Why The Pitt Star Noah Wyle Is Glad The ER Reboot Was Canceled

No, "The Pitt" is not a direct spin-off of "ER" — let's get that whole thing out of the way, lawsuit notwithstanding. Still, star Noah Wyle, who worked to craft the show with fellow "ER" veterans John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill, did intend to resurrect the legendary medical drama created by Michael Crichton originally, and he's glad he went with a different approach instead.

In an interview with TVLine after the first two episodes of "The Pitt" dropped as a Max exclusive, Wyle, speaking to Ryan Schwartz, said that his reunion with Wells and Gemmill came about during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, as doctors across the world made enormous sacrifices in the midst of genuine horrors ... and as "ER" lit up the streaming charts. "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," Wyle revealed, saying that they all hoped to — and tried to — address those topics on "ER" back in the day.

Still, as Wyle continued going down this path with his two fellow collaborators, he realized that maybe leaning on "ER" would be a mistake. "And then it just became, well, 'Is the old IP the easiest and most advantageous delivery system?'" he recalled to Schwartz. "It seemed to be the one that people were most excited about trying, but it wasn't really the point of the exercise. The more we went down that road, the more the point got obscured in the reunion aspect, the retread aspect, the reboot aspect ... so I was not sorry when, you know, we were sort of forced to pivot and figure out how to tell the story in a new way. 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."

The bottom line is that "The Pitt" and "ER" are quite different, despite the Noah Wyle, John Wells, and R. Scott Gemmill of it all. Part of this is thanks to the fact that "The Pitt" is a Max exclusive, and while it'll harken back to network TV by actually airing a season a year (according to Max content head Casey Bloys), the fact that it's definitely not a network TV show works in its favor. Not only can the characters curse — sorry, "Grey's Anatomy," but do doctors really say "crap" instead of something a bit stronger during tense moments? — but the series can show (horrifyingly accurate) medical emergencies in full. Take the degloved ankle seen in the first episode, or that very notable (and realistic!) birth scene in episode 11; neither of those things would have ever been shown on network TV like NBC.

As Wyle told Ryan Schwartz, that freedom let him, Gemmill, and Wells figure out a brand new approach for this show. "Scott brought the real time storytelling framework to the table, and John, 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 — a more photorealistic way than we were ever able to do, and in a more organic, performance-based way," Wyle revealed. "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?' it's 'What should you show, in discretion and taste?' It was really gratifying."

"ER" was, as we all know, a massive hit for NBC — and Noah Wyle knows that better than most, because playing the young resident turned seasoned attending Dr. John Carter put him on the map as a performer. As he said to Ryan Schwartz, he, John Wells, and R. Scott Gemmill didn't set out to simply reboot "ER," but find the "feeling" they all experienced while working on that series. "I wanted it to feel like what it used to feel like, and what it hadn't felt like for a long time," Wyle mused. "Could we make it feel that way again? John and Scott 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. 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."

So what was it like for medical drama veteran Wyle to lead a group of young (fictional) medical students and residents eager to prove themselves, just like Dr. Carter before them? Being first on the call sheet can be an intense and heady process, and since Wyle became a huge star thanks to "ER," you would think he provided essential wisdom to the next generation of pretend doctors. He did, but there was also another element to it:

"What I found was that I wanted to impress them. I wanted to make them think that I was good, and I wanted to make them trust that I would lead them. That was my intention at the outset — and it's interesting, because I haven't been as available to them, emotionally, as I usually am with the casts that I work with. But when we work together, anything professionally, in terms of playing in front of a camera, doing this kind of format, having a coming-out party in terms of publicity, and the early, nascent stages of fame, I've tried to make myself as available to them as they want me to be, without sounding like a know-it-all, or like somebody who's been there, done that."

"The Pitt" airs new episodes on Thursdays at 9 P.M. on Max.