Our secret weapon is a man named Dr. Joe Sachs, who is a board-certified emergency room physician. He was a technical advisor and a writer on ER, and he is with us again. And he is meticulous, his attention to detail, and he basically does those trauma scenes. He will sort of present what the appropriate medicine and procedures are, what each person in the room's role is, given their hierarchy in the hospital, and even weighing in a little bit on emotionally how they may be feeling given the circumstances and stakes of the case.
On why there's no musical score in the show
One of the decisions we made early on was to not employ any soundtrack in the show. And by lifting the music out, we've sort of removed the artifice that says you're watching a TV show and we need you to feel sad here because we're playing strings or exciting here because we are using percussion. We're letting the sort of symphony of the sound of the procedures in the room be our cadence. And a lot of that is the technical jargon that the doctors are employing. It becomes the soundtrack in this scene. And the intensity with which they're delivering those lines becomes the emotional equivalent of a score. And it's really less important the audience understands and more important that the audience sees that the doctors know what they're talking about. It's competency porn.
On getting his start on ER and staying for 11 seasons
I started [acting] when I was 19 and when I was 22 or 23, I did the pilot for ER and never looked back after that. … I'm really incredibly grateful to George [Clooney], Anthony [Edwards]. They were all 10 years older than I was and really took me into their wing like big brothers. … They were mentors and tutors to me in the early years. And I don't know how I would have handled all the success and the workload if I hadn't had such incredible role models around me showing me how to be professional. …
I took for granted how well run the show was and how smooth it was produced and how well cared for I was in that ecosystem. And then I spent the next 15 years trying to recreate something that I thought was an industry standard without realizing it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And then, I've been blessed by having lightning strike twice.
On his charity and advocacy work abroad
I got approached by this group called Doctors of the World that was an American-based version of Doctors Without Borders, which is French, that was doing frontline triage medicine in different war zones around the world. It's a purely volunteer organization. Doctors, GPs from America, would go and volunteer their time to go halfway around the world and practice wartime MASH medicine in very harrowing circumstances. And I had an opportunity to go during the war in Kosovo and be in a refugee camp in Macedonia, and watch firsthand the heroic efforts of these doctors trying to treat this refugee population and came back really galvanized about helping this organization and ones like it do that kind of humanitarian aid. And it was catalytic for us doing the storylines in Darfur and the Belgian Congo that we eventually did on [ER].
On hoping The Pitt will shed light on the critical work of healthcare workers
I like to think that we're … going to keep reminding everybody about what kind of country we really are at heart and how amazing the people that do this kind of work are. … It's so infuriating to watch them be taken advantage of, or worse, taken for granted.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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