Medical dramas on television have been around pretty much since the advent of the picture tube. There was “Dr. Kildare” in the 60’s. “Marcus Welby, MD” in the 70’s, “St. Elsewhere” was in the 80’s… But starting in the 90’s there was one team of diligent doctors that stitched their way to critical acclaim and 23 emmy awards. It also propelled its actors to true stardom. There was even a future Batman hidden in the scrubs. This is Still Here Hollywood. I’m Steve Kmetko. Join me with today’s guest, Dr. Carter from E.R., Noah Wyle.
This is Still Here Hollywood. I’m Steve Kmetko. Join me with today’s guest, Dr. Carter from E.R., Noah Wyle.
Medical dramas on television have been around pretty much since the advent of the picture tube. There was “Dr. Kildare” in the 60’s. “Marcus Welby, MD” in the 70’s, “St. Elsewhere” was in the 80’s… But starting in the 90’s there was one team of diligent doctors that stitched their way to critical acclaim and 23 emmy awards. It also propelled its actors to true stardom. There was even a future Batman hidden in the scrubs.
Steve Kmetko
Yes, I'm still here. Hollywood. And coming up on today's episode, has there ever been talk about doing a reboot with ER?
Noah Wyle
Well,
Steve Kmetko
Oh, I think I've stumbled onto something.
Noah Wyle
Yeah. You know, this has not been talked about.
Steve Kmetko
A lot of people who were in the cast and associated with the program spun off into other things. Perhaps most notably George Clooney. He likes to play practical jokes on people. Did he ever do anything like that to you? He's a jokester.
Noah Wyle
I sort of pegged him early as one to watch and made sure that I was more of an accomplice than a victim. And that's best served by not leaving the table first. Whoever leaves the table first, inevitably Georgia, go, you know what we should do.
Steve Kmetko
Medical dramas on television have been around pretty much since the advent of the picture tube. There was Dr. Kildare in the 1960s. Marcus as Welby MD in the seventies, St. Elsewhere was in the eighties. But starting in the nineties, there was one team of diligent doctors that stitched their way to critical acclaim and 23 Emmy awards. It also propelled its actors to true stardom. There was even a future Batman hidden in the scrubs. This is still here. Hollywood. I'm Steve Kmetko. Join me with today's guest, Dr. Carter from ER, Noah Wyle. Noah, thanks for doing this for me. I really appreciate it. Nice to you here.
Noah Wyle
Thank you for inviting me.
Steve Kmetko
One of the things I'd like to start out with, you are one of the few people who actually was born here in Hollywood. And grew up here.
Noah Wyle
True.
Steve Kmetko
Now you have nothing else to compare it to, but how do you think that helped you or hurt you in terms of your career choice?
Noah Wyle
I think it helped in a lot of ways, not the least of which was the fact that my whole family and friends support group and history was here. Whereas most people that come here to pursue their dreams are coming from somewhere else. And this is not the most welcoming city to move to. It's not the easiest to navigate. It's not the easiest to make friends because it's so spread out. So, I've always thought it was a great advantage that my base was here already. Also, exposure, just that 10,000 hours of exposure earlier than everybody else. My stepfather works in the industry and he is done everything from, he was Frank Sinatra's Coffee Boy on Manchurian candidate. And then he ended up running studios in the eighties. But I grew up on sets and I grew up with enough proximity to it that it seemed like it was a feasible goal, unlike a lot of people who think, I don't even know what that roadmap would look like. It, for me, it was a left on Fairfax.
Steve Kmetko
Also because of your exposure, I think a lot of people come here who are hoping to make their name. They don't know. You know, a set can be a very intimidating place. The first place, the first time you're on it, or if you're going for an audition, you had that as well going for you that you had at least some feel for.
Noah Wyle
Yeah. But I feel like, the second I stepped on a set, I just felt that I was exactly where I wanted to be. I see black cables on floors and I follow them to lights that have flags next to them. And I find a camera and a bunch of guys in shorts, and my heart starts beating because I, that's the one environment in the world where I know where North is and south is, and east and west, I know where I go. I know where it, I know, I know that world very well. It's everything else that confuses me. And I felt that element of magic and kind of behind the scenes at the circus and wanting to figure out how these guys were doing the stuff that everybody else was on the, on the receiving end of, I was taken with it.
Steve Kmetko
Do you remember the first time you had that kind of an experience? What kind of a rush you got?
Noah Wyle
I grew up in Hollywood in the Hills a little bit up from a park called Waddles Park, which back in the late seventies, early eighties became a popular location spot to shoot kind of B2C minus cable skin flick movies. So, I would go down and watch them film from the trees and just watch them do it over and over again. And sometimes I'd see actors I recognize from movies, and it'd be fascinating to watch them just being casual or rehearsing a fight scene. I just, yeah. Junkie.
Steve Kmetko
You went to Northwestern, right?
Noah Wyle
I was invited to attend a theater program that Northwestern sponsors for juniors of in high school, which I did after my junior year, 1988. And that was a very seminal summer. And since I came out of that thinking, this is what I want to do, I did my senior year, graduated, didn't go to college, start acting right out of out of school, living with a guy that I met at that program. But we applied to college and were accepted and never attended.
Steve Kmetko
Do you regret that?
Noah Wyle
Not at all. I only regret it when I think about how I, I've never given myself four years to do nothing except explore interest with very little responsibility and lots of resources. I've only kind of been fortunate to keep working, but working since I was, you know, young. And it would be, I've thought about it after the fact thinking that would be nice to take a sabbatical and do a deep dive kind of study about something that interests me.
Steve Kmetko
Do you regret it when you watched Jeopardy?
Noah Wyle
No, I did Jeopardy. I did Celebrity Jeopardy and I did all right.
Steve Kmetko
Oh, good for you.
Noah Wyle
Yeah, no, I've been called an Auto-D act. I took my inferiority complex about not going to college and applied it by trying to be smarter than college guys.
Steve Kmetko
Did you find it hard getting into the business when you wanted to? From what I've read, it seems as though it was a pretty smooth path for you.
Noah Wyle
Yes, comparatively. Absolutely. I was very fortunate and I've had a lot of angels that have come in and anointed me at key moments. The first one was a casted director legendary cast director named Gretchen Renell, who was out here in California at a party. And my parents dragged me too for some friends of theirs. And I was sitting and sulking in the corner, and she kind of took an interest and asked me what I was interested in doing. And I told her I wanted to be an actor, and she was, wonderful. She would invite me. She was head of casting at Disney at the time, so she would bring me in for auditions. She recommended my first agent to me. I just would find myself supported by some incredible person. I've been very lucky.
Steve Kmetko
I read something. I didn't, I'm meant to write it down, but I didn't. One second. Give me a, gimme a second here. It was a quote of yours that I wanted to use.
Noah Wyle
This is so much easier than Steven Weber said. It was going to be. Just kidding.
Steve Kmetko
I like Steven a lot.
Noah Wyle
He's a brother. He's a man.
Steve Kmetko
He's a good guess. He was a good guess too.
Noah Wyle
He's funny.
Steve Kmetko
Yeah, he is. It was a quote attributed to you. It's weird. I actually like doing interviews now. Ever since I gave up therapy, it's my only time with a captive audience.
Noah Wyle
I can identify the year that quotation is from, because I gave up therapy very briefly.
Steve Kmetko
Oh, you're back.
Noah Wyle
Of course.
Steve Kmetko
Okay. Captive audience. Spill it.
Noah Wyle
This is a very rare thing this doesn't happen very often anymore, as you well know, because you watch the whole era where the one-on-one interview became completely chopped up into microbites. And now we live in an age where everything is pulled out of context. So, in the beginning when it used to be really nice to be able to talk about your work and be expansive in your answers, and I think that's what I meant, is that it felt therapeutic to talk through what it was like to be on this insanely popular show that changed everybody's lives. That was part of it. It was a heady time.
Steve Kmetko
Tell me what you remember from that?
Noah Wyle
Everything.
Steve Kmetko
From ER beginning,
Noah Wyle
Everything Chap. I mean, I remember everything.
Steve Kmetko
And then you were on it for like, what, 11 years?
Noah Wyle
It ran 15. I ran 13. And I did the first 11 seasons. I did a few episodes of the 12th, took 13 and 14 off, and came back and did that last half of the 15th and final.
Steve Kmetko
Give me an idea of what you remember as especially something you really clutch onto.
Noah Wyle
I remember my audition very well. I remember the finale very well. I remember my, one of my favorite memories when we'd shot the pilot, and it was very speculative about whether it was going to be even on or successful Chicago Hope, which was debuting at the same time on CBS had a much more established cast than David Kelly at the helm. And our reputation was that it was dark, it was difficult to follow and highly technical. And so, and we had this two-hour pilot that we were launching with, and they brought us to New York for the upfronts to go out and meet the advertisers. And they showed a clip of the pilot first, and we were at Ry Fisher Hall, which was packed. So, there were thousands of people in there. And they had George, Sherry, Tony, Eric and I.
Juliana hadn't been cast as a main character yet, because she died in the pilot originally. And we're in the wings of Avery Fisher Hall, and we hear this voice say, you know, it says on the screen if you thought there were no more heroes left in the world. And then it just started showing these clips from the pilot, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And we had never seen a frame of it yet. So, we're watching it kind of sideways, and then it stopped and there was silence. And then the place went crazy, like clapping, cheering, stomping, like, and we all got this rush. And I just remember Tony turned all of us and going, here we go. And we walked out on the stage and we took our little bows, having no idea what the reception was going to be, but it was astronomical from the very moment we came on the air.
Steve Kmetko
It was the most popular show on television for a while.
Noah Wyle
For about a decade. Yep.
Steve Kmetko
And a lot of people who were in the cast and associated with the program spun off into other things, perhaps most notably George Clooney.
Noah Wyle
Yes. Mr. Clooney's done quite well for himself.
Steve Kmetko
Yes. He has.
Noah Wyle
Liquor business, I believe.
Steve Kmetko
Among other things. He likes to play practical jokes on people. Did he ever do anything like that to you?
Noah Wyle
Well, I,
Steve Kmetko
He's a jokester.
Noah Wyle
I sort of pegged him early as, as one to watch and made sure that I was more of an accomplice than a victim. And that's best served by not leaving the table first. Whoever leaves the table first, inevitably George, go, you know what we should do. So even if you have to use the bathroom, you hold it, you hold it, hold it, hold it until somebody else gets up.
Steve Kmetko
He had a little bit of experience himself getting into television. I remember I mentioned to you that I used to see him at the Hollywood YMCA all the time. And I think it was when he was doing ER and we used to talk a lot because I was in TV news. His father, Nick Clooney, was an anchor manager in town. And George has is a real news addict.
Noah Wyle
Yes, he is.
Steve Kmetko
What was that? That's it. Yeah. He has a good grasp of current events and he has good opinions about it too. But at least he came into it, having watched his father, having assisted his father in some newsrooms,
Noah Wyle
He's a guy that continually impresses me because he continually redefines what my assumptions about his talent level are. You know, when we worked together and he was acting, I thought he was a perfectly fine, good actor, but goodnight and good luck was another level. You know, writing and directing and starring in that movie was such an homage to his father and the newsman of the past. And in between that he'd done Dust Dunn and went five days, he was doing, he was very strategic and extremely thoughtful about how he plotted his course, but he just delivered every single time. And then Michael Clayton, another one or old brother were out there, another one. He just kept growing. Now he's humanitarian, he's doing, he walks with Kings.
Steve Kmetko
A father,
Noah Wyle
Father. That was the one I did not see coming. No.
Steve Kmetko
He also made that documentary about the Kennedy assassination, which was fascinating. And Walter Cronkite his participation and how CVS made the,
Noah Wyle
We got to meet Walter Cronkite. Walter Cronkite did the cold open for the live TV movie that you referenced earlier, fail Safe. He came on and announced it and talked a little bit about the context of the Cold War and how the writers of Fail Safe had been blacklisted writers who had not been able to be credited on his show when they wrote for him. And so, he rectified that. It was very cool.
Steve Kmetko
Speaking of that, I worked at CBS in CBS news and there was a day when Walter came to the newsroom to talk with one of his old friends who was working for us. Bill Stout, who was a real solid newsman and reported from Vietnam and had a real his rich history. And Walter had come to see him. And I worked in a very small office, shared it with Stout and some other people who were in that office. And one of the few places there was a chair was next to my desk, and I was in editing. It was deadline. And I walked in and I bumped into the chair and looked down, and it was Walter Cronkite was sitting in it. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm on Deadline. And he looked at me like, yeah, I know what a deadline is. You know, like, duh, Steve. Most trusted man in America, and you're bumping into him. Let's see. Hey, do you remember out of curiosity, any of the medical terms?
Noah Wyle
Oh My God, are you kidding? Are you going to test me with my monologue? That's my party trick. 65-Year-Old male with severe peripheral vascular disease manifested by claudication of the left calf, 10 days post-op for Mercy General after having an oral by femoral bypass, Noal postoperative course, still Bega about six hours ago when he began to experience the gradual onset of lower left quadrant pain without palliative or provoking factors. BP 120, 80, pulse one 12 respiration 78 upon auscultation. Diminished breath sounds were noted at the base of the patient's right Lung intrigued. I tested vocal Fres probate second edition, leading me to a diagnosis of pleural effusion confirmed by this radiograph, which shows fluid in the patient's right costophrenic sulcus.
Steve Kmetko
Very good. I didn't understand a word of it. Well, little bits of pieces there.
Noah Wyle
It's got there. Little thing right here. You know, it's fancy way of saying he's got a little thing right here.
Steve Kmetko
Your mother was a nurse, right? Orthopedic nurse,
Noah Wyle
Yes. She 10 years or 10 years orthopedics.
Steve Kmetko
Did she ever give you any advice about your work?
Noah Wyle
Advice or,
Steve Kmetko
How to approach something?
Noah Wyle
Criticism, advice, criticism. It's fine line sometimes, isn't it? No. She would call 1101 and it's, you never touch your face with bloody gloves. What do you want to get AIDS? I'm going to go to the hospital tomorrow and answer for that. And I'd say, okay. Okay. Point taken.
Steve Kmetko
That's cool. At least she had an interest.
Noah Wyle
She had,
Steve Kmetko
A vested interest.
Noah Wyle
Yeah. Vested interest. She was yep. She, because, she would know what was coming up on the storyline, so she was very in the know. Yep.
Steve Kmetko
Is it true that you once had to give a dog mouth to mouth?
Noah Wyle
Only because Mr. Spielberg demanded to be done. He took an interest in our show and the first season he was executive producer and shared an anecdote about how when he was a teenager, he worked in an emergency room in Phoenix and had seen some physicians stop what they were doing and give mouth to mouth resuscitation to a German shepherd and save its life. Thought it would be fun to do on the show. And I drew the short straw, and that was sucking on snout for a couple hours.
Steve Kmetko
Well, interesting. But I suppose when Spielberg says. Do it.
Noah Wyle
Don't how high,
Steve Kmetko
Yeah. How high. Exactly. I also understand that at one point you had to use your, some of your skills, some of the things you picked up along the way in a real emergency, real life emergency.
Noah Wyle
What are you fishing for? Here come, go. Let me think. Mostly you learn enough to know how little you know and how much you could do wrong, and how you could really make a huge mistake. So, a lot of the times, there's been a few times where I've been, happened to have been the first on scene at an accident, car accident twice. And I knew enough to be helpful and supportive and didn't do anything that caused any harm. But it was very funny when the paramedics show up, normally this woman, I'm starting to tell them what happened. It's like, right thing. Wait, what? What? Oh, whoa, whoa. Oh yeah. We got to fix the, yeah.
Steve Kmetko
Were there ever instances where?
Noah Wyle
That's a bit that won't work on the radio portion of this show that was a very physicalized bit.
Steve Kmetko
Were there instances where people in public, members of the public came up to you, recognized you as?
Noah Wyle
Sure.
Steve Kmetko
A doctor.
Noah Wyle
You know, it's the most convenient icebreaker, say, hey, hey, can you take a look at, there was a period of time where I was so into the medicine that I really did feel like I had a pretty on par education with the third year medical student after all the stuff that we had done over the years. But most of it's left me, sadly.
Steve Kmetko
You have three children, correct? And you just celebrated your 10th wedding anniversary?
Noah Wyle
Yes. I did.
Steve Kmetko
That's very nice. June 7th.
Noah Wyle
You just gave it more acknowledgement than we did.
Steve Kmetko
No. Wait a minute. I saw something posted on Instagram.
Noah Wyle
So, oh yeah. That's the corner of the realm in the world today.
Steve Kmetko
You and your wife dancing, I believe.
Noah Wyle
Yes. We dance.
Steve Kmetko
That was nice.
Noah Wyle
We've been dancing for 10 years, love and having a lovely time.
Steve Kmetko
I read about you and you're listed as actor, producer, director, writer. Which do you identify most with?
Noah Wyle
Gemini. I think that's in there. Angelina's also in there. Like I said, I've been very, very fortunate and a lot of that fortune has come from when I've hit a wall with one of my trajectories, I've been able to pivot and find an interesting new door to explore. And so, when I was doing a show up in Canada called Falling Skies, which was also a Spielberg show, kind, a sci-fi show I had all, I always have had directing aspirations, but put it on an extremely high pedestal and thought you have to know so much before you try. You should know music and photography and acting and editing and all the different aspects. And I knew a lot of the production aspects, but I didn't feel like I knew anything about post-production at all. And we had a director fall out of the rotation and the cast promoted me to take the slot, which was extremely gratifying, and they approved me.
And so, even though I was in the show a lot, I made, that was my directorial debut. And again, I just, I was terrified, but I had never felt that engaged before. Never felt that challenged, never felt that scared or oddly competent. And it just was like a rush. I have never had anywhere else. And then I started another show called The Librarians, and so I really wanted to direct on that as well. And I did. And then I just started thinking, God, I would love to take a crack at writing one of these. And so, in the third season I wrote one and it turned out really, really well. And then the fourth season I wrote another one that turned out really well. And then I got on this other show, leverage down in New Orleans, which I also got to direct on. And I wrote one of those too. And so, it's been this nice sort of ability to kind of shift and try different things and story tell in different forms, but ultimately, it's all storytelling. And I don't know that I have a preference because I really enjoy them all.
Steve Kmetko
And we'll be right back. Is your daughter a Swifty?
Noah Wyle
My youngest, yeah. They've all worked through their Swifties. They're but my youngest, yeah, we watched, we didn't go to the concert, but we watched the movie concert and she was into it. She liked it. I like it put her on the car and the kids have long been dropped off at school and I'd still playing. And I'm not reaching to change it. It works.
Steve Kmetko
On the job training, I think can almost be more valuable than an education in a formal education in school.
Noah Wyle
A hundred percent.
Steve Kmetko
And I've always felt that if I'm doing something that I've learned on the job there are people who are watching me and approve of what I'm doing, it's that much more gratifying. Do you feel that's True?
Noah Wyle
I do. You know, you strike me because you've referenced the newsmen of the past as with reverence that you have to have the sensibility to come in and want to learn from the people around you and appreciate that you're standing on shoulders of giants and that like medicine, the more you learn, the more you learn that there is to learn. And, and so I've always had a real humility about the way I approach it and a real desire to learn as much as I can. And so I ask a lot of questions and if anybody looks like they're good at their job, I want to see how and why they're doing it so well. Does that answer your question?
Steve Kmetko
Yeah. I don't think it did. Yeah. Tell me then, who do you think you've learned the most from?
Noah Wyle
Well, Clooney helped, Clooney was very influential because he was one of the guy he took me under his wing and kind of taught me how to be famous in a healthy way and kind of taught me how to be careful and strategic and take a long view of my career. And he had a great expression. Take your work seriously, but don't take yourself seriously. But I've had a lot of mentors and people that I consider unfortunately he passed away last year, but David Crosby, oddly enough, was a real brother. We spent a tremendous amount of time together and there's a guy that cat had more than nine lives and was generous enough to share all the peaks and valleys of them with me. So, I find that that is kind of what's kept me on an even keel, is seeking out people that have traveled this road before and asking how they did it.
Steve Kmetko
Do you think he helped you in any way musically, that we don't know about?
Noah Wyle
Well,
Steve Kmetko
He did you have musical aspirations?
Noah Wyle
I worked of the courage singing for him once, and without hesitation told me not to quit my day job.
Steve Kmetko
Well, you need candor every once in a while.
Noah Wyle
Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.
Steve Kmetko
I also liked the fact when I was reading about it, that when you did finally decide to leave ER, it was for your family. And stepping aside to allow the younger generation to have their opportunity.
Noah Wyle
That sounds tad more magnanimous than I probably was at the time. I think it was more selfish about wanting either a break or wanting to be at home with my son who was newly born. And that was really it. You know, he was born in the 11 season and it was the first time that I ever looked at my watch and thought, come on, what are we doing? Let's, we're wasted. Like, and I thought, wow, where do you want to be? And I did not want to spend 80 hours a week missing the first couple years of his life. And I have zero regrets about that. Family's important to the best actually.
Steve Kmetko
Does ER seem as long ago as it was?
Noah Wyle
Some days for a long time it didn't. And then the last couple years it did because it had this really nice resurgence of relevancy during the pandemic, at that during the pandemic, it went on Hulu for the first time, and suddenly people could stream it and binge it without commercials. And they had the time and there were 15 seasons of, of content. So, during the pandemic and soon thereafter, I was getting a lot of mail that was making it feel relevant again to me. Especially from first responders and people in the medical field.
Steve Kmetko
I'm given the reflection every once in a while.
Noah Wyle
Shame on you.
Steve Kmetko
I've reached an age where reflection happens a lot. Do you ever reflect about your career at this point?
Noah Wyle
Yeah, constantly. Yeah. I'm very happy with where I'm at right now. I'm about to start this new venture with this old group. And I couldn't be more excited about it. It's kind of a culmination of a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about that have been by interests the last few years. And it's a bit of a homecoming. It's not really premature talk about it cause it's certainly we start shooting in three weeks, but which is insane. I'm doing this new show called The Pit, which is a hospital show.
Steve Kmetko
It's going to be on Max.
Noah Wyle
It's going to be on Max. It's a John Wells show, John executive produced ER. And it is also executive produced by Scott Gemmill, who is an ER writer and producer. And Dr. Joseph Sacks, who was an ER writer and producer. And we've got this really interesting idea on how to do a new medical show and Max is giving us a chance to do it. We're going to shoot it around the corner at Warner Brothers, just a stone’s throw from where the old one took place. And it's pretty cool.
Steve Kmetko
Do you feel like you have enough energy, the same amount of energy that you had in the beginning?
Noah Wyle
I have more
Steve Kmetko
Really?
Noah Wyle
I have more, yeah. I don't sleep very; I don't need as much sleep as I used to. I think about when I was in my twenties and thirties sleeping till, noon or one o'clock in the afternoon. I've had two days already by noon. You know, I'm just a busy person.
Steve Kmetko
There was something else I wanted to ask you about that I, a quote that I loved.
Noah Wyle
Ask me that question again in February when we wrap this season. I think I'm going to be, I think this one's going to take a lot out me. I think I'm going to be tired after this one.
Steve Kmetko
Really? How come?
Noah Wyle
It's going to be an endorse,
Steve Kmetko
More responsibility?
Noah Wyle
Yeah. I wrote two of them which was extremely gratifying for the first season of a max show, to get an opportunity to write two of them. You know, I'm going to be in a lot of it and there's some aspects to it that are going to be extremely challenging.
Steve Kmetko
What are the things that I was attributed to you? I'm thinking about naming my first son, Emmy.
Noah Wyle
Jesus, you're pulling some old stuff.
Steve Kmetko
So good. So, I'm an old guy so I can say,
Noah Wyle
So, you can say that I have an Emmy.
Steve Kmetko
Got one. I want Emmy, Oscar, and Tony and my daughter Grammy. But you didn't do that.
Noah Wyle
I feel like that was an interview that I did drinking for like a Esquire interview or something. It was in my unguarded phase where I was just spouting off. But yeah, I did not name any of my children after acting trophies. So, I still cannot claim that I have an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony, or a Grammy.
Steve Kmetko
But you do have a tattoo.
Noah Wyle
I've got a couple for my children. My son Owen was born as we discussed in 2002. And this is an O for Owen. Then my daughter Auden was born in 2005. And this is for her. And then my daughter Francis and my wife. So, they all have, and this is nine dots that my friend Harry Berg put on me at a party when I told him I wanted a, it was a stick and poke tattoo of remember the show The Saint with Roger Morris?
Steve Kmetko
Yes.
Noah Wyle
Remember that white stick figure with the yellow? That's what I wanted him to put on me. And then I chickened down nine dots into it. Stopped.
Steve Kmetko
Just nine dots into it. That's it. That's all I got. Well, there's always time.
Noah Wyle
Yeah. No, Harry's still around.
Steve Kmetko
Is your daughter a Swifty?
Noah Wyle
My youngest, yeah. They've all worked through their Swifties. They're but my youngest, yeah, we watch, we didn't go to the concert, but we watched the movie concert and she was into it. She liked it. I like it, put her on the car and the kids have long been dropped off at school and I'd still playing and I'm not reaching to change it. It's works.
Steve Kmetko
What do you do for fun?
Noah Wyle
That's a good question.
Steve Kmetko
Where is life just fun for you?
Noah Wyle
You know, I get a huge charge out of my work and there were two things that happened. The first was the pandemic when I wasn't working. And I didn't feel good about myself cause I didn't feel like I had any skills that were really of value during that period of time. It really bothered me a lot that I wasn't contributing in any meaningful way, which is where this idea for this show that I'm doing now, kind of came from. It was a desire to put the spotlight back on to people that are on the front lines, who have been there, taking care of us for the last five years without a break. And they're tired and they're burned out and they're overwhelmed. And a lot of cases they're being abused and they're heroes. And I wanted to do something that reflected that again. The second thing was the strike. You know, 192 days of walking around with a picket sign in my hand, thinking about, what I think is important and what I think is fair, how I want to work, how you know, it should work. It was really poignant. And I no longer take work for granted because those two things showed the fragility of how this whole thing is operating, and it's not a guarantee to any of us. And during the pandemic and just afterwards, after the strike, what I really saw is when I go to work, I am helping to employ upwards of 300 people so that they can feed their families in really uncertain times. It stopped being about making art and started about making a living and having a place to go to be communal and creative when that didn't seem like it was going to be possible. So, I'm coming from a way different place than I used to be. I just can't wait to get to work. I can't wait to help a bunch of different people buy into a singular vision and create something that hopefully will be entertaining or special and then go home to my family. You know, that's a good life for me.
Steve Kmetko
Has there ever been talk just curious about doing a reboot with ER, I think I've stumbled onto something.
Noah Wyle
Yeah. This has not been talked about, but that's kind of the road we had started down in 2020. I was getting all this mail from first responders and I had this desire to pivot the compliments to John Wells. So, I emailed him and I said, hey, I'm getting all this lovely sort of mail from people that are thanking us for keeping them entertained or inspire them to go into the careers that they're in the first place. And I just have to say thank you. That without, except for my children, this is probably the best thing I've ever done with my life. And I just want to say thanks. And then I went on and I said, I know you don't want to reboot the show. I don't either. I thought it was very smart not to franchise it and to dilute what we did. But if you ever wanted to do something much smaller and much sort of more contained, more of a character piece, kind of catching up to an old character and just finding out how they feel about what's happening right now in healthcare, kind of use them as a Jeremiah opportunity to say what you want.
I would vote for that. I would be on board for that. And he thought about it and we talked about it, and then we ended up bringing in a couple of the e old Dr. Writers, Scott Gamal and David Zabel. We talked about it. And we came up with a concept and it really never got out the starting gate. We had some issues with the Creon estate and the negotiations became a non-starter. So, in a lot of ways, it was a Dodge bullet and a blessing because that would've been the focus. It would've been on, hey, it's the brand again, and who's coming back to play? And oh my God, he looks great and oh my, you know and I really want the focus to be on the content of what we're trying to put across. And so, I think this will be a pure delivery system in a lot of ways than it would've been if we had done the reboot. But we came close.
Steve Kmetko
How tall are you?
Noah Wyle
Six one.
Steve Kmetko
Oh, just curious. Strange question.
Noah Wyle
Not at all. Six one Brandon Brown. Gemini. Currently Brown, 184.
Steve Kmetko
Oh God. That'll change as you get older.
Noah Wyle
It is changing daily.
Steve Kmetko
Daily.
Noah Wyle
I worked for three years in New Orleans. That's a tough town to be in and try and stay fed. Yeah, right. Oh, my goodness.
Steve Kmetko
And not eat. Who would you like to work with that you haven't so far?
Noah Wyle
There's a lot, especially when I think about the generation that is sort of the older generation now, the Pacino’s and the De Niro’s and the Hoffmans and the Gene Hackman. I and John Voight, those are all the actors I grew up watching, and I've met many of them, but I've never worked with any of them. And there's some directors too that I really, I'm sorry, that I didn't get a chance to work with before they passed. And there's a few that I would still love to have an opportunity to work with. Yeah, tons.
Steve Kmetko
What do you like doing the most television or film?
Noah Wyle
That's a great question. Because I only wanted to do movies, the idea of doing a TV show to me was like the most insane concept. And when they sent me the pilot script for ER, it was a two-hour pilot, which was written as a feature script. So, I didn't really know it was a TV show until I went into audition for it. And then I figured they'd cancel it and I'd be on my way to my film career. And then a funny thing happened and a funny thing happened on the way was films changed. You know, the movies are different than they used to be made, you don't find those kinds of character piece movies that those actors I just mentioned made their names and reputations and made anymore. So, if you want to play those stories, those are all on tv. And some of the best writers came to TV and some of the best directors came to TV with pay cable and now streaming. So, the game changed a lot. But what I really found is that I liked the regularity. I liked the lunch pail, blue collar, go to work every day, see the same people, get invested in their lives, become a community, have esprit decor, and build a sense of, a buy-in. And I like that a lot. So, I prefer TV for that. Sometimes it's nice to go off and tell one story finite period of time, be a hired gun. But I find it more gratifying to be some part of something that goes on and on my mind.
Steve Kmetko
I sense from you a real social conscience as well.
Noah Wyle
It's been there, it's growing. It's bothered. It's trying to figure out how to voice itself and like, all of us worried.
Steve Kmetko
What's the hardest thing for you about raising a family?
Noah Wyle
My own personal experience, the hardest thing has been to try to do it from two houses. My first wife and I split up when the kids were six and three, and it was the best thing for everybody. But it's been a difficult thing to manage. And as a kid that grew up living out of two houses, it was something I never really wanted to be a reality for my kids. So, I do a lot of work to try to augment the fact that is their reality.
Steve Kmetko
Is it hard?
Noah Wyle
Yeah. Do you have kids?
Steve Kmetko
No.
Noah Wyle
Oh. Well,
Steve Kmetko
I have two dogs.
Noah Wyle
You don't know Squat Kmetko.
Steve Kmetko
No. You have a dog too. I know.
Noah Wyle
I've had many. You know, when you're born with the name Noah, it comes with a territory. I am friend of the beast.
Steve Kmetko
That's another thing I wanted to ask you about that I saw somewhere that you like to collect, Bricka bracket was called, associated with Noah's Ark.
Noah Wyle
I did, I occasionally still pick up the odd piece if it's I've gone for quality over quantity now as I've been called a hoarder by more than a few people in my family in my life. I'm basically a hoarder with a big enough house that you can't quite tell. But I come from a long line of pickers and junkers and pack rats. And we have a expression in our family that the line of demarcation between hoarding and taste, hoarding and collecting is taste. And we fall just on the respectable side. Barely.
Steve Kmetko
Barely. Did you know any kids when you were growing up named Noah besides yourself?
Noah Wyle
One kid in my class in third grade, Noah Shane. He was, he didn't last long, but he would sell me his grapefruit roll for 50 cents, my lunch money every day. No, it was not a very common name. And then I just saw it was announced that Liam and Noah were the two most popular boys’ names of last year, which is hilarious to me that, that's true.
Steve Kmetko
Did you always like your name?
Noah Wyle
And Colin Gils made a great joke about it on Saturday Live. He goes, great. Another generation of pussies.
Steve Kmetko
How do you deal with the world of social media?
Noah Wyle
Barely, barely arms reach. But you'll find when you ask me to promote this, how I how I deal with it. It makes me tremendously uncomfortable. I see it for its benefits, but I see it for its drawbacks more. And do as little as I have to promote the things I'm doing and to wish the people who are on social media happy birthdays and happy anniversaries and the things that you do. But I'm basically a very private person and don't like self-promotion very much. And so, it's a whole medium that's geared just towards allowing people in and promoting yourself, which has its positive aspects as people should all feel self-empowered. But we sort of have developed into a bit of a narcissistic society as well. And I don't see as much good works and hope and aspirational qualities to what the messaging could be. And I find that troubling.
Steve Kmetko
When was the last time you took a selfie?
Noah Wyle
Of myself alone? Never. I mean, maybe if, oh, I got this haircut yesterday. I was in the car and I wanted to show it to my wife. So, I did take a selfie of myself, but I've not taken a selfie to show anybody where I am or what I'm eating or what I'm watching.
Steve Kmetko
Because that's all you seem to see on social media anymore is selfies, selfies, selfies. They say, there's that line right now that if you don't take a picture of it, it didn't happen.
Noah Wyle
My concern is that this thing was sold is a way of establishing who you were in terms of personal liberties and taste, where you were saying, this is who I am, these are the things that I think are important and I care about. And I'm hearing more and more that people are, well, it happened in the Trump trial where those jurors were being, they went through their social media and were looking at the things that they had liked and disliked. Not just the things that they had posted, but the things that they had commented on. And suddenly they were being held accountable for those preferences in a very different way than was intended. Suddenly you're now identified by the things that you have said that you like and that is now part of a record that doesn't seem like it's got a lot of leeway for change. And I find that really troubling.
Steve Kmetko
Alright.
Noah Wyle
Sorry to end it on a downer note.
Steve Kmetko
No, no.
Noah Wyle
How about another Clooney story?
Steve Kmetko
Okay. Go ahead.
Noah Wyle
Took a in the cat box. Do you know that one?
Steve Kmetko
Yes, I've heard that one. I think he told that on the Tonight Show once.
Noah Wyle
Yeah, man.
Steve Kmetko
I'll tell you a story about George Cloy. I was walking into the Hollywood YMCA because I would go every morning and there was this car in the parking lot there. And George loves his cars. It was a black Porsche with a I call it a tray on the back, it had a wing or whatever they call them a spoiler tail.
Noah Wyle
Whale tail.
Steve Kmetko
Right. That's it. And he came out the Y and saw me looking at it and he said, obnoxious. I said, yeah, kind of.
Noah Wyle
Yeah. But self-effacing humor.
Steve Kmetko
Yes.
Noah Wyle
Beat him to the punch. Yep. That car, was it a convertible?
Steve Kmetko
I don't know if it was or not, I don't remember, but it was just had as shiny as new and as black as can be.
Noah Wyle
That was a night early on in the yard where he and I went to a party together. He picked me up in his black Porsche convertible and we'd just been, this was in the old days when people would give you free stuff because you were on tv. So, we had a couple of Hugo Boss suits that they had sent us. So, we thought we looked pretty sharp and we're in his convertible and we're driving up through the Hollywood Hills and it's kind of a warm summer night and I just thought, man. And Blues Traveler just cut an album. I can remember it was playing on the radio and I said, this is great having a convertible. And then we went to the party and I had too much to drink and I had to work the next morning. So somehow, I got home and I got up and I was at work and I'm stumbling through it. And George was off and he comes on to the sound stage and I said, hey, what are you doing here? And he goes, I got a little prison for you buddy.
And he dingles jingles these keys. And I go outside and there's a 1960 Oldsmobile convertible dynamic 88 painted two-tone, blue and white. And he goes, I've had this car for 10 years when I bought it when I was on another show called ER when I was about your age and think you should have it. And he gave me the car right then and there and I called it the gift that kept on taking. Because man, I put so much money into that car, you could start it with a Phillips head screwdriver. But yeah, it was a very generous gift. I actually ended up auctioning off that car. Somebody paid $20,000 for that car because of its pedigree and we sent it to the Red Cross just after Hurricane Katrina.
Steve Kmetko
Oh, Cool. Worst or scariest thing to happen on a set.
Noah Wyle
Set on fire. Twice subsequent movies.
Steve Kmetko
You were set on fire.
Noah Wyle
Back-to-back movies. My first two movies. Yep. Accidentally, of course.
Steve Kmetko
Tell me more.
Noah Wyle
The first one was a scene where I was burning my father's love letters from his mistress and in a bathtub with gasoline. And to get the shot, we put all the letters on a big Ritter fan and dusted them with gasoline. And then they turned that Ritter fan upwards and turned it on and aimed it at me. And then they lit it. And this huge wall of fire just kind of came right at me and stunt ice put me out. And then second movie I was doing a protest at my high school in 1965 Los Angeles Watts Riots. And I'm a young activist student who wants to take on the administration of the high school. So, we have a big Sentinel soldier monument in the front of the school, and I'm going to burn it and I throw gasoline on it and I'm supposed to lay it on fire.
And they put a bunch of rubber cement on it so it would go up. And then there was a delay. So, they were worried they wouldn't go. So, they put another coat on it and then somebody went to the bathroom and then they put another coat on it and then there was a problem with the camera and they put another coat on it. Anyway, by the time we finally lit it, it had so much of this flammable stuff on it that it kind of exploded like a bomb instead of going up. And I had all this burning glue all over me.
Steve Kmetko
Has there ever been a big role that you wanted that you didn't get?
Noah Wyle
Yeah, tons Happens all the time. We've talked about a couple of them actually. Goodnight and good luck. George offered me a part in that I couldn't get out of yard to do it. I was offered a part of Private Ryan and saving private Ryan couldn't get out of er to do it. There was a bunch. There was a bunch that in retrospect, I almost am glad that I didn't do them because those guys made those parts and had those,
Steve Kmetko
The things that happened are supposed to happen.
Noah Wyle
Yeah, totally.
Steve Kmetko
And I'm trying to remember Sergeant Private Ryan was Matt Damon. Didn't he end up getting that wrong?
Noah Wyle
Matt Damon was private Ryan. Yep. There was two I got offered the part of Upham, which was Jeremy Davies part, and he was so phenomenal in that I couldn't imagine doing anything close to what he did. And then cause but that was the run of the film. So, then we tried to just make it private Ryan who comes in at the end and nope, vie whatever happened to the guy that played private Ryan, anyway.
Steve Kmetko
Yeah. Whatever happened to him. Okay, Noah, thanks for stopping by.
Noah Wyle
My pleasure.
Steve Kmetko
Still here Hollywood is a production of the Still Here Network. All things technical run by Justin Zangerle, Theme music by Brian Sanyshin and executive producer is Jim Lichtenstein.