Noah Wyle returns to familiar ground with new medical drama The Pitt
When Noah Wyle first hung a stethoscope around his neck, 15 years after leaving County General Hospital, the ER actor had a serious case of déjà vu. “I have a groove in the back of my neck, so it just clicks into place,” says the star and executive producer of The Pitt, which takes him back to the emergency room, albeit as the department’s senior staff member, not the resident kid. “It would be rare for another actor or artist to have an opportunity to revisit something that was such a huge part of their early career and then get to play that instrument again with a little wisdom and maturity. It’s been really rewarding.”
Created by ER producer R. Scott Gemmill and produced by the famed ’90s medical show’s creator John Wells, The Pitt takes viewers away from Chicago and into an underfunded hospital in central Pittsburgh. “Pittsburgh is very representative of a major American city that’s not often portrayed,” says Wells, who went to Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in Steel City. “They have a world-class medical community there, many teaching hospitals, universities and it’s beautifully scenic. It’s the real world. It’s what America really looks like.”
Having not delved into the inner workings of public hospitals in over a decade, Wyle quickly made another observation about real-life America and the state of its healthcare. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” he remarks. “I remember that in 1994, ERs were the primary source of healthcare for most Americans — 22 million Americans didn’t have health insurance. That was part of what went into our show’s popularity, how relevant it was at the time. And here we are 30 years later, talking about the exact same issues, except the problems have gotten a little bit worse.”
As a result of ER’s influence on the culture at large, Wyle had already identified a watershed moment in healthcare, which inspired him, Gemmill and Wells to re-examine the ground they had all trodden. “I was getting a lot of mail from first responders that were confessional about how difficult their daily lives were. I was shocked to find out that we had been responsible for this huge spike in candidacy and an outpouring of money going into that discipline and some excellent innovations happening over the last 30 years, and that trend started to decline rapidly after COVID,” says Wyle. “I pivoted a lot of that to John and said, ‘There’s something happening here that’s probably worth talking about again.’ And, ‘Even though we didn’t want to do this again, if you ever did want to do it again, I’d volunteer.’ ”
While the environment seems familiar, the experience of portraying senior attending physician Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch does not feel like a repeat of John Carter’s trajectory. “This is a totally different acting exercise,” says Wyle. “This is building a pressure cooker hour by hour, degree by degree, ingredient by ingredient, playing with levels of fatigue and an ability to compartmentalize things that need to be compartmentalized. This has been a wonderful psychological examination of one guy having one of the worst days of his life and the presence required in just that exercise.”
The series plays out over a 15-hour shift and all the complications faced by staff and patients on a minute-by-minute basis, giving viewers a sense of what would go on beyond the perimeters of their own medical bay. “When you go to the ER you don’t know those doctors, and the fact about ER doctors is they don’t follow up with patients. They save you. They’re there for the 12 hours and then they’re gone,” says Gemmell. “They don’t come back and say, ‘How did Mr. Jones do?’ They’re on to the next case. I think [the show] speaks to the reality of that. It comes with challenges in terms of how do you tell a character’s storyline over 15 hours when some of them don’t even know each other? That’s also a challenge that makes it fun.”
For Wyle, it is being in the position of mentor, of a young cast that includes Supriya Ganesh as Dr. Samira Mohan, a third-year medical resident, Taylor Dearden as Dr. Melissa “Mel” King, a socially awkward second-year resident who has experience working with military veterans, Isa Briones as Dr. Trinity Santos, a brash intern with an overly confident personality, Gerran Howell as Dennis Whitaker, a fourth-year medical student who lacks confidence, and Shabana Azeez as Victoria Javadi, a 20-year-old third-year medical student who is often overlooked due to her youth, that has been the highlight of the experience. “One of the most gratifying aspects has been working with this ensemble and watching them go through this for the first time, to be available to them as a resource if they want, but to also enjoy watching them on their roads and be a Trojan horse that is allowing everybody to meet this invading army of talent.”
The Pitt airs Sunday, March 9, on Crave1