This article contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “The Pitt.”

It almost feels like Noah Wyle’s life as a pretend doctor was destined when he casually mentions a detail from his childhood.

“Our butter knife was a brain retractor,” he says with a playful smile. Excuse me, what?

He’s not joking. His mom was an OR nurse for 10 years. And he lights up as he talks about the procedures she had a hand in — total hip replacements, all kinds of orthopedic surgeries. She would bring home surgical tubing, tubs, gauze and other stuff for him and his siblings to play with. And, yes, there was the unusual butter knife substitute. But it was her identity as a nurse that stuck most with him.

“What I look back on with my mother, it’s that my mom’s hardcore,” he says. “You can’t rub her shoulders too hard or she’ll bruise. If you tease her, she gets upset. But she carried a man’s leg to pathology and didn’t blink twice about it. I have a lot of respect for what my mom did and shouldered and carried all day long.”

We’re sitting in the dreary family waiting room on the set of “The Pitt,” Max’s medical drama that’s had critics and fans hooked and pulses racing since its January launch — boosted, in part, by its format. Each installment of the drama chronicles an hour in the 15-hour shift of the hospital’s morning staff. It had Wyle scrubbing back into a hospital environment 15 years after his breakout role in “ER,” NBC’s long-running medical drama in which he starred as Dr. John Carter. Here, he plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Rabinovich, the emotionally troubled but strong-willed chief attendant in the emergency room at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. He wears the stress of the job on his bearded face but, with the armor of his navy zip-up hoodie, musters the energy to inspire his team with words of encouragement — even if he inevitably gets interrupted with a new patient rolling through.

“We’re throwing spaghetti on the wall, trying to see what sticks,” he says. “We started about eight days after we wrapped [in February]. I went to New York for four days — my wife sent me away for three days because I was a basket case after the end of the season, and I got back from doing the press tour after the wrap party. I was just no good.”

He’s better now. Mostly. The reaction from medical workers has been overwhelmingly positive. And it’s hard not to notice his pride in what the show has achieved as he ushers this visitor around the set like a proud dad: He points out the intentionally uneven placement of the posters in the waiting room we’re in, which served as a de facto break room for the cast between setups; he animatedly shows off a congealed splatter of blood on the floor, lifting it up and slapping it back on the floor; he motions to the nearby pediatric room — yes, the one with the cartoon fox — that is central to key moments in the show; and he asks whether I would like to take home a box of medical gloves. (I was tempted.)

The Times spoke with Wyle about the whirlwind first season, which concluded on Thursday. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: We’re in an era where flashy or cliffhanger-type finales are big. It was refreshing to get a somewhat understated conclusion to this intense, 15-hour ride. Things close with some of the morning crew sitting at a park, coming down from an exhausting shift, and they’re reflecting on the beauty and chaos of the job and what keeps them coming back. And Robby eventually takes his walk home. Talk about ending on that note.

A: That was an interesting scene to shoot because our entire show was shot in sequence, except for the scene on the roof between Dr. Abbott and I and the scene in the park. Those were shot in September when we went to Pittsburgh to make sure we could shoot all the appropriate weather. We shot me walking into the hospital, we shot the stuff on the helicopter coming down, and then we shot the end of the show. Those scripts hadn’t even been written yet. There were placeholders and they were nonspecific enough that we felt that they’d be appropriate — the scene was Abbott on the roof, I make reference to having made a speech, the speech was TBD. When I watch those scenes, I’m mostly pleased with the technical prowess that they cut in seamlessly, and they make it feel as if it was all in the flow.

But in regards to the content you’re talking about, it was always the intention to make this a practitioner-centric show. Ending it on the debrief that they’re having casually in the park, they reinforce each other’s resolve to come back and the importance of what they do and the need for them to be in these jobs. I think that’s how a lot of these people see themselves — as much as you and I might not want to be in that situation, they’re sort of like Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan in the fourth quarter, down by two; they want the ball. They’re the best at what they do. There’s a lot of professional pride underneath it all. The takeaway is you watch Robby walk away with one beer in his stomach and another in his pocket — this is the beginning of a healing journey that he now has to face.