Why Noah Wyle Left NBC's ER

In the very first episode of "ER" — the landmark medical drama created by "Jurassic Park" novelist Michael Crichton — we meet John Carter, an ambitious but obviously overwhelmed third-year medical student played by Noah Wyle. Alongside other original cast members Anthony Edwards, George Clooney, Eriq La Salle, and Sherry Stringfield, just to name a few, Wyle's John helped shape the word of "ER," a gritty, realistic medical show set in Chicago's fictional County General Hospital (and, more specifically, that hospital's emergency department). Wyle and Carter did leave "ER" full-time in the show's 11th season — though he made cameo appearances as the show drew to a close in its season 15 — but when John Carter finished out his run on the "ER," he became the show's longest-running character.

So why did Wyle leave the show that made him famous? In April 2005, CBS News reported that Wyle would leave the show as a regular but agreed to return for four episodes in the following two seasons after his departure. At the time, executive producer John Wells (remember that name) told the outlet, "It's very sad for me. Noah and I have a lot of history together. He's a wonderful actor and a wonderful man, and it's been great to watch him grow up and get married and have a family." 

As the outlet also reported, Wyle previously weighed in on his decision in September 2004 with E! News (via the same CBS article). "I've just got other stuff going in my life right now," the actor said. "I've got a son, I've got family and friends that said goodbye to me 12 years ago and are wondering when I'm coming back, and this little urge to scratch a different kind of itch in my career, and it's just coming to the end of the character's run."

Out of all the great characters on "ER" — and there were many! — Noah Wyle's eventual doctor John Carter might have the most dramatic evolution of anyone. As a fresh-faced and eager medical student, Carter originally intends to study surgery under Dr. Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle) but, despite Benton's disappointment, he ultimately switches his specialty to emergency medicine so that he can spend more time connecting with patients. It's important to note that Carter comes from an extremely wealthy family, so he's a rare kind of physician who doesn't really have to worry about money; what this means narratively is that the character can endure situations like, say, going without pay while switching his specialty from surgery to trauma without straining credulity.

Carter basically becomes the protagonist of "ER" as the seasons ticked on, particularly as popular characters like George Clooney's Doug Ross or Anthony Edwards' Mark Greene (who left in season 5 and season 8, respectively) were no longer center stage. In season 6, he's stabbed by a patient suffering from a severe mental health crisis and endures a serious injury to one of his kidneys, leading to lifelong complications; he also develops an addiction to prescription painkillers during his recovery and ultimately seeks help to overcome it. He carries on a relationship with another major character from the show, Maura Tierney's nurse-turned-doctor Abby Lockhart, for a while, but when he goes to the Congo to provide medical care in season 10, the relationship ends; he ultimately comes back to Chicago with a pregnant girlfriend named Makemba "Kem" Likasu (Thandiwe Newton), who worked at an AIDS clinic with Carter in the Congo. The couple's son is stillborn, devastating both Kem and Carter, but they ultimately reunite at the end of season 11, which is when Carter officially "leaves" the show.

Carter does briefly return in season 12 — as other doctors join him to work in war-torn Darfur — and in season 15, his remaining kidney is failing, at which point his former colleagues Dr. Doug Ross and Carol Hathaway (Julianna Marguiles) work together to find him a transplant (though they don't actually know it's going to Carter, just that it's going to "a doctor"). It seems, in the series finale, that Carter might be returning to County General, but there's no way to know for sure. Now, though, Wyle is playing a new doctor on TV ... and he wants you to know it's not John Carter.

In a recent Variety profile, Noah Wyle opened to up to Adam B. Vary about how the real-world COVID-19 pandemic influenced the creation of "The Pitt," the hit Max original that Wyle created alongside fellow "ER" veterans John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill (both of whom worked behind the scenes on that series). Apparently, people who loved watching Wyle play a doctor on TV kept sliding into his DMs during the COVID lockdowns. "They were saying things like, 'Carter, where are you?'" Wyle recalled to Vary. "It's really hard out here."

Up until that point, Wyle said he was quite serious about never donning scrubs on set again: "I wouldn't take a script if it was to play a doctor, even if it was a veterinarian. The idea of putting a stethoscope around my neck just seemed like a really bad idea." Still, he told Vary that messages from fans inspired him to make metaphorical lemonade; as he put it, "The light bulb that went off for me was, I could use Carter the way I used to use Carter — to talk about how I feel now."

"The Pitt," which takes place "in real time" throughout a 15 hour emergency department shift at a busy and chaotic Pittsburgh hospital, is not a spin-off or reboot of "ER," though that was the original intention behind it (Wyle declined to comment on much of this in the Variety profile as a lawsuit is ongoing). Still, he said he feels good about the fact that it's something different. "We pivoted as far in the opposite direction as we could in order to tell the story we wanted to tell — and not for litigious reasons, but because we didn't want to retread our own creative work," Wyle mused.

At the end of the day, "The Pitt" is a show that couldn't exist in a world that didn't endure COVID-19 and the pervasive and often harmful misinformation surrounding the pandemic. Wyle spoke to that, saying that this show is meant to honor medical workers who endure so much: 

"These people sacrifice so much in the service of others that I find it absolutely infuriating that their expertise is being called into question. I find it infuriating that we still can't come to a consensus that masks cut down on transmission of disease. I find it infuriating that we still won't acknowledge that vaccines are an important way of eradicating disease. I find it all infuriating that we are where we are right now. So I wanted to make a show that brings back into sharp focus what an objective medical fact is."

"ER" is available to stream on Hulu and Max, and "The Pitt" is available to stream on Max.