Noah Wyle puts his surgical skills to the test... with a game of Operation. His focus is tested while he answers questions about his 11 seasons at 'ER', why 'The Pitt' is set over the course of one day, and what it was like to work with George Clooney. He also weighs in on his medical knowledge and what procedures he thinks he could successfully pull off in real life.
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00:00Oh s**t. Oh s**t. What the f**k?
00:05We're working our way through the whole body, aren't we?
00:12Hi, I'm Noah Wiley, and I'm going to be answering some questions while playing Operation.
00:18I feel like I have shaky hands today, usually steady hands, but I'm not feeling supremely
00:24confident because these all look smaller. I'm going to use my glasses, that is a guarantee.
00:27With all of your experience acting on medical shows, how much actual medical knowledge do
00:34you feel like you have? Well, probably somewhere around a third-year medical student. I mean,
00:43theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge are two totally different things. By the way,
00:47I'm supposed to take out the brain freeze from his brain, which I have now done successfully.
00:52I have been asked to weigh in on a couple of different ailments, but I think it's more of
01:01a conversation icebreaker than it is actual curiosity, or I hope. I hope nobody really
01:07thinks I can help them. Sats at 94.
01:09Give me the second.
01:10Until you rest?
01:11Down to 89.
01:12Wait, wait, I've got it.
01:12Sats coming up.
01:13I think you have to understand at least most of what you're saying, so I try to make sure
01:19I know what I'm talking about when I say it. Fans love watching Dr. John Carter's journey
01:23on ER over the seasons. Was there a particular episode that you felt really captured the essence
01:29of your character? I'm always sentimental about the pilot just because it began the whole experience.
01:34I've always felt that the Africa storyline that he was engaged in was revelatory about
01:41his character. There was an episode called Makemba, where I met Tandy Newton's character
01:46in Africa that I felt like that was Carter at his best. Take out the Adam's apple.
01:52I went from 22 years old to 37 years old. I was single with a cat and a ficus in an apartment,
02:00and I left married with two children. It was the most informative experience of my life.
02:07I definitely grew up, and everybody got to watch me do it. Jeez Louise, this thing is
02:11in there. Oh, there. That's what I want. I want the stem. I was trying to take it out
02:15from the thick part. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. What the fuck? Can you swear on variety? All right.
02:23It's out. It's out. He'll never talk again, but the damn Adam's apple's out.
02:26We're working our way through the whole body, are we? Okay. You left ER at the end of season
02:3411, coming back for some guest spots in the finale. What was the main decision for you
02:38behind leaving the show? The birth of my son, November 9th, 2002, was the first time on set
02:47that I was really interested in being anywhere other than on set, and so I left, but referred
02:52to it as a divorce with visitation rights. I left a few episodes in the balance to keep
02:56my hand in and to be part of the final narrative, which John Wells always maintained was a nice
03:03bookend to have Carter be part of since the pilot was his first day in the hospital. To
03:06have him come back and to be chief attending was a really nice sort of beat of closure.
03:11doctor. The heart. Straight to the heart. There it is.
03:15Zzz! Zzz. Zzz. Taken. Taken out. Oh, I just dropped it in the Adam's
03:29apple. That's terrible. Okay. I've successfully removed the heart from the Adam's apple. Has
03:36Has there ever been a scene that you were grossed out by on ER or the pit?
03:41I once and famously had to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a German Shepherd on ER.
03:51Sucking the end of a wet dog nose. Take after take.
03:56That kind of grossed me out. I have a pretty tight high tolerance for my own pain and bloodletting, but I don't like to see anybody else in pain.
04:02Surgeons do this all the time, where they sometimes just shake the table, just to reorient the patient.
04:15This is going to take me a sec.
04:20Don't mind that snapping sound. It's perfectly natural. I'm going to rotate counterclockwise.
04:27Oh, I almost had it. I feel like a real doctor all the time. It's just pure delusion.
04:35Okay.
04:36I don't know. I smell a male practice suit coming my way.
04:41If you had to operate on someone, what do you think would be the easiest operation to perform?
04:48Hmm.
04:49I'm going to go ahead and say, I think I can put it in a chest tube.
04:53I think I've done enough of them.
04:54Mid-axillary line, throw out costal space, punch through the pleura.
04:59French.
05:01Yep. I think that's what I'd do.
05:02The funny bone.
05:05I like suturing, but I do find that much like this operation, I require my glasses,
05:11and it's not as easy to see as it used to be.
05:14Oh, look at that. Oh, shh. I had it. I had it.
05:17I like intubating.
05:18We should intubate, right?
05:20That's when you stick a tube down somebody's throat.
05:23Oh, man. I had it. I had it. And then I got cocky. Just like a surgeon.
05:29Okay.
05:29You were on the most episodes of VR out of any other cast member.
05:33Was your character always supposed to be in that many episodes?
05:36No, I don't know that there was any supposed to about it.
05:38You know, the show ran for a crazy long period of time, and I had a ball doing it.
05:45I didn't want to leave until I wanted to be around my kids more.
05:50And, you know, after a certain point in time, it was just a wonderful place to be.
05:59Spare Rib.
06:01It's on the spare rib.
06:03Oh, I don't even see it in there.
06:05All right. There it is.
06:08Get in.
06:09What was it like working with George Clooney?
06:14It's a triggering question, apparently.
06:16He was great.
06:17You know, he was a lovely compatriot, a lovely colleague.
06:21Taught me a lot.
06:21I learned a lot from him.
06:23Still learn a lot from him.
06:24I think it's very brave what he's doing going on Broadway right now.
06:28Have you become more or less a hypochondriac since doing medical shows?
06:33I'm not much of a hypochondriac.
06:37I'm not a very good patient.
06:38I think I'm dying every time.
06:42I guess that is a hypochondriac.
06:44Every time I'm sick, I think I'm dying.
06:45But I don't think I'm dying all the time.
06:47I don't pay attention to all my ailments.
06:49But when I do get sick, even a common head cold feels terminal to me.
06:54People are saying that the pit is a very accurate representation of the medical field.
07:00Do you have real doctors on set and in the writer's room to advise?
07:03We do.
07:04One of our secret weapons on this show is a man named Dr. Joe Sachs, who was a technical
07:09advisor on ER and also a writer on ER.
07:11He's a board-certified ER doctor who still practices.
07:15And he is both on our writing staff and frequently on set.
07:18We also have three rotating ER doctors who serve as technical advisors on every episode.
07:23We have real ER trauma nurses that are working in the background.
07:28We have real lab techs working in the background.
07:30And several of our actors who play nurses also are nurses.
07:35We've got tons of experts around to make sure that this is as accurate as we can make it.
07:41Best feedback is, that looks great.
07:44More common is, hey, your stethoscope's in backwards.
07:48Writer's cramp.
07:48All right.
07:52Oh, yeah.
07:56Oh, shoot.
07:56Oh, man.
08:03How much has changed in the medical field since starting ER in 1994 to now?
08:07What's the biggest difference?
08:08The biggest difference is in 1994, there were about 40 million Americans without health insurance
08:14who are using ERs as their primary source of healthcare.
08:18That's doubled now.
08:20We have a nationwide nursing shortage and we have a national boarding crisis.
08:25They used to have it tough.
08:26Now they've got it almost impossibly tough.
08:28We very quickly thought to ourselves, what didn't we do in the old days that would be relevant now?
08:34And within 10 minutes, we had 25 things on the board that we never did 15 years ago.
08:39Whether it's mass shootings or fentanyl or trans rights.
08:43You know, these weren't in our lexicon 15 years ago.
08:46So it was incumbent upon us to find the stories in the bread basket.
08:53I don't want to sound cocky, but I think I'm going to nail this one.
08:55Having the entire season of The Pit take place in one day was eye-opening.
09:04What inspired that choice?
09:05That was Scott Gemmell, our executive producer and showrunner's idea.
09:10And it was arrived at because we were trying to figure out how to create a sense of urgency
09:15and immediacy and pressure in the same cinematic language that we used to employ on ER without
09:21repeating ourselves. So we were trying not to have to rely on long uninterrupted Steadicam takes.
09:27A 24-hour ticking clock suddenly gives you this aggregate sense of tension and fatigue.
09:32Like a pressure cooker where you're adding temperature and ingredients
09:37and over time until the whole thing just blows.
09:40Charlie horse.
09:46Oh, I had it. I do have it.
09:48Oh, I had it.
09:49Can you share your favorite behind the scenes memory from either ER or The Pit?
10:01There was a lovely moment here on this set when they first cut the first trailer together
10:06and nobody here had seen a frame of what we were doing yet.
10:09And we put the trailer on on all the monitors around the central area over there.
10:14You could just feel the excitement and the ripples of sort of like,
10:18wow, this is, this could be really good.
10:22This is a tricky one. Barely wider than the dial.
10:28I'm just going to yank it out.
10:29Because I want to go home like a lot of doctors.
10:34I'm just going to say, nurse, close that for me.
10:40Do you hope The Pit also runs for 15 seasons like ER?
10:43Where would you like to see your character go?
10:47Well, if it goes 15 seasons, I'm pretty much sure where that character is going to go.
10:52He's going to go straight to the old folks home from there.
10:55I hope this one runs for a while. I've been really gratified to be part of it.
11:00I'm extremely proud of it. I love the resonance that it seems to be having out there.
11:04And they've given us a second season. We're going to hope to do it justice.
11:11Okay, where are we? Water on the knee.
11:27Just for fun, I did that one lefty.
11:30If your character had to pick a theme song for performing surgery, what would it be?
11:34I would say, given the circumstances, Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Breakdown.
11:43Sounds pretty appropriate.
11:48Or Another One Bites the Dust. Is that what we were looking for?
11:53I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. That's pretty strong for surgery song.
11:57Help by The Beatles.
11:58This is the hard part where I've got to go talk to the family.
12:10Never gets any easier.
12:13We tried.
12:15We used all of our capabilities, all the resources at our disposal, but his injuries were too severe.
12:21And I'm afraid we lost him in the bread basket.
12:28We'll see you next time.
12:32Have a great day.
12:36Bye bye.