It didn’t take lengthy for it to be evident that The Pitt was going to safe Noah Wyle one other Emmy nomination, the sixth of his profession and his first since 1999. However when you attain the top of Season 1 Episode 13, and Robby breaks down, it’s clear that he’s doing one thing particular along with his return to taking part in a health care provider.
That breakdown, Wyle tells TV Insider in our newest Scene Examine — watch the complete video interview above to see him dissect that scene, talk about Season 1, and tease Season 2 — was a second he saved in thoughts main as much as filming it. It comes after he picks up a shift he normally wouldn’t (the anniversary of his mentor’s dying) and suffers quite a few losses, together with his stepson’s girlfriend, in a taking pictures at a music pageant he was initially going to attend (she took his ticket).
“On daily basis, whether or not I used to be at work or not, I might simply type of contact in with this second realizing that it was coming and say, ‘Is it there? Yep, it’s there. Okay. The fireplace’s nonetheless lit.’ However I wouldn’t let it pop till today. And that day once we went to work to shoot that scene, I used to be so excited to get this sense off of my chest finally as a result of I’d been type of working it for thus lengthy that there was a masochistic ingredient of pleasure of what was going to occur once I lastly let it go,” he explains. “And I didn’t actually know what it was going to really feel like. I simply needed it to only come out. And that is the way it got here out.”
Constructing to that scene on that day, he noticed Robby as “a drowning man on his approach to his drowning,” he says. “Because the shift progresses, the water ranges frequently rising. After which once we get into this scene, that is the second the place in my thoughts, the water was over my head, over my head, rising past my capability to remain on prime of it.”
He admits, “I may have carried out all of it day. The properly was very deep that day, and Damian Marcano, who directed it, I believe, felt a little bit responsible about placing me by means of the paces. And I saved saying, ‘No, no, man, come on. Let’s do it once more.’ We didn’t do many takes. It was very economically shot. We didn’t actually rehearse it extensively. Taj [Speights] was a phenomenal actor to play the scene with. And Nina Ruscio created an setting with these animals on the wall that was so disjointedly, haunting, and off-putting that it made my job extraordinarily straightforward.”
Wyle calls the next episode, the 14th (and penultimate), “the magic trick of the season.” He’d identified concerning the breakdown in Episode 13, and he’d filmed the roof prime and remaining moments within the finale months prior, however he hadn’t identified what would bridge these two.
Robby’s arc appears like one which, on some other present not informed in real-time as The Pitt is, may have been stretched throughout a number of shifts. “The thesis gamble was, would this really feel like an mixture toll on a viewer the way in which that it feels on the characters? Will they determine with our fatigue? And that labored. I imply, it really works for those who watch it one hour at a time, it really works at much more for those who watch a number of episodes. However as an strategy, I requested all of the forged members to attempt to spend at the very least at some point spending 15 hours in your ft simply to see what it appears like and the place do you begin holding pressure and when does it begin to creep in? When do you get hungry? When do you get hangry? In the event you’re very clearheaded and will talk clearly at sure occasions, when does that get tougher for you? And people grow to be the stuff you put into your scripts so that you could present that mixture toll,” Wyle explains.
“Possibly a gurney runs over your foot in hour 4, it turns into a little bit limp, it will get extra pronounced by hour 15. These are the little, what I name, superb brush strokes that you simply get to do with a present that solely limits you to fifteen hours,” he continues. “However by way of the massive swings, it’s not a whole lot of time. We talked about it within the writing room. It’s simply sufficient time, 15 hours, to possibly fall in love, possibly fall out of affection, possibly discover religion, possibly lose religion, possibly uncover that you’ve a expertise for one thing, possibly uncover you don’t have a expertise for one thing. In order that was as a lot as we allowed all of those characters and it was sufficient.”
Watch the complete video interview with Noah Wyle for way more about The Pitt, its 13 Emmy nominations, and extra.
The Pitt, Season 2, January 2026, HBO Max