Noah Wyle talks about his Emmy nomination for ‘The Pitt’

Twenty-six years after Noah Wyle was last nominated for an Emmy, for his role as Dr. John Carter on NBC’s long-running medical drama “ER,” the actor has scrubbed back in for a chance at a golden trophy. The star and executive producer of “The Pitt” received a nomination for lead actor in a drama series for his role as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, and overall, HBO Max’s breakout hit received 13 nominations. Wyle will be competing alongside Sterling K. Brown (“Paradise”), Pedro Pascal (“The Last of Us”), Gary Oldman (“Slow Horses”) and Adam Scott (“Severance”) for the award. The actor’s skill around a fictional emergency room has yielded strong results.

While it’s his first Emmy nomination since 1999, it’s the actor’s sixth Emmy nomination for playing a doctor — the previous five were for his supporting role as the med student-turned-hospital veteran on “ER.” Tuesday’s nomination is his first ever in the lead actor in a drama category. Wyle was in production on “The Pitt’s” sophomore season on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank when he got the celebratory news, and The Times caught up with him during a break.

Noah, congratulations! Production on Season 2 is underway. You were on set when you got the news?

Thank you. Yes, we’re working today. I was on set. We shot the first scene. I asked to go to the bathroom. On a bathroom break, I checked my phone and saw a text from my wife that said, “Baby!” I thought, “Oh.” By the time I came back onto set, everybody was starting to get very excited. Then just now, [R.] Scott Gemmill [the show’s creator] came down and made a formal announcement and read off all the 13 nominations, and that just exploded the crew and cast background into massive celebration.

How do you get back to work after this?

Oh, so easily. I’m going [to] go in there, and we’re gonna get right back at it. I don’t know. I guess with a little bit of a bounce in our stride. When I look at the sound department, who works so hard on our show, parsing out all that overlapping dialogue — to see them get recognized, and see our makeup departments, both prosthetic and non-prosthetic, be recognized for their labour — everybody puts such pride into their work, and I am inspired by so many incredible artists who bring their expertise to this place every day.

How are you feeling about that kind of cast change early in the show’s run, or what it means for Season 2?

We made it clear at the outset that part of being in a realistic teaching hospital is a revolving door of characters, whether you have somebody not come back, or you have somebody die, or whether you have somebody rotate to another department or go on another specialty.

These are the things that we pull our hair out in the writers’ room trying to figure out how to keep this ensemble together for as long as time possible, but knowing that there has to be a revolution of characters coming through to keep the place realistic.

I would imagine it’ll be easy today. How do you plan to celebrate?

I looked at that list of nominees that I’m in the company of, and I send my congratulations to all of them. It’s incredibly gratifying and humbling to be included in their company. I’m going to celebrate quietly with my family and come back to work tomorrow.

What’s a memory that stands out from your last Emmys experience?

Talk about perspective. It was such a beautiful, wonderful, heady time for me that the last time I was nominated, I was annoyingly blasé about it, and if I had known that it was going to be 20-plus years before I was invited to the party again, I think I would have had a better time.

Tribune News Service