Noah Wyle
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Good Hang with Amy Poehler · Noah Wyle
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Did George Clooney Play Basketball on the ER Set?
Noah Wyle says George Clooney played basketball on the ER set all the time, and beat him in a lot of games. Clooney grew up in Kentucky with a basketball in one hand. Asked to pick a team from ER and The Pitt, Noah takes Clooney first.
Shawn Hatosy had asked the question and floated Noah as the point guard. Noah has never played point guard. He is 6 feet 1 and change, which he says is tall for an actor, and he would not bring the ball up. He does not think Shawn is campaigning for a spot. Shawn plays tennis.
The hoop stood right outside the soundstage, and Noah's trailer was the backstop. They played every lunch. Makeup had to wipe the sweat off and cool them down afterward. Clooney was re
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What Happened When Noah Wyle Tried to Befriend Shaun Cassidy?
Noah Wyle tried to befriend Shaun Cassidy and never got a callback. A mutual friend brokered a night to hang out and play pool. Noah came on too strong, asked too much, and turned Cassidy off. The friend later told him Cassidy thought he had come on a little strong.
Noah had gone home and told his wife they were close, and that he might even go on tour. He thinks Cassidy did not want an hour on the Hardy Boys. For anyone under 55, he describes Shaun Cassidy as the Harry Styles or Timothée Chalamet of that moment, more television than film, and someone who cut albums too. Noah knew him first as a musician.
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How Old Was Noah Wyle When He Auditioned for ER?
Noah Wyle was 21 when he auditioned for ER, and he turned 22 while they made the pilot. He had started out refusing commercials. He wanted theater and film only. Agent Eileen Feldman signed him from a list of high school plays on the back of an envelope, on a recommendation from casting director Gretchen Ronell. When that plan did not pan out, she sent him the ER pilot, which had been written as a feature script. By then he was ready to do whatever came in.
The audition followed a breakup. He was back in therapy and reading The Celestine Prophecy, sitting in the hallway so the other actors' energy would not land on him. The first round went well. They called him back for the producers. He t
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Why Did Noah Wyle Skip College?
Noah Wyle skipped college because a summer theater program showed him the people he wanted to work with. Northwestern University sponsors the Cherub Program, an all-star session for theater kids from around the country. He went, found that group, and came home committed to acting. He wanted an apartment with his best friend and a way to hustle.
At 17 he bused tables for Dimitri Dimitrov. Dimitrov taught that serving is not the same as being subservient. If you want to act, treat the dining room as a show, play the part, and watch the details. One night Dimitrov worked the shift with a burst appendix, counted the money, tipped the staff, went to the emergency room, and was back the next nigh
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What Happened When an Emu Attacked Noah Wyle?
Noah Wyle was trying to feed his emus after they had babies, and both birds came at him. He kept them in a three-walled enclosure with their food in a trash can. Emus fight by kicking up their talons, and the only shield he had was the lid of that can. He crouched there thinking about the headlines he did not want, the ones that would say an emu killed him, then rushed past the birds and got out.
He got rid of them after that. The droppings are rich in nitrogen, so they fertilize pot, and fly fishermen use the feathers for flies. A pot-smoking fly fisherman came down and took the birds.
Amy Poehler called the lid a Captain America shield. Noah Wyle called it Coward America.
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Is Noah Wyle People's Sexiest Man Alive?
Amy Poehler says Noah Wyle is People's Sexiest Man Alive. She had wanted him on Good Hang for a long time, and she frames the title as the legitimate thing they can finally talk about. She jokes that his people said he would not come on until he had that.
Noah Wyle plays the honor as a joke about the previous cover, Jonathan Bailey. He says he is disappointed in the Bailey administration on the international front and on immigration, then says his own administration will crack down on the borders of beauty. The credit, he says, goes to his mother and his father. People magazine was huge in his house. They sat down with it and read it cover to cover.
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Where Were the Pitt and ER Filmed?
Shawn Hatosy says The Pitt and ER were not shot in Pittsburgh or Chicago. Both were filmed on the lot in Los Angeles.
Basketball was a big part of ER. They were always shooting hoops, and the court sat right next to the stage. That court is pickleball now. Shawn played a lot of basketball as a kid and in high school, and he plays tennis and pickleball now. He still pulls people out at lunch. Noah Wyle has never made it out there.
Shawn says a lot of people do not know that, and assume Pittsburgh and Chicago instead. Asked who Noah would draft, Shawn guesses George Clooney, then jokes that Clooney is busy enough to send someone else onto the court.
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Why Does the Pitt Take Place in One Day?
Shawn Hatosy says The Pitt takes a hospital show people already know and changes it by telling the story in one day. That frame is what made the show feel immersive, and solid, before it was a hit.
He had worked with executive producer John Wells on other shows that did not land the same way. Wells is why he took a guest role on ER. His manager told him Wells was directing, and a Wells episode is a big one. The part was a transformative character with more than one personality. At the end of it he told Wells he wanted to keep working with him. Southland came a couple of years later. Wells stays loyal, and Shawn has worked on three shows shot in Los Angeles.
The Pitt, he says, is a factory
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How Does Noah Wyle Prepare for a Big Scene?
Noah Wyle treats a scary role as a mirror instead of a reason to turn it down. The first time he read the Falling Skies pilot, the man was a history teacher who then had to kill aliens with a machine gun. His instinct was that nobody wanted to see him as an action hero. He asks what the resistance is really about. On that show the mirror was a post-divorce single father rebuilding a life, afraid of leadership, of fatherhood, and of loss. Those fears told him where the part needed him to go.
Once he is on the job, he protects a hard scene the way a caveman protects a new fire. He thinks about it a little every day, builds it, then tamps it down until the shoot. The day itself is the release.
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When Did Noah Wyle Learn His Mother Was a Nurse?
Noah Wyle did not learn who his mother was professionally until he was 54. After season one of The Pitt, she watched the episode where his character breaks down, came to his house, and said it brought back patients she had not saved. She listed a gang member who had been shot, whom she tried to help with two units of blood, and a little kid she put in a drawer. He had never heard the stories. When he asked how old he was when she put the kid in the drawer, she said his brother was about that age, which is why that case got to her.
What he remembers is that she made dinner, drove them to practice, and helped with homework. She did not bring the work home except gauze so they could be mummies
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How Was Noah Wyle's First Day With Rob Reiner?
Noah Wyle calls his first day with Rob Reiner an absolute dream. Rob was everything Noah would imagine and want him to be, and made him feel comfortable, confident, and competent in about eight seconds. Noah has carried that welcome onto every set since.
Noah got to the set of A Few Good Men early and saw Rob Reiner talking with Aaron Sorkin. He started to walk away so he would not bother them. A booming voice called his name. Rob came at him like a lumbering bear, picked him up, and said he was excited Noah was there and they would have so much fun. Rob turned to Aaron, called Noah fantastic, and said, you saw the audition, he is great, the day is going to be great. It was a little overcas
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How Did George Clooney Set the Tone on ER?
Noah Wyle says George Clooney set the tone on ER. The cast were the class clowns, and the idea that they would stay serious doctors was always going to run out, especially with Clooney in a scene. The rule was to work hard and play hard, take the work seriously without taking themselves seriously, show up, be on time, and be professional. Clooney wanted the line between cast and crew, and between foreground and background, erased so the set felt like one company.
Noah Wyle rebuilt that ethos on The Pitt: a family, hard and relevant work, and a respectful, inclusive set. He did not like Clooney's pranks. They make decent stories afterward. He is not a prank person himself.