The Pitt’s Noah Wyle issued a backhanded compliment to Donald Trump as he thanked the president for allowing the show to become a beacon of hope amid the second Trump administration.
In a GQ profile marking the finale of Wyle’s hit medical drama’s second season, the Emmy-winning actor explained what makes The Pitt resonate. One of the reasons, it turns out, is the provision of truthful narratives about healthcare and politics in the current landscape.
“The election went the other way,” Wyle told GQ. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead, we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe.”
Wyle said this is one of the reasons why The Pitt has become such a wild success.
The Pitt was created before Trump assumed his second term in office, but Wyle suggests that the new administration changed its impact. The show was first given a 15-episode order by HBO Max in March 2024, months before the election. Its first season premiered in January 2025.
Another reason for the show’s popularity, he said, is that its a display of “competence porn.”
“This is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so f---ing glad that they’re there doing it,” he said, “And compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”
Set in the emergency room of a Pittsburgh teaching hospital, The Pitt has garnered critical acclaim and swept awards shows. It has been renewed for a third season, which Wyle has promised will be “explosive.”
Wyle has said the idea for the series came after the pandemic, during which the ER alum received “a lot of mail from first responders.”
He told the Television Academy that he was “overwhelmed” by the letters, many of them “saying thank you for having inspired them to go into a career in emergency medicine” and “keeping them inspired while they were going to work in what was amounting to a nightmare.” From there, the first seeds of The Pitt were planted.
The HBO show has been hailed for its realistic portrayal of healthcare and hospitals, interwoven with depictions of modern-day political issues: racism, sex trafficking, abortion, addiction, mass shootings, homelessness, and the continual impact of COVID.
Wyle, 54, and the show’s creators have often spoken about the role politics plays in The Pitt.
Its second season featured a storyline about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, just weeks after the deaths of two civilians at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis.
Producer John Wells explained that the episode was written before Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, both American citizens, were fatally shot. Wells said that HBO told the show to remain “balanced” in its portrayal; later, Wells told Deadline that the episode was not meant to “politicize” the show, but rather, represent reality.
“We’re just trying to be truthful. And if we can be truthful, it’s not left or right, it’s just our telling of what’s factually happening without trying to take a side,” Wells, 69, said.
Wyle echoed this intention, also telling GQ that the show strives to reflect reality.
“We really want to err, if possible, on the side of pure representation. It’s a Rorschach test, draw your own conclusions—it’ll say more about you than we’re trying to say about you,” he said.
