The Pitt’s Noah Wyle Says Robby’s Backstory Is ‘Sparse by Design,’ But Promises ‘Specificity’ When It Comes to His Relationship With Collins
When five-time Emmy nominee Noah Wyle stopped by TVLine’s New York City studio on Feb. 11, he was still recovering from a 150-day shoot on the Max medical drama The Pitt, which films in Los Angeles and completed principal photography on its 15-episode order on Feb. 6.
“I drove home the other day thinking to myself, ‘I don’t know if I could do 22 episodes anymore,'” he told me. “This show has been extremely demanding. It felt great [to finish] — sort of like an answered prayer.”
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Don’t get Wyle wrong: “[The Pitt] was a ‘pinch me’ experience from start to finish. We came in, we had a great cast… everybody joined medical boot camp with open hearts and open eyes and a lot of excitement, and that buy-in carried through cast and crew, foreground and background. Everybody bought into what we were doing and gelled really, really fast, and that made the days fly by.”
Each of those 150 days started the same way for Wyle. When viewers pressed play on Episode 1 last month, Robby was already on his walk to work — sunglasses on, tunes blaring in his head. But the only song we heard was “Baby,” a soulful ditty by Detroit outfit Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise — a group that formed in 1994 (the year ER made its NBC debut) and disbanded in 2009 (the year ER wrapped its 15-season run).
To be honest, Wyle isn’t sure if series creator (and fellow ER vet) R. Scott Gemmill chose “Baby” for that reason, but the song resonated with either way: “I listened to it, then I listened to it religiously.” Like Robby, Wyle “listened to it every day on the way to work [on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank]. I listened to it on the walk I make from my dressing room to the set… and then I would make that same walk that Robby makes in the pilot episode, past the portrait and into the emergency room. I’d replicate that every day, regardless of what we were doing. It became my little ritual.”
And more often than not, Wyle was walking into a grueling shoot — difficult, in part, because of the emotion journey that Robby goes on in Season 1. His character’s unresolved PTSD, stemming from a COVID-era loss, “was all fleshed out and planned in advance, kind of like a piece of music.” He knew “when it’s gonna peak, when it’s gonna valley, and when we’re gonna hit our crescendo with it.” But in terms of who Robby is outside of work, and what makes him tick, those details were “sparse by design.”
It’s no secret that Wyle, Gemmill and fellow executive producer John Wells have made it their mission to craft the most accurate medical drama possible — and most practitioners, Wyle pointed out, “do not wear their hearts, or their educations, or their personal problems on their sleeve — and guys like Robby, who have led very compartmentalized lives out of necessity as a survival instinct, let you in even less.“
That said, we will get “specificity” in regard to his current relationship (and former romance) with Tracy Ifeachor’s Dr. Heather Collins. Wyle also assured me that we’ll get additional “context” for his relationship with Taj Nico Speights’ Jake, the closest thing Robby has to a son, but who is not actually his son.
“This is not your normal day or your normal shift for [Robby], and he probably should have stayed home,” Wyle explained. “We watch that professional mask and demeanor erode over the course of the shift until he is no longer able to keep those compartments airtight any longer.”
But what, exactly, will it take for Robby to spontaneously, emotionally combust? I point out that The Pitt’s Season 1’s tagline — “15 episodes, 15 hours, one shift” — suggests that Robby will be forced work longer than your typical 12-hour ER shift. Does that imply that some sort of unforeseen trauma will keep him in scrubs and bring him to his breaking point?
“The last five episodes of the show kind of, in some ways, redefine the show,” he teased. “So I advise you not to make too many assumptions, and to stay on this ride until the end.”
For even more intel on what we haven’t yet learned about Robby, you’ll have to watch my full interview with Wyle above. Meanwhile, new episodes of The Pitt drop every Thursday at 9/8c on Max; its Season 1 finale is due out April 10.
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