Noah Wyle is no stranger to the medical genre of television, having starred on ER for nearly 15 years as Dr. John Carter. Now he’s killing it (metaphorically) within the 2025 TV schedule on The Pitt, whose entire first season is streamable with a Max subscription. Although Wyle was initially against doing another medical drama, things changed with The Pitt following COVID. The series has been getting much praise for the medical accuracies, and even his mom, who’s a nurse, had a cathartic reaction to one medical TV emergency.
One of the more notable parts of The Pitt is seeing the mental toll that the doctors and nurses and other staff have taken on throughout their shift. It goes from a normal day to everyone dealing with a mass casualty event that is certainly heavy for a few episodes. Not only did it affect the characters, but Wyle told Fresh Air that his mother recalled having some feelings brought up from when she was a nurse while watching a particular scene involving her son's Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch. In her words:
My mother was an orthopedic nurse and an operating room nurse. She worked for 20 years at a hospital in Hollywood. And she came over for breakfast last Sunday. And she came into the kitchen, and within five seconds of being there, she said, ‘Noah, I can't stop thinking about last week's episode and that scene where you were listing all the people who died. And I think I had my own PTSD reaction. I suddenly remembered everybody. I remembered the 4-year-old. I remembered the pregnant woman with the baby. I remembered the gang member that I tried to keep alive by squeezing two units of blood.’ And she's just listing these names. And she's, you know, getting teary-eyed, and she finishes.
The fact that Wyle’s own mother got emotional over The Pitt because of how realistic it was and because it reminded her of her own work as a nurse really shows just how accurate the series is. And how well it’s done to portray the medical profession. Of course, he has been on a medical drama before, and he even brought it up to his mom but now that he's made his medical TV comeback, things are different.
Despite ER once still being the longest-running primetime medical drama, it didn’t feel real in quite the same way, according to his mom. And to her point, the fact that the series doesn't utilize a musical score beneath its surgery scenes goes a long way in making those moments feel more palpable. But whatever the reason, Wyle couldn’t believe he was only just now hearing this anecdote.
And I said, my goodness, Mom, I was on a medical show for 15 years. You never told me that. And she says, well, that wasn't real, (Laughter) and I said, well, this one wasn't either. And she said, but it felt real, and it brought all that up for me - isn't that funny? And so here I am in my own kitchen having this lovely, sort of cathartic and catalytic moment with my mother. And I asked her, I said, the 4-year-old, when was that? She said, oh, I think your brother was probably about 4 at the time. I think that's why it hit me. And then I thought to myself, oh, so you came home and you made us dinner that night, and you helped us with our homework? Wow.
Having that kind of chat with his mom after all these years over a project that he’s doing that hits so close to home must have been an incredible feeling. It’s also not lost on Wyle that his mom has been keeping this a secret for over 30 years and is only now just saying something. It really proves how special The Pitt is:
That's 35 years that's been in there. Came out last Sunday.
Since The Pitt has been renewed for a second season on Max, the realism and medical accuracies will only continue. I’m curious to know if Wyle’s mom will open up about anything else during her time as a nurse, but that might all depend on what happens in Season 2 and if anything will trigger a deep, forgotten memory.
The Pitt has aired its season finale, and the show won’t be coming back until sometime in January. Even though it sounds like a long wait, it will surely be worth it. The series is one of the best shows streaming on Max, and these 15 episodes of Season 1 will just have to be enough to hold people for the next several months.
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