If you’ve got a pulse and a social media feed, this won’t surprise you in the slightest: The Pitt is a full-on phenomenon.
The excellent Max series (which you can stream right here) is an up-close-and-personal look inside the bustling emergency room of a Pittsburgh hospital. The series is told in real time, so the 15 episodes of season one amount to 15 hours of a consecutive ER shift — each episode represents a single hour in the lives of these unforgettable doctors, nurses, and patients.
It’s riveting, and the ratings back that up. The Pitt averaged 10 million viewers per episode over its first season, making it one of the top three most popular series in Max history, and it’s already been renewed for more episodes. Here’s the scoop on what to expect in season two, including which beloved characters we’ll be seeing again.
Fans of this stellar show are everywhere, and our own Katie Couric is certainly one of them. “I love this show so much,” she wrote on Instagram. “Granted, there are many scenes where I close my eyes because I am very squeamish. But I’m blown away by the humanity and relevance of The Pitt. It’s brilliant and beautiful.”
So you can only imagine how excited she was to talk with Noah Wyle, who stars as Dr. Robby, an attending who’s still processing his traumatic experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Wyle’s also an executive producer on the show, and he’s no stranger to high-quality hospital acting, as ’90s TV fans remember well: He also played Dr. John Carter on the medical classic ER.
But that’s enough pre-op preamble: It’s time to scrub in and see the entirety of Katie’s can’t-miss conversation with Wyle in the video above, stat.
Here are just a few of our favorite moments from their interview:
Why Wyle returned to medicine on screen after ER
Wyle initially vowed never to play a doctor again, but changed his mind post-Covid after receiving letters from frontline workers. He felt a responsibility to continue portraying their stories: “I felt a certain responsibility to continue to be part of their medical journey.”
He and ER producer John Wells wanted to show how the healthcare system and its workers had changed since the pandemic: “Every show after Covid needed to reflect those radical changes. And I hadn’t really seen one yet do that.”
On mental health and in medicine
Wyle’s character Dr. Robby serves as a lens on the emotional toll on healthcare workers. He discussed the concept of secondary victim syndrome (the distress experienced by those workers), and how poorly the system supports its own: “Doctors need to be in charge… there’s a real stigma about reaching out for help, because you should be able to handle it — ’cause that’s the job.”
His emotional breakdown scene in The Pitt, including a moment where he recites the Shema (a Jewish prayer), drew praise for its authenticity. Wyle says that after enduring a period of searching for meaning during the pandemic, he found it cathartic to portray his conflict onscreen. “[During Covid] I was thinking, God, it’d be great to have a nervous breakdown. Wouldn’t that feel so good to just fall on the floor and sob? And then, five years later, I gave myself the opportunity to have that moment — I just invited the world to watch it.”
On The Pitt’s commitment to authenticity
Wyle described how the cast underwent a two-week medical bootcamp to portray their roles with realism: “They went home with their suture kits and sewed up chickens, did what they needed to do and came back ready.”
He also defended the show’s decision to have no music playing during emergency scenes, saying, “We really felt that if you’re going for authenticity, you know, where’s the music coming from? As soon as you hear violins, you’re gonna feel manipulated to feel sad. As soon as you hear drums and percussion, you’re gonna feel an accentuated sense of tension. But that feels like a manipulation.”
From ER to The Pitt — and the legal drama in-between
Originally, Wyle and Wells hoped to revisit ER through his former character Dr. Carter, but legal disputes with Michael Crichton’s estate forced a pivot: “When we ran into issues with the rights — legal and logistical — it became problematic. The negotiations broke down. We had to ask ourselves: What was the story we really want to tell? It was about healthcare workers post-Covid. So John Wells said, ‘Let’s just do that.’ It became liberating to tell a new story without being shackled to old characters.”
