Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety This interview is part of Variety and CNN’s Actors on Actors series. Watch the full video interview now at CNN.com/Watch (or on the CNN app) and on Variety’s YouTube channel starting at 11:59 pm ET.
Noah Wyle and Sally Field first worked together on “ER,” when Wyle was among that show’s breakout stars and Field was already an established legend. Now, they’re reuniting to discuss emotionally charged work they’ve done in the past season. On “The Pitt,” for which Wyle won the Emmy for best actor in a drama last season, protagonist Dr. “Robby” Robinavitch had a seasonlong existential crisis, culminating in his admitting to thinking about suicide. In the TV movie “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” Field’s Tova, an aquarium janitor who is herself grieving, finds a new lease on life thanks to her bond with an octopus called Marcellus.
Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety Noah Wyle: Hi, Sally. Look at the lengths we have to go to to get together.
Sally Field: You grew up very well.
Wyle: Thank you very much. Glad you think so.
Field: I wanted the opportunity to talk to you about what you’re doing. It’s so jaw-droppingly good. I look at it and go, “How the hell is he doing that?” Especially this last season — I know what it takes for that emotionality all the time. It takes a piece of your soul with it. And the relentlessness of the show, I can’t even imagine how you shoot that. It’s like the old days of network television.
Wyle: Which is where I got my training. So it’s not a muscle that hasn’t been worked; it’s just a muscle that hasn’t been worked in a long time. The older you get, the more precious the work becomes. You don’t want to do it as often, and when you do it, you want it to be cathartic and feel creative.
Field: You’re acting, you’re writing it, you’re directing it: I can’t imagine.
Wyle: I have had a couple of fallow periods in my career where it really rocked my sense of orientation not having a place to go and be creative and feel like I was part of something. So that mitigates my fatigue. It’s the enjoyment of being in the element that I like being in. I don’t get tired talking shop.
Field: The whole notion that each episode takes place in a day, and you watch the wonderful performances of all of these characters who become more and more exhausted themselves. They’re legitimately worn. I, too, have done network television and worked like that, and I know how exhausted you are by episode 12.
Wyle: That’s where we get helped by the longevity of the season. As the show goes on, they stop putting the concealer under your eyes and they stop doing your hair and, eventually, you just start to go to work as exhausted as you feel, and it tends to show.
Field: I worry about Dr. Robby. The last two episodes of this season are just heart-wrenching. Dr. Robby is having a hard time. He says that he doesn’t know that he wants to be anywhere anymore and I went No, no, no, don’t say that. I’m just going to go with the idea that he’s going to come back and be okay.
Wyle: What I think we saw was him lashing out, reaching out, begging for someone to intervene. And we’re not always very graceful when we’re at our most desperate. So his character was less than noble at various points in the season.
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