“Let’s go save some lives,” Dr. Michael Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) tells a fresh crop of residents and medical students on their first day at “the pit,” a crowded Pittsburgh emergency room, in this hospital drama’s fast-paced premiere. He also warns the newbies that this job might give them ulcers, or worse. Case in point: Before even seeing a patient, the caring MD, nicknamed “Robby,” heads up to the roof where a colleague hints that he has pondered jumping.
You don’t need a lab test to see that the series, executive produced by John Wells and created by R. Scott Gemmill, has the same blood type as their earlier hit, ER. That landmark show, lauded for its character-driven, gritty realism (which set the standard for future IV-infused TV) launched on NBC in 1994 and gave Wyle his breakout role as an earnest medical student, John Carter, who came from wealth and privilege and gave selflessly to the job.
Robinavitch’s limits are tested over these 15 dynamic episodes, each covering one hour of a single day’s shift starting at 7 AM. The doc grapples with working on the four-year anniversary of his mentor’s death during the pandemic, while assuring his gallows-humor loving colleagues that he’s fine. He’s not. Neither are they but watching all of them soldier on anyway is a joyful reminder of human resilience. We spoke with Wyle about getting the ER band back together, his hopes that the show will resonate in our post-Covid world, and more.
What has it been like to reunite with John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill?
Noah Wyle: Extremely gratifying would be the short answer. We created something really special the first time we worked together. I’ll confess, I don’t think I recognized how special it was while we were creating it. I knew that it was popular. I knew that it was successful. I didn’t know that it couldn’t be replicated on my next job or my next job, or my next job. That was born out over the next 15 years where I tried to create the same sense of ensemble [and] buy-in and was successful to relative degree a couple of times, but never quite the same. John Wells is a singular producer, and it starts with him at the top. And Scott is a singular talent as a writer and head writer. Working together again was almost out of a desire to see whether or not that was real the first time. And if it was, then, man, wouldn’t it be great to do it again?
RelatedGet to Know the Hospital Staff of ‘The Pitt’ With Noah Wyle
John Wells once said about you, “On ER, Noah would still give you the best suturing job you’ve ever had in your life. He really took it seriously.” Did your skills come right back?
We did this medical bootcamp before we started the season so all the new actors could get up to snuff with the terminology and the procedures, and we could run ’em through all the different things we were going to be doing. John kept making a point of bragging about my sutures, how good they were, and how I was going to really show everybody how it was done. I kept getting sweatier and sweatier thinking, man, it’s been a long time since I did a suture. It came time for the big demonstration, and I got my tools in place and I went to go throw that first stitch and realized I can’t see anything without my glasses anymore. The one thing that I never had to do before was put on my glasses to do suturing. Once I put glasses on, it all started to come back. I kept putting it farther and farther away from me to see what I was doing. It was pretty funny. It’s been interesting to see how much medicine has changed since we made that show. Many of the procedures are different and performed differently, and many of the drugs that we used to give were no longer given.
Does streaming give you more options than broadcast did with depicting the ER?
The standards and practices kept you from being able to use profanity or to photograph a procedure — oftentimes we were able to do incredibly accurate prosthetics, but then you wouldn’t be allowed to use the footage. Now tastes have changed, and you can get away with more. We use our discretion about how much we want to show and why, what point we’re trying to make. It’s been extremely liberating and exciting creatively.
Is Robinavitch what John Carter might’ve become or is he someone completely different?
He’s so different by design. Once we pivoted away from the idea of having [the series] be tied to that [ER] IP, we wanted to see how different we could make it. That began with John saying, “Noah, where’s your family from?” They’re Russian Jewish. And he said, “Well, what’s a name? What can we play with there? Would you want to play in that blood memory?” I was interested in playing a guy who came from a way more blue-collar background and who hadn’t had any of those early opportunities, who came to medicine for completely different reasons. This is a guy who probably shouldn’t be doing this anymore but was pressed back into service during Covid and has stayed shouldering the burdens of the job without really doing any of the therapeutic or analytic work necessary to optimize his mental health. He’s not quite up to the task, and today you’re catching him on a really bad day. The mask he’s been wearing of competence and confidence begins to erode. We see the toll that practicing medicine through Covid and afterwards has taken on some of these healthcare workers.
Warrick Page / Max
What do you mean he’s not ready?
We started having these very large philosophical conversations about what kind of show we wanted to do. We’ve asked [the medical community] to continue to do these tours of duty without break and without any real gratitude. They’re burning out, their morale is flagging, their ranks are thinning. When they try to place applicants in the ERs, they’re having a difficult time. There’s a nursing shortage, and the ripple effect to patient care is tangible. The need to address what’s happening currently in healthcare forced our hand into, how can we identify characters that represent those pressures? What Sophie’s choices did we make that we’ve never acknowledged because of how traumatic it would to acknowledge that we had to make them?
Which of the doctors from ER would work the best in “the pit”?
They’d all be too old! I’m feeling too old. You want to know something ironic? I’m 20 years older than Anthony Edwards was when we shot the pilot for ER and he was playing the attending, 30 years ago. I look around most days and think to myself, my God, I’m not older by five or 10 years. I’m older by 25 years.
Older and wiser, surely. Did you draw on your own life experience when writing the fourth and ninth episodes?
You try to make it as personal as possible. There’s some things that are woven into the fabric of [Episode] 4 that are very personal, mostly around the end of life care sequence with Mr. Spencer. Having my grandfather pass was a significant event in our family, and my mother and her brother were attendant to that death. The similarities provided a deep enough well that I could pull a couple specifics so that I felt it really resonated with me. And if it resonated with me, it would resonate with other people. When we came to shoot it, the buy-in from everybody involved and the sensitivity with which we shot it, knowing how triggering those scenes would be for crew members, many people kind of had to go outside and take a second. The act of telling that story, even with our crew, felt cathartic. I kept thinking, my God, if this has a multiplier effect to viewers, this could be service-based entertainment. I think we’ve got a good one here.
The Pitt, Series Premiere, January 9, Max
More Headlines:
David Schwimmer & ‘Goosebumps: The Vanishing’ Cast Tease ‘Genuinely Frightening’ Season (VIDEO)‘The Pitt’: Noah Wyle Explains How Robby Is ‘Different by Design’ from ‘ER’s Carter‘Abbott Elementary’ Bosses Tease ‘Always Sunny’ Crossover: Who’s Heavily Featured, Pairings & MoreNFL Wild Card Playoffs 2025 TV ScheduleStand-Up Comedian Jim Short Dies at 58: Margaret Cho Leads Tributes
