Noah Wyle teases what fans can expect from ‘The Pit’ season 3
Plans are well underway for Season 3 of The Pit as series star Noah Wyle promises fans of the HBO drama an “explosive” season.
LOS ANGELES — Noah Wyle is previewing season 3 of “The Pit.” And it will cause a boom.
Weil, who serves as star, writer and executive producer, shared important details about the upcoming season with USA TODAY ahead of PaleyFest LA’s “The Pit” event on April 12 at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles.
The next season of the HBO Max show will begin filming in June and will take place in the fictional Pittsburgh ER in early November.
“It’s going to be before Thanksgiving and we’re going to move into colder weather. The holidays are coming up. The weather is changing. People are going to turn on their heaters for the first time,” said Wiley, 54.
“It’s going to be explosive,” he promises.
Season 1 took place over one shift in September. The current season 2 took place 10 months later, during a 15-hour shift over the July 4th weekend. The next season is just four months away.
“So it’s not as big a jump (in time) as it was last time,” says author R. Scott Gemmill. “And let’s play in the cold weather.”
This season required nine months of intensive filming, leaving the cast and crew exhausted. But Gemmill said writers, including Weil, are already working on a medical series that mimics the old Hollywood model of annual seasons.
Amid a major career resurgence and multiple award wins, “ER” star Wiley says he doesn’t need a break anyway.
“You’re so worried about losing your job again that you try your luck,” Weil says. “We’re working on the story in the writers’ room and will be back filming in June and hopefully back on the air in January.”
Season 1 of “The Pit,” he says, was “a speculative adventure.” No one expected it to become such a hit. Wiley said he was able to enjoy the worldwide excitement that followed this year’s Emmy Award for Best Drama Series.
“We created Season 1 with nothing, and once the first episodes started airing early on, we had an inkling that this might be really popular,” Weil says. “During Season 2, we were honored at award ceremonies and had our pictures taken. It was great.”
Wiley called the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony on April 6, which he had dreamed of since childhood, just steps away from the Los Angeles landmark, “the best cherry blossom of my year and my life.”
PaleyFest crowd goes wild as they preview ‘The Pit’ finale
Wiley and Gemmill, along with fellow Emmy Award winners Katherine LaNasa (Chief Nurse Dana Evans) and Taylor Dearden (Dr. Melissa “Mel” King), felt the love firsthand at Sunday’s raucous PaleyFest event. All four floors of the Dolby Theater were filled with cheering fans, many wearing customized “The Pit” T-shirts.
“I’ve been living under a rock, so this helps me,” Dearden said, looking out at the appreciative crowd.
The crowd got even louder when event organizers announced they would be previewing the Season 2 finale, which won’t air until April 16 (up to 8 ET/PT). The atmosphere was positively excited as they showed the entire finale episode to hundreds of fans.
Gemmill promised the audience the same in Season 3 as the beloved cast moves forward.
“We’re going to accept these people and follow the next shift,” Gemmill said. “We follow each of their journeys through life. Every year, we get to know them a little bit more.”
Wiley said Dr. Michael “Robbie” Rabinovich, a highly talented but mentally challenged man, will continue to evolve and learn that he is unable to effectively deal with the trauma from the ER and his own life.
“The theme of season one is that the doctor is the patient,” Wiley said. “Season 2 is about how doctors don’t make very good patients. Season 3’s theme is that doctors can benefit from being patients.”
