Behind the scenes of "The Pitt"

Beginning in the 1960s, medical dramas became a staple of primetime TV. You may have followed the trials and tribulations of Doctors James Kildare, Marcus Welby, Hawkeye Pierce, Mark Craig, Michaela Quinn, and then, in 1994, "ER"'s Dr. John Carter, played by Noah Wyle.

Wyle says that, when "ER" ended, the odds that someday he'd do another medical show were "zero percent."

So, what changed? "COVID," he said. "COVID changed everything, certainly for me in thinking about there being another story to tell. I was getting a lot of mail from people on the frontlines saying,'We could sure use Dr. Carter out here.' Or, 'This is really awful.'"

For his work on "ER," Wyle was nominated as best supporting actor five times … and finally took home an Emmy this past September, when he received the trophy as outstanding lead actor in a drama series for his portrayal of Dr. Michael Robinavitch – Dr. Robby – on "The Pitt." The hit HBO Max medical series won five Emmys in all, including outstanding drama series.

And Season 2 is about to begin.

Dr. Robby watches over the controlled chaos at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. It all takes place over a single emergency room shift, and each episode covers just one hour in a very long day. 

A few months ago, "Sunday Morning" visited the set at the Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California. Walk from backstage into the emergency room, and you feel you are in an actual hospital.

Wyle said, "It became really important to have the entire set feel like a totally immersive experience. You open a drawer, everything that's supposed to be in the drawer is there. Everything feels real, and is exactly where it should go."

Wyle is in charge here in more ways than one. Not only is he a lead actor; he's an executive producer and writer. And on the days we dropped in, he also directed. 

Actors at "The Pitt" have to learn more than their lines. There's a two-week medical boot camp. Dr. Elizabeth Ferreira, herself an emergency room doctor, is one of the show's medical technical consultants: "We try our best to educate them on CPR, how to suture, how to intubate, the natural mechanics, so that when they are on screen and the camera is quite tight and close, everything looks finessed and refined, as if someone with experience has done it."

She helps make sure the procedures look thoroughly real, as in Episode 10, involving a patient who'd been slugged in the eye by a baseball. She helps make sure the procedures – and the prosthetics – look thoroughly real.

That hyper-authenticity extends to the storylines, as when a nurse is punched by a patient. Executive producers John Wells said, "Since COVID, there's a kind of a stress level and anger that exists in the population. And that has translated particularly to violence against nurses, but against all the healthcare providers [as well]."

Wells and fellow executive producer Scott Gemmill – both veterans of the series "ER" – said "The Pitt" also addresses the issue of loss of trust that the public has in public health. "Disinformation, that was one of the biggest changes, I think, besides COVID," Gemmill said. "I don't remember the disinformation being at a level that it is these days."

Wells said, "The biggest thing that we talk about regularly is Dr. Google – this notion that everybody who comes in is already on their phone figuring out what it is that supposedly is wrong with them, and half the people have assumed that they've got the worst possible thing that could happen to them. And that's part of what the erosion of trust is. You're defending yourself against artificial intelligence and what's going to happen next."

"The Pitt"'s second season will continue to reflect real life and real problems. Wyle said, "People are going to lose their health insurance. People are going to delay care. People are going to continue to come in sicker. They're going to be more volatile when they come in. That's going to put more of a burden on staff. All this stuff is sort of moving towards this perfect storm of unsustainability."

Wyle's connection to the medical community is more than what's in a script: his mother, Marjorie Speer, was an orthopedic and operating room nurse. "Mom's at the hospital all day, I got to walk home from school until mom gets home," Wyle said. "And then 35 years later, she's watching an episode of 'The Pitt,' and comes over and says, 'That rocked me.' She just starts listing all these names of patients that she had seen die when she was practicing. I said, 'Mom, I've never heard these stories before.' And she goes, 'Oh, yeah.' We were her kids, and she didn't show us that stuff."

But "The Pitt" does show us that stuff, and what happens when an empathetic doctor stops having empathy for himself. 

"You know, in the old days, it was kind of 'suck it up,' and it was a little bit of like, 'I went through it, so you got to go through it,' you know? This is your training," Wyle said.

"We were up for four days straight!" I said.

"Yeah! And it became a badge of honor to survive it."

Gemmill said, "We get feedback from people who, having seen the show, realize that they, too, are suffering and have buried it the same way that the Robby character did."

Which brings us to Dr. Robinavitch's meltdown. "Everything is going crazy. We need the hero to come in on his white horse and save the day," Wyle said. "He's on the floor!  The hero's on the floor? How can that be?"

So, three decades after "ER," Noah Wyle is once again playing a dedicated doctor – and as it turns out, it's a prescription he wrote for himself. "There were two points in my career. during the pandemic and during this last work stoppage for the writers and actors' strike, those were the two moments when the flow of my career [was] interrupted, and I wasn't used to it," he said. "It really rattled me in a way that … that rattled me. I remember saying to my wife, like, 'I don't think I work for money. I think I work for health, my own health. Like, I think this is where I get my orientation. And without it, I'm not sure I know what I do on this Earth.'"

And now?  "I'm the happiest I've been in a long time," he said.

I asked, "Does that surprise you?"

"It just confirms, you know, it confirms all my worst suspicions about myself, which is that I really need all this!" Wyle laughed.

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended interview - Noah Wyle (Video)

To watch a trailer for Season 2 of "The Pitt" click on the video player below:

     
For more info:

• Season 2 of "The Pitt" begins streaming January 8 on HBO Max
• Noah Wyle on Instagram

     
Story produced by Jay Kernis. Editor: Carol Ross.