Noah Wyle is Back in ER Scrubs on ‘The Pitt’

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Actor Noah Wyle, 53, is back in a medical drama — this time to play emergency room chief attendant Michael “Robby” Robinavitch on the new series The Pitt, launching Jan. 9 on Max. In the

role, he deals with issues that are perhaps more relevant to 2025 than the ones he faced as John Carter on ER, the long-running NBC medical drama that aired from 1994 to 2009.

“Fentanyl overdoses, mental health stuff, the gun epidemic, mass shootings, medical-assisted suicides and anything that has to do with what our country is going through post-pandemic,” Wyle

says. “These become viewed under a totally different light than what we did [on ER]. It makes for very exciting storylines that feel really relevant, not the least one of which is one that's

relevant to [AARP] — which is, we have a very large aging population.”

That storyline is also personal to Wyle, who wrote two of the episodes. “I've [got] four healthy parents that are still alive and thriving. But that is a gift that not many people are

enjoying as late into life as I am. So exploring the realities of what that looks like and how we care for our elders and what we want ‘end of life’ to look and feel like for them and for us

is a significant storyline that runs through the series this season, which I was really proud of.”

Wyle tells AARP about how he’s keeping fit and healthy; his still-cherished connections to ER colleagues like George Clooney and Julianna Margulies; and his way-too-extensive “collections”

of things like books, walking canes and — yes — Noah’s Arks.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was it like going back to a medical drama?

It's been incredibly satisfying. At the beginning, it was really just steeped in memory. I was walking around that lot [The Pitt is filmed about 200 feet from where ER was] just saying hello

to ghost after ghost and opening up a time capsule. I've described it to people as, for the longest time, ER was a very near memory no matter how long it had been. Those memories, those

relationships, it was all very easy to access for me, even when I had gone on to do other things. In the last four or five years, that began to change. And in the last year and a half, two

years, those memories have now receded farther into the distance than I ever thought possible.

Do you keep in touch with your ER colleagues?

I hear about what Julianna is up to all the time. George is sort of a “happy birthday, merry Christmas, saw your movie, heard you're doing a show” kind of relationship. Tony (Anthony

Edwards) and I reconnected a couple of years ago when [former ER colleague] Gloria Reuben organized a Zoom reunion for the Waterkeeper Alliance [a nonprofit that Reuben is the president of

that works to protect bodies of water around the world]. I said yes, expecting it to be three or four people. And the fact that everybody turned up to be part of it was a testament to how

much we wanted to see each other again, and the fact that we didn't even want to get off the call. Especially George. George was having a ball. He couldn't stop talking. 

Noah Wyle, right, first gained fame in the 1990s tending to patients on "ER" alongside superstar castmates such as Julianna Margulies, left. NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection