‘The Pitt’: Noah Wyle Unpacks Robby’s Shocking News & Teases Breakdown (VIDEO)

Meredith Jacobs March 13, 2025, 9:00 pm

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Pitt Season 1 Episode 11 “5:00 P.M.”]

Noah Wyle told us that Episode 11 would be revealing a secret about Robby and Collins‘ (Tracy Ifeachor) past, and he was right. The latest episode of The Pitt features a heartbreaking conversation between the two doctors on the back of an ambulance.

It’s not until this episode, after Collins delivers a baby, that she’s able to sit and begin to process the miscarriage she had in the middle of her shift. When Robby finds her, he tells her to go home early. She then reveals that she got pregnant a few years ago and wasn’t ready to be a mom then and never told him, afraid he’d hate her for being selfish. (She never says it was Robby, only using “he,” but it’s obvious both know he knows.) Robby assures her it wasn’t selfish, and not only does he forgive her, but he wants her to forgive herself.

“That was a loaded scene,” Wyle tells TV Insider. (Watch the full video interview above.) “We’ve been sort of teasing that these characters have some history, but we haven’t really gotten too specific about what that history is. And then they find themselves sitting in the back of an ambulance, and she’s disclosed to him that she’s been trying to get pregnant, that she’s just had a miscarriage, and that this isn’t her first pregnancy. And as we filmed it, it was extremely emotional.” He also reveals it was Ifeachor’s last day of filming.

Noah Wyle as Robby — 'The Pitt' Season 1 Episode 11

John Johnson / Max

That part of Robby and Collins’ past was the story that executive producer R. Scott Gemmill wanted to tell from day one, he says. That scene of them on the back of the ambulance was the audition scene for the role of Collins. “That seemed like a really great story. I think it was good for his character. I like the idea that this guy has had some relationships, but he’s a bit of a prickly character. And the job is really tough, and he had a relationship with this young woman, but it didn’t last, like none of his relationships seemed to. And then to find out that he might’ve had the potential to be a father when he doesn’t have a family now, I think that has a huge impact, and that impact helps push him towards where he ends up at the end of the series,” he says. “So it’s just finding those things that trigger that he doesn’t expect to happen, that throw him a little bit off his game and then keep building until we torture him to break.”

But right after that, Robby has to go right back to work and doesn’t have time to process that he could have been a father then. That’s nothing new for him, though. “I don’t think he’s had time to process any of the things that have happened to him for the last several years,” admits Wyle. “They just all kind of go into different compartments, which are all kind of overflowing on this particular day and that professional demeanor and his ability to kind of keep that mask of professionalism is getting harder and harder to maintain with each one of these little blows, whether it’s losing his mentee in Langdon or this being the anniversary of his mentor’s passing or having attended this tragic pediatric drowning or any of the other things that have been part of his day.”

The episode ends with Robby and Dana (Katherine LaNasa) finding out there’s a shooter at Pitfest — the same event that Robby’s stepson Jake (Taj Speights) is attending with his girlfriend. (Robby was supposed to join him, but Jake asked him to give up his ticket for Leah.)

“I would be very worried” about Jake and Leah, says Gemmill. Adds executive producer John Wells, “Wouldn’t you be if you were a parent, heard that there was a mass shooting and someone you cared about was there?”

This puts Robby “under an immense amount of pressure for [Episodes] 12 and 13, and we’ll take him to the breaking point,” warns Gemmill.

Robby does immediately try to reach Jake, says Wyle, teasing, “But then he has to be a doctor. This is going to be one of the most intense and horrific things he has ever seen as a physician, and it’s going to be one of the most intense and horrific things audiences have ever sat through.”

Inside Major Robby & Langdon Fight on 'The Pitt' With Noah Wyle and Patrick Ball

LaNasa says Robby is “pretty freaked out the whole time. It’s like he just keeps getting piled, piled, piled, piled, piled on, piled on, piled on. Now, his de facto son is missing at an event where there was a mass shooting. So yeah, it’s incredible stress for Dr. Robby and for all of us, really.”

This comes as the ED keeps losing doctors, too; Robby had to send Langdon (Patrick Ball) home after finding out he’s been stealing and taking patients’ pills, and now he’s sent Collins home, too. “That’s the drama that is The Pitt,” says LaNasa. “I love it.”

It’s right before they receive news of the shooting that Dana, who had been punched by a patient (Drew Powell‘s Doug Driscoll) two episodes prior, tells Robby that she thinks she’s done. Robby shakes his head but doesn’t argue and admits he doesn’t blame her. “You’re a good man, Robinavitch. Don’t let this place take that from you, okay?” she asks him. But can Dana really walk away?

“That’s the big crisis,” teases LaNasa. “As long as you see me on the screen from the moment that she gets hit, that informs the rest of my journey. It’s, I think, where I’ve built my identity, and I think I do go back to work, and I stay there because I can’t deal with going home. I know that when I go home, I’m going to have to deal with, can I continue to go back to a place where I get hit and the grief around that my whole life is that my whole sense of purpose is around that and just pulled out from under me in that one moment.”

She also doesn’t take Robby up on his offer to go home, and it’s not like she would with the victims sure to come from Pitfest. “That is really the part that makes this show a love letter to these emergency workers when we show how gritty they are, how they will bounce back to help to save and how noble they are,” LaNasa says.

Katherine LaNasa as Dana — 'The Pitt' Season 1 Episode 11

John Johnson / Max

“I think those are the days when you go home and you have a couple drinks, and you talk to your spouse about whether you can keep doing this and whether you want to keep doing this, and hopefully they listen and sometimes you just need time to decompress,” adds Gemmill. “I think Dana really loves what she does. I think the fact that it was a patient who wasn’t having a mental health crisis, wasn’t on drugs or alcohol, but just an angry person had more impact for her because it just speaks to the ongoing sort of lack of civility that these people are seeing — everyone sees it, but in the ER it’s even more pronounced.” Wells says there’s a “lack of respect and lack of compassion” in those situations.

But Gemmill expects that after a couple weeks at home, Dana would be restless and return to work. “She’s going to be different,” he stresses. “That’s going to stick with her for a while.”

As for why Robby doesn’t argue with Dana, “I think he feels and has felt many times like he’s done and keeps being pulled back into service out of a sense of need,” according to Wyle. “Or at least that’s the rationalization for it being something he doesn’t know how to stop doing out of routine and habits. And as is often the case with practitioners, it’s a lot easier to focus on the patient’s problem and to go to work every day and not have to deal with your own inner workings, but to just be able to focus on everybody else is a form of regulation. And if he’d stop doing that, then it may be overwhelming to see what comes up.”

Watch the full video interview with Wyle above for much more about Robby, his upcoming breakdown, reuniting with Drew Powell, and what’s still to come.

The Pitt, Thursdays, 9/8c, Max