PITTSBURGH >> Instead of the usual scrubs, stethoscope and hospital badge he wears on “The Pitt,” Noah Wyle sported denim jeans and a flannel shirt during a recent visit with doctors Allegheny General Hospital.

As the new Max medical drama series airs to critical acclaim, the actor returned to the North Side hospital that serves as aesthetic inspiration for “The Pitt” in part to “grease the wheels” for a potential second season. As he awaits a renewal — there’s a “good” chance, he said — Wyle’s looking forward to hopefully spending more time getting to know Pittsburgh’s quirks and intricacies as well as being an ambassador to the city’s medical community.

“Thanks for embracing us, specifically the medical community, thank you for your embracing of the show,” Wyle said on Feb. 10, seated next to Bobby Kapur, system chair at the AHN Emergency Medicine Institute. “It gives us the seal of approval — which has meant a lot — to be able to say that we are maybe the most realistic medical show that’s ever been on TV.”

That day, Wyle chatted with health care professionals including UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s EMS medical director, Sylvia Owusu-Ansah, who provided her insights to writers of the series and visited Allegheny General, the inspiration for the show’s fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, to meet its emergency staff.

In addition to his leading role on “The Pitt,” Wyle is also a writer and executive producer on the show. As Dr. Michael Robinavitch — also known as “Dr. Robby” — Wyle plays the chief attending doctor in an emergency room. “The Pitt” unfolds across 15 episodes, each representing one hour of a 15-hour shift. The first shift takes place on the anniversary of the death of Dr. Robby’s mentor, Dr. Adamson, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Robinavitch suffers from panic-inducing visions lingering from his experiences during the pandemic.

With new episodes airing Thursdays, this week’s show will see Dr. Robby heading into his seventh hour. Wyle, who had an “instrumental” role in building his character, said “The Pitt” will reveal much more about Dr. Robby as he further navigates the endless chaos of the “Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.”

Though largely filmed in a Hollywood studio, the production spent a few days in September shooting exteriors, including a scene that found Wyle on AGH’s roof.

Though he’s embracing the city in new ways, Wyle’s connections to Pittsburgh extend beyond the show, as his family history is intertwined with the area where his parents first met.

His grandparents attended Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, and his mother, registered orthopedic head nurse Marjorie Speer, was born at UPMC Shadyside. Speer met Frank Stephen Wyle (who goes by Stephen), Wyle’s father, while Speer attended Chatham University and Stephen Wyle studied at CIT.

Speer had an impact on one of the episodes’ storylines, wherein a patient of Dr. Robby’s is close to death due to pneumonia-induced sepsis. The man’s adult children, played by Rebecca Tilney and Mackenzie Astin, struggle with his end-of-life wish to not be intubated.

“Robby, my character, is attending this more holistically more than medically,” Wyle said. “And I called my mother, and I was describing the scene I was writing to her, when I was writing it.

Wyle’s mother talked to him about her father’s death. Speer was sitting by his bedside. And right before died, he opened his eyes and said her mom’s name — “Marge.” Then he closed his eyes and took his final breath.

“I said, ‘Wow, thank you,’ and I walked back to my computer and I wrote exactly what she had just said,” Wyle said. “That’s the dialogue that’s in the show.”

Personal experience also informs Wyle”s approach to his character.

“We’ve got more similarities than we have differences, so a lot of it is playing to the bone with stuff that’s important to me or that vibrates with me,” he explained.

“A lot of my work has always been somewhat cathartic for my own personal evolution and maturation and mental health.”

“And this was an idea that was born in 2020 when I was thinking aspirationally about having a nervous breakdown,” he said with a laugh. “I couldn’t figure out when to schedule it, so I thought ‘What if we made a TV show about a guy who had one?’ and then I can have mine and then we can film it. Then, everybody can watch it and hopefully do some good.”

Wyle also researched post-traumatic stress disorder — which Dr. Robby experiences throughout “The Pitt,” — in order to realistically depict his character’s panicked state.