Noah Wyle‘s newest medical drama The Pitt feels reminiscent of his days playing John Carter on ER — but that doesn’t mean the shows are the same.
ER, which aired from 1994 to 2009, followed the inner life of an emergency room in a fictionalized version of Chicago’s real Cook County Hospital. Wyle starred alongside George Clooney, Julianna Marguiles, Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle and Sherry Stringfield (and later John Stamos, Mekhi Pfifer and Linda Cardellini).
More than a decade after ER ended, Wyle returned as the star and executive producer of a new medical series on Max. The Pitt is described by the streaming service as “a realistic examination of the challenges facing healthcare workers in today’s America as seen through the lens of the frontline heroes working in a modern-day hospital in Pittsburgh.”
The Pitt highlights the highs — and lows — of the job while making the 15 episodes showcase 15 hours of one shift.
“[Fellow EP] John [Wells], Max and Warner Brothers were on board to try to make use of this new platform of streaming, to see whether or not we could tell the story in a visually more arresting way than we did back in the ’90s,” Wyle explained to TVLine in January 2025. “It is a more photorealistic way than we were ever able to do, and in a more organic, performance-based way. Because you’re no longer to standards and practices and language [barriers], you really can paint with all the colors on the palette. The question isn’t ‘What can you show?’ Instead it is, ‘What should you show, in discretion and taste?’”
Wyle noted that he found it “really gratifying” getting to play a new doctor.
“I wanted it to feel like what it used to feel like — and what it hadn’t felt like for a long time. Could we make it feel that way again? John and Yana Grebenyuk R. Scott [Gemmill] were on board for that because they, too, have been looking for that feeling that we all [last] had 15 years ago, when we did this the first time,” he continued. “The work felt good, and we had a good time, and we liked each other while we did it, and everybody was respectful. It was inclusive, and it was groundbreaking. And we wanted to see if lightning could strike twice — and, in some ways, it already has.”
Keep scrolling for Wyle’s candid quotes about differentiating The Pitt from ER:
The Transition From ‘ER’ to ‘The Pitt’
After The Pitt premiered, Wyle was asked about how plans to bring back ER ultimately turned into an entirely new show instead.
“That calls into question all the various chronologies of this and all the different sorts of iterations. You’re absolutely right, the intentionality was born in 2020 during the pandemic,” Wyle told TVLine. “The idea was to take a look at what was happening to the people that were on the front lines, and also take a look at the population that was getting sick and dying, and seeing how there appeared to be two different health care systems in our country — those for people who have money and insurance, and those who don’t.”
Obvious Connections
Wyle acknowledged that there were some intentional similarities between The Pitt and ER.
“Those were all issues we tried to talk about back in the ’90s, when 22 million Americans were going without health insurance and using emergency rooms as their primary source of health care. All of these themes were really significant to us then, and they have remained significant to us,” Wyle noted to TVLine. “Then it just became, ‘Is the old IP [intellectual property] the easiest and most advantageous delivery system?’ It seemed to be the one that people were most excited about trying, but it wasn’t really the point of the exercise.”
Not Looking Back
Wyle didn’t mind scrubbing back in — but he wanted to play someone new.
“The more we went down that road, the more the point got obscured in the reunion aspect, the retread aspect and the reboot aspect. So I was not sorry when we were sort of forced to pivot and figure out how to tell the story in a new way,” he continued in January 2025. “In a lot of ways, [not reviving ER] unburdened us from narrative limitations that we would have had to adhere to, and pay homage to.”
Bringing Someone New to Life
As new episodes aired in January 2025, Wyle compared John Carter and Dr. Robby.
“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,” he explained to TV Insider. “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.”
Wyle also wanted the COVID-19 pandemic to be integrated into the storytelling, adding, “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 continued: “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 afterward has taken on some of these healthcare workers.”
Drawing a Line in the Medical Sand
“In a lot of ways, ER was a patient-centric show, and this is more of a provider-centric show, which puts the focus of the medicine and the current way that it’s practiced in first position,” the actor told Variety in January 2025. “I would highlight the contributions of Dr. Joe Sachs, who was a technical advisor on ER and is very much the advisor of this show, an executive producer on the writing staff. He puts everything into making sure that the realism is on the page, on the stage, and making sure that the community that he comes from is being honored and the stories that they want told are being depicted.”
Subtle But Purposeful Changes
“The fundamental difference in the two shows is that there is a social conscience to this,” Wyle said on the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast in January 2025. “My intentionality came from wanting to put a spotlight back on this community that for the first time — since ER came on air — weren’t matching all the candidates and all the places they needed them. We have a nursing shortage and we have a great need for these people to be in their jobs if we have another pandemic.”
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