The Pitt’s Noah Wyle is opening up about what he says was a palpable change in Hollywood following Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential win.

“I turned to my wife [Sara Wells] and I said, ‘Well, call me when smart is sexy again,’” Wyle, 54, told The Times in an interview published on Friday, March 20. “And you know, it’s been a few years and I’m now working on this show and the show has got great resonance. So, I tend to believe that smart is sexy again.”

As the actor explained to the publication, he made a pilot titled Perfect Citizen for CBS 10 years ago, during the 2016 presidential election between then-Republican nominee Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Wyle believed the show was a “shoo in,” the publication added, until “the day” Trump became president of the United States, “at which point the show was dropped and dramas about ‘law and order militarism’” were prioritized.

A decade later, Wyle is once again the nucleus of a hit television show — this time on HBO Max — starring as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, an emergency room physician leading a team of doctors, nurses and interns as they work to treat the patients at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. The show also stars Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa, Supriya Ganesh, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Isa Briones, Gerran Howell and Shabana Azeez.

The show, created by R. Scott Gemmill and executive produced by John Wells and Wyle, premiered on HBO Max in January 2025 and has found massive success since, earning multiple awards including a 2026 Golden Globe for Best Television Series — Drama.

The series is known for blending entertainment and politics, touching on everything from the lack of funding and resources for hospitals and staff, high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse disorders in emergency room physicians, abortion rights, rape kits, trans rights and the impact ICE officers have on local communities.

“I was amazed at the reaction that that character had, the gratitude that came my way from that community for the representation of just a human being,” Wyle told the outlet of a trans character in the first season of the show, who works as a sommelier and cut her wrist opening a bottle of wine. During the episode, her gender is affirmed by the staff, who independently and without prompting correct her medical records.

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“It underscored how little of that there is,” Wyle added, before discussing what he acknowledges is a “risk of turning off viewers by coming off too dogmatic or wearing our heart on our sleeve.”

“We may be guilty of that on occasion,” he added. “Wells is a wonderful corrector for that, because he’s constantly admonishing us for being sloppy in our bias. And he’s not asking us to present all things equally, because I don’t believe that there are moral equivalencies to these arguments, but he’s asking us to at least give a legitimate point of view to an alternative philosophy.”