Inside ‘The Pitt’: Noah Wyle, EPs on the ‘miracle’ of its success and what to expect (and not) in Season 2

WARNING: The following story contains spoilers about the Season 1 finale of The Pitt, "9:00 P.M."

Just like Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch's (Noah Wyle) casual walk to work in the pilot of The Pitt, the Max medical drama had an unassuming start when it premiered in early January. And then things escalated.

While Robby and his team at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center would go on to have a stressful, chaotic day, capped off with a mass casualty incident, it's only been up and up for the show itself. Thanks to passionate word-of-mouth, its dedication to realism that has earned praise from healthcare practitioners, and a 15-episode order with a weekly release — each episode chronicling one hour of their ER shift — The Pitt has been the breakout hit of the year. It's now in the top three of Max's most-watched series of all time. The fandom and love have grown so much just in the past month that the show and Wyle have soared up the Emmy odds, and new episodes have become must-see — and must-tweet — TV right when they drop Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. That is, of course, fitting for Wyle and his co-executive producers John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill, his fellow alums from ER, the anchor of NBC’s iconic Must-See TV lineup.

"It has been extraordinary, and I honestly didn't think that it could happen quite like this anymore," Wells tells Gold Derby. "That there are so many shows and so many opportunities, it takes a long time for people to catch up to things. I've just been very gratified by the fact that the audience has found it quickly and seem to be really engaged. And that's a bit of a miracle."

Arguably even more so because The Pitt is the apple in a bag of oranges. It's a broadcast-style procedural made on a small budget on one set with a large episode order that is succeeding in streaming, which has put a premium on big budgets, high production values, and short seasons. Not to mention, Season 2, in which Wyle is slated to direct an episode (the erstwhile Dr. John Carter wrote two episodes in Season 1), will premiere in January 2026, nine months after Season 1 ended. Compare that quick turnaround to numerous streaming and non-streaming shows that can make fans wait years between seasons.

Season 1 wrapped up Thursday not unlike how it began. There's a rooftop scene between Robby and Dr. Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) with the pep talk-giving reversed, and Robby pops in his AirPods to listen to Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise's "Baby" on his walk home after one helluva day. There's no major cliffhanger — the biggest "twist" is probably Dr. Santos (Isa Briones) letting a homeless and carless Dr. Whitaker (Gerran Howell) move in with her — but there are a few dangling threads. Did Dana (Katherine LaNasa) really quit? Will Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) go to rehab? Will Robby take Abbot up on his offer to speak to his therapist? Season 2 will pick up 10 months later over the Fourth of July weekend.

Wyle, Wells, and Gemmill spoke to Gold Derby about the success of their atypical streaming hit, why they think the show has resonated with fans, the Season 1 finale they considered doing, what to expect next season, guest stars you should not expect, and more.

SEE Consider this: Noah Wyle deserves Emmy love for his career-best work on The Pitt

Gold Derby: I'm gonna get right down to it. How does it feel to have made one of the best shows of the year?

R. Scott Gemmill: [Laughs] Feels good!

John Wells: We're just proud of the show. You never know if the audience is gonna respond to what you're doing. So the fact that the response has been this strong is really gratifying.

Noah Wyle: The making of this show is one of the creative highlights of my life. And if that had been where it ended, I would have felt incredibly satisfied. But the fact that we've been embraced by the medical community and that audiences are excited to tune in each week and talk about it every Friday morning is just beyond expectation.

What's that been like for you guys to observe and see that it's catching on with people, especially since you created it with the goal of shining a light on the frontline workers and healthcare workers?

Wyle: I've had the opportunity to go to a few hospitals since we wrapped and it's been really poignant to see how seen and heard practitioners feel by our show. And just walking down the street in New York, it's very different than it's been for the last 15 years.

Gemmill: This was a little different for me anyways because we had written 10 episodes before we started shooting, and then we'd shot many episodes before we started airing. So we had no idea what the reception was going to be. We were sort of doing it in a bit of a vacuum. So once it launched, it was it was very exciting to see how people responded.

Wells: It has been extraordinary, and I honestly didn't think that it could happen quite like this anymore. That there are so many shows and so many opportunities, it takes a long time for people to catch up to things. I've just been very gratified by the fact that the audience has found it quickly and seem to be really engaged. And that's a bit of a miracle. I really didn't assume that that could ever really happen.

We had done Shameless, and it didn't become a hit until its fifth year. I think shows go one or two or three years sometimes before the audience can find it in this crowded marketplace, so it's fantastic that to see that this can still happen — that this kind of, you know, wildfire of enthusiasm through social media and viewership can happen anymore. I really didn't think it could.

ER was so groundbreaking in the '90s. You guys pioneered the Steadicam and you were the king of disaster episodes. And The Pitt is seen as a throwback to broadcast procedurals, but it's groundbreaking in its own way in the age of streaming. You guys do bigger episode orders. It's a tighter budget. And the look and feel and the way you shoot it is different. It's spare and stark. Do you guys view the show that way — that you guys were doing something different and it's a "risk" even though what you're doing has been successful on linear TV for 50 years?

Wells: I think the genre has been successful, but we what we were trying to do, we had no idea whether or not it would work, which was to do a human level, ground level, take a ride-along with some emergency room practitioners, and just be in the room with them. The level of seeing what they actually do — it's very graphic, and as you say, very spare, so we had no idea that that would work.

I always like to comment on the fact that almost every show — no matter what it is, whatever way it's structured — is a genre. We work in genres. We work in different kinds of storytelling that was identified during Greek drama. So this just happens to be one of those many genres, and we went at it in very specific way with very specific goals that Scott and Noah outlined really early on. And then we just kind of applied production techniques to make certain that we were getting at what those themes were.

Wyle: The line of demarcation in healthcare can be drawn in 2020 before COVID, and we're living in the A.D. of it all. And I think, in some ways, that reset the clock on what modern healthcare looks like, and that became the focus of the show. How do we do a show that's more practitioner-centric, less patient-centric, and has a fidelity not just to terminology and to procedure but to the emotional truth of the compounding aggregate experiences that practitioners shoulder and don't have a lot of opportunity to offload?

I love the way you guys tackle a lot of the issues. In conversation with healthcare workers, what were some of the things that they told you they wanted to see portrayed on TV that wasn't being portrayed on TV?

Gemmill: One thing was the risk of violence that healthcare workers are exposed to. The statistics are really unfortunate. And when we did talk to them, a lot of the things that were said by our nurses were things that I'd heard from other nurses who had had their cheeks broken and their teeth knocked out. The battle between patient satisfaction scores and getting patients to be seen quickly, and even if patients are seen within 20 minutes by a doctor, it still may be four hours before they get upstairs because of the lack of hospital beds available. And that comes down to lack of nursing available. We listen to all the professionals. We bring them in at the beginning of the season. We talk to them about what we've done right, what we've done wrong, what they would like to see different, what hasn't been told from their perspective.

One thing I love about the show is its simplicity. We're just dropped into the ER and it's an immersive set, and I love that there's no score. I've talked to several people who did not realize there's no music until I pointed it out. I feel like that's what you want, right? It's a sign that this is the correct choice. It's working, and they're so drawn into the show, they don't notice that there's no music.

Gemmill: Absolutely. That was a that was a decision made from the very first moment on. Anyone who came in to talk to us, whether they're writers or directors, producers, we made it very clear that we didn't wanna have a musical score. We knew it could work. We've seen it done. We've done it ourselves on occasion. It's sometimes a very difficult sell to others. That was that was the only real sort of battle we had was to fight to keep the music out.

I think what you realize is once you watch it, if you hear the music come on, you sit back in your chair because now you're watching a show. When there's no music, I think it pulls you into the action much more strongly, and you're sucked into that world. I think the music distracts you — it provides an escape, I think, because it's like, everything is gonna be OK as long as there's somebody playing a violin over in the corner there to help you feel what you're feeling. But when there's no one there, you gotta think for yourself, like, "What am I feeling?" And that's what goes on with some of these cases because you're being blasted with a range of emotion from terror to horror to sadness to relief when a loved one is out of pain.

I realized after a couple episodes that the show reminded me of the best episode of ER, "Love's Labor Lost." Because that episode, you focus on the A story — the preeclampsia — and then at the end, we get to sit with Dr. Greene (Anthony Edwards) as he processes everything. With The Pitt, it feels like this all the time. We get these small moments with the characters. They get to take things in, and you see the toll it takes on them. We see a convo that might be cut on a regular show in favor of the next trauma coming in or something. Was this something that crossed your mind? Did you think about the show this way or make this connection?

Wells: Well, I agree with you that "Love's Labor Lost" is the best episode of ER. [Laughs] But, yeah, I think we just wanted to show what it's like. What are we asking physicians and medical professionals to go through for us? And so the challenge was — and Noah, you can really speak to this — to perform a 15-hour shift over a seven-month [production] period and to maintain the continuity and the arc of that performance over all these episodes. And so, as the audience, you're going along for a long shift. You're in it. There's no music to help you escape. It’s just, “I've gotta bring my own feelings and how I how I sense it.”

Wyle: I think that that says it really well. It becomes a kind of an endurance test and challenge to the viewer to stay on their feet as long as these people are gonna stay on their feet. And to appreciate, as you're watching each one of these hours roll by, how these people attend everybody's worst day of their life. And they do it four times an hour, 12 hours a day every day. And they pick up our broken pieces, and we go to them sicker, and we go to them angrier, and we have less patience, and we have less empathy for them. And they're human. And our healthcare system is as fragile as they are. Their health is ultimately our health.

Noah, we have to talk about your performance in the 13th episode. There's a 13-hour buildup to that. How did you calibrate Robby's increasing stress level without ever going over the top? Because you never play anger. And then how did you prepare for when the time finally came to break down in PEDs and feel the weight of the duty and the guilt and responsibility?

Wyle: In some ways, it's there from the very first moment. We tried to find moments when you get a sense of the volcanic amount of emotion that he’s suppressing and compartmentalizing. And as the day goes on and triggers begin to happen and some of his bearing walls are taken away, that professional mask is slipping to a greater, greater degree. So on a technical front, I sort of had this wellspring of emotion that I would kindle like a fire every day just to make sure it was lit. And then eventually, it was just time to let it out. And then on that day, it felt more cathartic and like a release than a chore.

One of the magic tricks of the show is you guys make viewers care about these characters without a ton of backstory or exposition. But it's in the casting, the writing, and the acting, and they all feel like fully formed characters. I think the best example is the night shift coming in seamlessly, and it feels like we've been watching them for five seasons. How do you guys go about creating that immediate sense of familiarity with new characters?

Wyle: Cathy Sandrich [Gelfond] is a terrific casting director. She brought us tremendously talented people, who a lot of them audiences aren't familiar with. They're new faces, so it helps you with your sense of immersion and belief when you don't have a lot of associated baggage with the people you're watching. You don't remember them from other things.

Gemmill: That was a conscious decision to really have a lot of new faces so that when you first see these characters, you just buy into them as who they are.

Wells: The writers did an extraordinary job of staying really honest to what that workday would look like. And so it leaves a lot of space for the audience to fill in because we're not, like, telling all the time. It's really just seeing what the behaviors are. You start to make assumptions about who people are, then those assumptions are, just like when you meet new people here, those assumptions are oftentimes incorrect, and sometimes they are correct. I think that the single-day format and staying honest to what you would know in that single-day format is one of the real strengths of the show.

The finale is pretty low-key and is a comedown from the mass casualty. Did you guys always know how the day would end?

Gemmill: We knew the last scene because we shot it in September. [Laughs] We didn't know how we were gonna get there for sure. But we did. No, not really because how do you come down after that? On a certain level, there were times where we thought, “Man, wouldn't it be great if we just ended the season at the end of Episode 12 [during the mass casualty]?” [Laughs] We'd pick it up next year because it was a lot.

But, again, I think if you just be honest and look at what would these characters be going through in hour 14, or what would they be going through in hour 15, and how would they come down, and what would that look like? Just by trying to be as honest and truthful as possible, I think what you end up with is something that the audience accepts and buys because I think one of the things about doing it in real time, as we've done, is it really forces the audience to be in the ER for the whole day. And that's what it's like when you go there.

I like that you guys didn't go with a big cliffhanger because it is more realistic this way. They do eventually leave their shift. They go home at the end of the day. But you there are some loose ends here, like Langdon's status is still up in the air. Dana seemingly quits, quietly quits. What can you say about Season 2 and how those things are resolved?

Gemmill: We're jumping about 10 months. When we come back, it'll be the Fourth of July weekend, and lots has transpired between our people and in their personal lives. And when we start back up, the audience will be playing catchup as some of our characters will be because some will have been away from the hospital for a limited period of time.

I wonder who. Will Robby have a good minute or two in Season 2? Will he get to pee more than once during the day?

Wyle: [Laughs] Who knew that was such cinematic gold.

Gemmill: Noah’s built it into his contract that his character gets to pee at least every four episodes.

How will Santos and Whitaker be as roommates?

Gemmill: That's TBD. That's gonna be interesting. We're having fun with that. You know, that's the great part of the job — you create these fun characters and then you get to go on an adventure with them. And that's what it's all about.

Wyle: I smell spin-off! [Laughs]

Will every season have a major trauma like Season 1 did with the mass shooting?

Gemmill: No, I don't think we'll do that. We don't wanna repeat ourselves, and I think that would become a little formulaic. Part of our job is to figure out what sort of things could affect a busy ER. And there are there are a lot of other things going on in the world, and we will present some of those.

Wyle: It was really gratifying to see how much audience had responded to the first 10 episodes and appreciated the small details and the interpersonal relationships and drama just from regular cases without having to go to an extreme situation. I think that was really revelatory that we didn't have to go bigger or louder. We could just be more truthful.

I love that you guys got Brad Dourif to play McKay's (Fiona Dourif) dad this season. Could we see Bryan Cranston (father of Taylor Dearden) and Jon Jon Briones (father of Isa Briones) in Season 2?

Gemmill: Wouldn't it [be great]?

Wyle: [Laughs] We got a better shot at JJ.

How soon is too soon for someone from ER to stop by?

Wells: We don't wanna pull anybody out of the show. We love the actors that we've gotten to work with through all these years. But at the same time, we don't want you to turn to somebody on the couch and say like…

"It's Carter and Benton (Eriq La Salle)!"

Wells: Yeah, "Hey, look who that is!" You know? That is the antithesis of what the show's trying to accomplish. I think it's fair to say, don't watch the show in anticipation of seeing people who've been on previous shows.

Noah, what would Robby and Carter think of each other?

Wyle: Oh, that's a great question. I think Carter would want Robby to like him. And I think Robby would be slow to like him but eventually come around.

I kinda feel like Carter would hide the fact that he's wealthy from Robby like he did with Del Amico (Maria Bello).

Wyle: [Laughs] Yes, yes, yes. I agree.

One thing I love is the levity on the show too. You got a lot of that early on in the season with the rats and the gag of the fluids being spilled on Whitaker. But my favorite was the ambulance bet. I'm assuming that was a real thing that you guys learned about from healthcare workers.

Gemmill: I don't remember.

Wyle: Ambulances get stolen. That's true.

And then everyone in the ER takes bets on what happens?

Gemmill: I think that was a Noah invention.

I love it. One last thing. John, we spoke 10 years ago because I did an oral history on "Love's Labor Lost" for the 20th anniversary, and you said something back then that I think about whenever I watch a new show. And that is, "When you're doing the first season of a show, you're constantly looking for the episode where everything seems to come together. And it's the show you were hoping to make when you first started thinking about making this series." That was "Love's Labor Lost" for ER. So for all three of you, what do you think that episode is for The Pitt?

Wells: I think some of it depends on what you want from the show. I was bowled over by Episode 8 with the honor walk and what was going on in that episode. When I read it, it was something that kind of overcame me. And then when I watched it — I don't normally cry at on shows that we work on — and that sort of did it for me where I thought, “Oh, in this format, you can deliver that same punch.” But I don't know. Everybody probably has their own.

Wyle: It gelled really quickly for me. I think John with the pilot, we did those two weeks of boot camp and then we hit the ground running. And from the from the opening bell, I felt like everybody recognized they were doing something special and wanted to bring their best game. And when that happens, one plus one equals three in all sorts of areas. But it's really rare. You can't quite plan for it. You just have to hope for it. I would go with the pilot.

Gemmill: I like to think that's something we still aspire to.

Wyle: [Laughs] Well played.

Gemmill: I don't know if you ever get there. You’re very proud of your episodes, but you never wanna have that one that was perfect because then you're done, you know? You've peaked. So I try and think of that as just the unattainable, but certainly something you strive for.

Maybe it’ll be in Season 2, and then you have another bar to clear.

Gemmill: There you go. That's true. That's a good way of looking at it.

All episodes of The Pitt are now streaming on Max.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.