MAX‘s new hit series The Pitt hasn’t just reinvigorated the medical procedure for 2025, it’s also pushed series star and executive producer Noah Wyle back into the spotlight. Decades after shooting to fame as ER‘s heartthrob intern John Carter, Wyle is once again winning audiences over as an emergency department doctor struggling to juggle the stress of the job and a messy personal life. This time, though, he’s Dr. Robby.

**Spoilers for The Pitt Episode 15 “9 PM,” now streaming on MAX**

The entire first season of The Pitt tracks a particularly grueling fifteen-hour-long shift for Wyle’s Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch. The day started with Dr. Robby talking his friend Dr. Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) off the literal ledge and ended with Abbot returning the favor. Besides being the fifth anniversary of the death of Robby’s mentor, Dr. Adamson, this day brought with it parents grieving their children, a measles outbreak, an assault on a key hospital worker, a colleague/ex girlfriend’s miscarriage, and the revelation that Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball), Robby’s closest friend in the ED has been stealing benzos from his patients. Oh, and there was a mass shooting at a music festival that overwhelmed the department and pushed Dr. Robby to his inevitable breaking point.

Needless to say, fans and critics are predicting an awards campaign for Wyle’s work as Dr. Robby on The Pitt Season 1. What’s gone a bit more under the radar, however, are Wyle’s contributions to the show as an executive producer and writer. (He wrote both Episode 4 and Episode 9.)

When DECIDER got the chance to hop on a Zoom call with Wyle last week, we asked him about what makes The Pitt’s writers’ room stand apart from other streaming hits, what’s next for Dr. Robby, and where he hopes the relationship between Robby and ex Dr. Heather Collins (Tracey Ifeachor). Wyle also addressed what’s going on between his character and Langdon and refused to assuage our nerves that Langdon and Dana (Katherine LaNasa) won’t be coming back for Season 2…

DECIDER: I need to start with a really kind of nerdy question. I saw like this like skeet going around BlueSky talking about how your writer’s room is kind of more like a more traditional network writer’s group where you have writers that you’re nurturing and bringing up in the process. Is that true? And if so, do you think that’s contributed to the show’s success?

Noah Wyle: Uh, yes, well, John Wells runs a very specific type of training program within his company. He likes to foster and nurture young talent. He has all sorts of different apprentice programs and showrunner programs. I think that’s a huge part of his ethic, is to reach back and reach down and promote talent when he finds it. So that has been consistent. We do, but to be honest, everybody has equal contribution in that room, it feels. You know, we’re all in there together and there’s no bad ideas. It’s very collegiate and very intimate. So the hierarchy that probably is there in terms of title doesn’t really manifest itself in terms of participation. I think probably it’s that collegiate aspect and the lack of formality that Scott Gemmell brings to the writing room and the sense of egalitarianism that he engages in that makes us all feel empowered to do our best work, to take chances, to reach higher.

You’ve written two of the episodes this season, and when I spoke to Taylor Dearden, she gave you credit for one of her favorite Dr. Mel King moments of the season. She said that it was your idea to do the gravel removal for her character and she felt very seen by you as a writer in that respect. Can you talk about that inspiration and how maybe you look at these actors and what they’re bringing to the part in terms of developing the scripts further?

It’s a funny thing about writing. It feels like a conscious act, but it’s lot more of feeling like a vessel and having things come through you. And I know that sounds kind of arty farty, but when you’ve established a character that is three-dimensional and is being performed by somebody as talented as Taylor Dearden, when you think about that character, their character almost speaks for themselves. They almost tell you what they would do or what they wouldn’t do in any given situation. So you almost just have to present an issue or a moment in the room and then everybody starts to weigh in on how they’d do.

So I brought a guy in with a lot of road rash, a lot gravel, and I knew that Mel was having a really hard day, and I knew that Langdon was going to chew out [Isa Briones’s] Santos and needed to also show the other side of his ability to be a good teacher and reach back in the next moment. So he was gonna find Mel and he was going to try to get her back on her game. And then it’s just like, you know, it was the lowest hanging fruit to say, “I’ve got the perfect case for you. Something you can just absolutely go into a fugue state and meditate your way back to feeling normal and re-engage.”

You’ve gotten so much praise for Robby’s breakdown in Episode 13. I also think you do extraordinary work in the finale. I think one scene that really pops to me is between you and Langdon outside, because it feels like something has really broken there or something has changed between those two men. Can you talk me through that scene? And at this point, where does Langdon sit with Robby because before he didn’t trust him, but now I don’t even know if there can be a bridge.

I think you’re reading it really well. When we came to shoot that last scene in Episode 10 together, we had a stunt coordinator there on set. We thought about it getting kind of heated and physical, and then we came the shoot it, and it became so clear that it wasn’t a fight scene. It was a break-up scene. That it was a sad scene. And then, you know, like any breakup, it’s really hard to be in the same room as someone that you felt intimate with and felt betrayed by. Even if you have to work next to them, even if they still are good at what they do, it’s really tricky to bridge both the professional and the personal at the same time after you’ve gotten the rug pulled out from underneath you. So that scene in the ambulance bay was, if the first scene was sad and didn’t turn it into a fight, this was, “Okay, now that I’ve had a second to really think about this, if you’re really going to provoke me, you’re getting me to get what’s underneath my sadness, which is my anger.” And he sort of doesn’t say or do the right thing in that moment. He could defuse the bomb and instead he lights the fuse on it.

Speaking of breakups and relationships, we do learn more about Robby and Collins’ backstory in later episodes. I remember when it was first being teased out, feeling very much excited that perhaps the show would explore what you were describing, like two people who used to be romantically involved, but now are just colleagues or friends. Because I think that there’s an emotional intimacy there that’s not usually explored. Do you think that the Robby and Collins relationship could become more romantic down the line or do you want to keep it platonic?

I think Robby goes home at the end of this shift and can no longer lie to himself that there isn’t a problem. You know, this whole first season was about recognizing that he is about to hit his rock bottom. He will have no capacity for a personal relationship, no capacity for friendship, no capacity for leadership, unless he addresses these demons. And so Season 2, if I’m prioritizing and trying to stay in keeping with the grounded, realistic way we’ve been laying this out, is more about him finding that road to mental health than distracting himself with either a romance or excitement. Yeah, I don’t know how to describe it other than that, you know, their relationship is extremely complex. It’s really fun to have a character that’s got both the potential of a future with and past with. But he’s sort of damaged goods right now.

One of my favorite things about talking to the actors over the course of this season is discussing how beautifully interwoven clues about people’s backstories are into the scripts and into the story. I understand that there was a boot camp and that some actors got whole bibles about their character’s backstory. We don’t know that much about Dr. Robby. We hear that he lived with his grandmother when he was young and she seemed to be religious. Is there anything more that you hope to tease out about his backstory in future seasons, or are there any little clues that you think that fans could hone in on in your performance, be they subtle or not?

I love that this is a clue path that engages people because I think it’s interesting, you know? And I think the less detail you give, sometimes the more you engage that clue path. So when we started writing the show, it was, “Okay, where do we begin? Does Robby wake up in his house? Apartment? Townhouse? Is he flopping on a friend’s couch? If he’s got an apartment, what’s on the wall? Is he alone? Does he have a dog? Does he take a shot of whiskey? Does he drink orange juice?” Like, every choice defines and limits at the same time. And suddenly your everyman becomes THAT man, depending on how the art director has decorated the apartment set. And I didn’t want anybody to know this man except in a professional capacity until it became impossible for him to keep up his professional mask anymore and then you get to know about his personal. That was sort of the rule for everybody. Like the less we know about them personally, the more professional, the better. And then we’ll learn a nugget or two and that nugget will be defining in that moment, but it’ll be specific to that moment. The audience will then get a glimpse when it’s appropriate.

So, everything on that front was by design to not define him, but you want to know that he didn’t handle loss well. He has an abandonment issue. He didn’t deal with the loss of his mentor and having to be responsible for that well. Whether that’s the only time he has experienced that or whether abandonment is a triggering thing for him that predates Adamson is something that we are, I am, playing with. Whether that becomes revealed or not, it sort of informs the character’s journey forward, if we can go back and track his pathology to its root. If he was raised by his grandmother, where are his parents? If he’s fallen out of faith, what happened to the faith? Those are questions that I am intrigued by.

I think what a lot of fans will be anxious about at the end of the season is whether or not two characters in particular will be returning for Season 2. That would be Patrick Ball, Langdon, and Katherine LaNasa’s Dana. It’s up in the air whether or not Langdon will go into rehab or be fired. And Dana, we don’t know, she was up in the air about leaving. Are you going to announce at any point whether or they’re confirmed? Because some of the actors I’ve talked to seem very aware that they’re going back. Or is there a reason why you want to leave it up in the air for those two characters?

There’s going to be a foot race. The top five winners get to come back. All of them are in training now. No, the truth is that we loved all these characters. You can only keep certain people in certain jobs in certain hospitals before there’s a natural changeover. You know, we’re breaking story now. I don’t know how to answer that question other than to say that it’s great that people want these characters to come back and that’s really fun to play into and away from and with, and that’s great.

I’m sorry to end on such a vague note, but…

No, no, it’s fine. I have to ask. I mean, I’m sure you guys are still breaking it up and figuring things out. But yeah, just curious.

“Tell me what happens, but don’t tell me what happens.” You don’t want to know because that would ruin it for you and it’s been so fun to keep you people in the dark on these twists and turns. But I understand why you have to ask. We’re asking ourselves all these same questions and answering them as thoughtfully and honestly as we can.

This interview has been formatted and edited for clarity.