Interview: ‘The Pitt’ Season Two Was “Oddly Cathartic” for Noah Wyle

CONTENT WARNING: The following interview does contain discussions of suicidal ideation.

When examining Noah Wyle’s career, it’s clear as day that he understands the power of television as a medium. He continues this tradition on The Pitt. Now in its second season, the Emmy juggernaut has not only become a hot topic of conversation amongst audiences week after week, it also fully embraces any and every opportunity to speak to the current cultural climate.

“I was a product of television growing up and certainly very vulnerable to how collective of an experience it was….” Wyle says. “These stories, these families, these characters were very present for me. So as a cultural touchstone and bridge to stranger to stranger, I’ve seen the impact pretty early on…. There’s a great quotation from Alexander Graham Bell, supposedly, when he was asked what the value of the telephone was…he said, ‘The value of the telephone is equal to what the value of what two people have to say to each other is.’ It’s the content [that] dictates the importance so it depends on what we fill and feed it.”

One of those major pieces of importance this season came with a deeper exploration of Dr. Robby’s mental health throughout the season. At the onset of the season, he’s wrapping up loose ends and trying to ensure a smooth transition as he prepares for his sabbatical. However, as the shift wears on, it’s revealed that things are actually much more serious. For Wyle, it was important to gradually reveal this information throughout for myriad reasons.

“[It] makes for more satisfying viewing, I think, to respect a sophisticated audience’s intelligence and take them on a bit of a journey and show a character exhibiting a lot of different modes of behavior that aren’t necessarily typical to who he is, but aren’t always red flags that a guy’s having suicidal ideation either,” he explains. “So it triggers responses, positive and negative, throughout the day, but it’s only as the shift wears on that that mask he is able to maintain slips even further, and he gets a lot less subtle about what’s going on with his interior life. There’s a lot of aspects to this that we wanted to touch on, how it’s oftentimes the person you least suspect that’s going through the hardest time.”

Wyle’s performance presents an intricate depiction of someone struggling with suicidal ideation. Not only does he infuse Robby with stunning vulnerability, but he also embraces the sharp edges that begin to prick others in his path. There were a lot of questions and motivations to wade through for Wyle to get into Robby’s headspace; the ultimate goal, though, was to root the performance in truth.

“It was oddly cathartic,” Wyle says. “I use my work for a therapeutic exercise as well as a creative exercise and going to those places and asking those questions about what would motivate somebody…all those little micro questions that you would ask yourself as you have the agency to choose the end of your own existence and that’s a heavy, heavy moment. And at the same time, all you’re seeing around you is people who love you. All you’re seeing around you is an environment that benefits from your presence. All you’re seeing around you is meaning and reasons to stay. You can’t just translate that to something that actually makes you want to participate in it…. So it was all a murky soup to play in and I’ve had enough personal and anecdotal experience to sort of draw from that it wasn’t hard to anchor it in some real truth for me.”

Throughout the shift, Robby has numerous confrontations with his peers, delivering some of the most memorable scenes of the show to date. Wyle’s approach to those important scenes is anchored in remaining present for his scene partners.

“I think it’s just an ever state of presence for this one, you know, because I wear enough hats that I have a sort of vested interest in everybody, not only doing their jobs well, but enjoying doing their jobs well,” he explains. “So I want everybody to feel supported and safe in the work that they do and in the places we ask them to go, sometimes blindly without knowing what the flip side is going to be five, six episodes later…. And so I come into those scenes just being an open book and hopefully an open resource for them because I’m a conduit between the writing room and the set. I oftentimes have a little bit more context than they’ve been given for where a storyline is coming from.”

On top of his nomination for acting, Wyle received his first nomination for directing this year. The episode, “12:00 PM,” notably deals with the loss of Louie (Ernest Harden Jr.) and shifts focus onto the nursing staff. When explaining his approach to the direction, Wyle says, “You’re balancing a lot of different storylines, a lot of different tones within those storylines and so, you know, certain moments need to be really kinetic and then certain moments really need to land so that you feel the emotional impact. Certain things need to play light and funny and other ones should gut you. And it’s sort of like ingredients in a recipe.”

Wyle also enjoys the visual storytelling the series allows with small, detailed, and sometimes funny interactions unfolding in the background as our main story unfolds.

“I was influenced early on by filmmakers who really enjoyed a jammed up frame,” he says. “Robert Altman comes to mind, Ron Rudolph, George Roy Hill. Orson Welles probably is the progenitor of it all, by the way that he would shoot with Gregg Toland, these deep, deep, long focus shots telling story and deep background, background, mid-foreground, foreground. And I just love the depth of our set is so extreme that it really lends itself to multilevel storytelling. And we have such a talented background group that you can really build moments between characters and have offstage little vignettes playing that play in concert or in counterpoint to what you’re doing in the foreground just to add that little bit of texture. I always look for that kind of stuff.”

The Pitt is not Wyle’s first time on a hit medical drama. His breakthrough came through the hit series ER as John Carter. This time around, though, there comes an intersection of fans both old and new tuning into his work and the series, something that is special to Wyle.

“It’s phenomenal. I mean, it’s incredibly rewarding to have multi-generational fans who’ve watched me grow up, who have grown up with me, who have learned as my characters have learned about life. It’s really incredibly rewarding and cool for my kids to see.”

You can watch Noah Wyle’s nominated work on The Pitt. Season 2 of The Pitt is now streaming on HBO Max. Check out our full interview with Noah below!