Noah Wyle Says His Nurse Mom Used to Critique His Performance on ‘ER’

ER alum Noah Wyle said his mother, a registered nurse, used to call him every week to critique his performance on the medical drama.

“She would call [at] 11:01,” Wyle, 53, shared on the Monday, June 24, episode of the “Still Here Hollywood” podcast of his mother, Marjorie, who worked as a nurse in an operating room for 10 years and in orthopedics for another 10. “[She’d] say, ’You never touch your face with bloody gloves! What? Do you wanna get AIDS? I’ve gotta go to the hospital tomorrow and answer for that.’ And I said, “OK. OK.’”

Wyle, 53, portrayed Dr. John Carter on ER from 1994 to 2009. Speaking to host Steve Kmeto about his mother’s “vested interest” in his show, Wyle joked of Marjorie’s phone calls, “Advice, criticism — it’s a fine line sometimes.”

The actor also admitted that he would tell his mom the storylines for episodes before they aired on TV. “She would know what was coming up on the storyline, so she was very in the know,” he said.

While he doesn’t have the same work experience as his mother, Wyle shared that he still picked up on some things while playing a Hollywood doctor. “Mostly, you learn enough to know how little you know and how much you could do wrong and how you could really make a huge mistake,” Wyle said.

“There’s been a few times where I’ve happened to be the first on [the] scene at a car accident twice,” the Leverage: Redemption star continued. “I knew enough to be helpful and supportive — didn’t do anything that caused any harm.”

Wyle added that it was “very funny when the paramedics showed up” at one of the accidents and, after he had filled them in on the details, they realized he was a “fake” doctor.

“There was a period of time where I was so into the medicine that I really did feel like I had a pretty good on-par education with a third-year medical student,” Wyle noted. “After all the stuff we had done over the years. But most of it’s left me, sadly.”

Wyle starred in more episodes of ER throughout the show’s 15-season run than any other cast member, with a whopping 254 total episodes under his belt. Along with Wyle, the original six stars of the long-running medical drama included George Clooney, Julianna Marguiles, Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle and Sherry Stringfield.

In 2019, Wyle exclusively told Us Weekly that the cast of ER still sees each other regularly. “We get together all the time. Thankfully, nobody’s filming it,” he told Us at the time.