I’ve made it no secret that I was rooting for Noah Wyle to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his role as chief attending physician Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch in “The Pitt,” the HBO Max show that follows a 15-hour shift in a fictional Pittsburgh emergency room.
The actor has previously been nominated for five Emmys for his supporting role as Dr. John Carter in “ER” back in the ’90s, and yet last night was the first time he went home with a statuette. He was a favorite to win the award, but I still plotzed when he won, yelling “yes!” so loudly that my husband ran in from the other room to see if something had happened.
Wyle, also a writer and executive producer of “The Pitt,” brought so much humanity to Dr. Robby in a show that is all about paying tribute to the medical profession. We saw his integrity, his love for his profession, his care for his fellow medical professionals — but also the weariness of being an ER doctor in our broken healthcare system and the trauma that still lives in so many in the medical field from the pandemic.
But Wyle didn’t just bring his acting chops; he brought his very DNA to this character. As he said before the season started, Robby’s Jewish identity, made clear with the Star of David necklace that he wears under his scrubs, is taken directly from Wyle’s own heritage as the son of a Jewish father, and the descendant of Ukrainian Jews.
In an interview last Friday, Sept. 12, Wyle spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash about how Dr. Robby ended up Jewish. He also spoke about his stunning and heart-wrenching breakdown in the show, in which Dr. Robby recites the Shema prayer on the floor of the pediatric section of the ER which, in the wake of a mass shooting, has been turned into an impromptu morgue.
“It was an attempt to try to create a character that was a little closer to the bone than maybe I’ve played before,” Wyle shared with Bash, two days before his Emmy win. “In early conversation with John Wells and Scott Gemmill, John asked me where my family was from and I told him a little bit about the Ukrainian Jewish side of my father’s family.”
“I’ve never played a Jewish character before, I’ve never really explored that aspect of my own blood memory,” he continued. “But I was curious about playing a character who was raised with a sense of faith but really wasn’t practicing and was almost in denial of his faith. Somebody who had turned to science and other things for validation of the human experiences.”
As the show goes on and Dr. Robby struggles with past and current trauma, his religion comes to the forefront. “With nothing else to fall back on it was interesting to use a prayer, a very simple prayer, as the last thing that he would cling to,” Wyle said in the interview, “almost as a childlike nursery rhyme, to try to find some solace, and in that prayer, find that meaning that he needs to help get him off that floor.”
It was a moment that added so much depth and vulnerability to his role, and likely one of the reasons Wyle finally won his Emmy. In his acceptance speech he thanked all his collaborators, from everyone who works on the show to his family. But more than, a visibly moved Wyle said: “To anybody who is going on shift tonight or who is coming off shift tonight, this one is for you.”
When asked what it felt like to win an Emmy 26 years after his last nomination, Wyle told Entertainment Tonight that it was “incredible, a dream come true.” I’m so happy for Wyle and the entire “The Pitt” team that earned a total of five Emmys this year; I’m sure they have more coming.
Season two of “The Pitt” premieres this January, and I already can’t wait for more of Dr. Robby.
