The
HBO Max series, The Pitt, triumphed over shows like Severance, The White Lotus and Andor to win the Outstanding Drama Series Award last year. Set in Pittsburgh, the medical drama highlighted the personal and professional crises of frontline healthcare workers in the US. Led by ER's Noah Wyle, it also invoked comparisons to the previous Emmy-winning medical drama. But the new series has set itself apart in the way in portrays the current state of healthcare while also dealing with political and medical issues. Wyle discussed The Pitt's expectations and how it plans to go beyond ER before the release of Season 2.
Noah Wyle on The Pitt's 2 success
In a press conference with creator R. Scott Gemmill and filmmaker John Wells, actor and executive producer Noah Wyle addressed the the pressure of
coming back for the second season after their big Emmy wins. Besides Wyle, cast members Katherine LaNasa and Shawn Hatosy also won acting trophies at the Emmys. Wyle stated, "Of course we felt it the proverbial sophomore slump is real. And when you have something that’s as impactful and as successful as our first season was, it’s inevitable that, you’re gonna be combating expectation. I will say that John alleviated us from a lot of that pressure early on by saying, 'You don’t have to do it bigger, better, faster, stronger, you just have to do it again and remember what you did the first time and stay true to the characters and be honest and go from there.'"
The actor felt that getting the love from the audience and real doctors and nurses early on helped them work towards a better Season 2. He said, "It felt like the medical community embraced it first and embraced it loudly. And since that was the audience, we were really aiming at and hoping to get the stamp of approval from, that was extremely gratifying. And I feel like their stamp of approval gave other people the confidence to watch it and feel like this wasn’t gonna be a waste of their time. And then word began to spread from there. Once we realized that certain things were working and that was validated by the viewers, it gave us a little confidence to come back and put a little bit more emphasis on certain things and less on others."
Noah Wyle reveals what he learned from ER
The medical drama is the same 15-hour shift from the first season. But this time,
it takes place on the Fourth of July. While they did film on location in Pennslyvania, Wyle shared, they spent less time in Pittsburgh this season than they did in the first season. The actor plays senior attending physician Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch in the Emergency Room and additionally, another veteran having been on
ER for 11 years from 1994 to 2005. Talking about what has changed since his time on
ER, Wyle recalled, "I used to joke that at 11:01 my phone would ring—back in the ER days, my mother, who was a nurse, would call me and say, 'You never touch your face with bloody gloves and you never do this and I have to go to work tomorrow and I’m gonna have to answer that.' Now thanks to the internet, I’ve got, like, eight million mothers to call me and tell me, 'I think your stethoscope was backwards, jack*ss.'"
Before starting the series, Wyle said they looked at what more they could do. "One of the first things we did was, we had a huge dry erase board—we just wrote all the things that we never did on ER that could be talked about today. And we were amazed at how fast we filled up that board, whether it was talking about fentanyl or talking about trans rights or talking about gun violence or talking about nursing shortages or boarding crisis. It went on and on and on, and we thought, 'Oh my goodness, there’s a lot here that we could get into that feels extremely relevant,'" Wyle added.
The Pitt Season 2 will premiere on January 9 on JioHotstar. The series will stream weekly until its finale on April 17.
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