John Wells Has Produced Four Decades of TV Hits, Including ‘The Pitt.’ He Has Some Advice for Hollywood

John Wells Has Produced Four Decades of TV Hits, Including ‘The Pitt.’ He Has Some Advice for Hollywood

Since he got his start in Hollywood nearly 40 years ago, John Wells has averaged more successes per decade than most creatives accumulate over an entire career.

The prolific writer, director, producer and filmmaker’s latest feat is The Pitt, a real-time medical drama that spans one 12-hour emergency room shift in a 15-episode season. Reuniting Wells with former ER collaborators R. Scott Gemmill and Noah Wyle, the HBO Max procedural launched unexpectedly into the zeitgeist with its January premiere ­­— thanks in part to weekly drops (how novel!) that saw the audience quickly pass 10 million per episode. This is hardly Wells’ first time scrubbing in for TV. He cut his teeth writing on China Beach, then developed ER with the late Michael Crichton and created Third Watch. Along the way, he also made the U.S. version of Shameless, directed four films (including the celebrated adaptation of August: Osage County) and ran a little series called The West Wing.

Riding high on The Pitt‘s 13 Emmy nominations and the summer dominance of the Eric Bana Netflix breakout Untamed (already renewed), the power producer and two-time WGA West president sat down at his Hollywood office in July to talk about the future of his latest hit, his concerns for the industry and the wildest exchanges he’s had with the standards and practices department.

The Pitt, as a format, is a bit of an experiment. What did you learn in season one that you’re applying to season two?

The first year of the show, you’ve introduced the characters — which takes up a lot of screen time. What propels the show now is the immediacy, the urgency of being in this setting with what’s happening in American health care right now. And that’s only getting more dramatic because these Medicaid reductions are going to directly hit the urban and rural hospitals delivering primary care. It’s just going to get worse.

As for the characters you’ve introduced, you made a bit of news with the departure of Tracy Ifeachor. What went into that decision?

Look, the show is set at a teaching hospital. And if you’re a fourth-year resident in a teaching hospital, your time there is done at the end of that year. Not to scare any of the other castmembers, but people don’t stay at these hospitals forever. They’re going to roll off, and that will be part of the evolution of the show. We’re not committed to doing a year every season as we go on, but we can’t say that we’re going to be true to the medicine and teaching hospitals and maintain the same cast for the entire time.

So you’re planning large time jumps between seasons?

Because we’re only doing one day over the course of a season, we could do the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the same week. But we’re not. We’re going to be jumping. From the fall in the first season to the Fourth of July for the second. The beginning of the residency year usually starts on July 1, so everybody will have moved up and there’ll be new people coming in.

What is lost and what is gained in telling a story this way? You and Noah obviously worked on ER together, where you could get slow-burn relationship drama like you had with George Clooney and Julianna Margulies.

One of the advantages is we are not able to play medical melodrama in the sense of long-term relationship issues. You’re dropping in on people at a specific day and time, so you may discover that somebody’s been having a relationship. And it may be a crisis point in that relationship on that particular day. Having written or been involved in the writing or writing 70-ish episodes of China Beach, 332 episodes of ER and another 170 episodes of Third Watch, we’ve written a lot of medical melodrama. Part of my first conversation with Scott and Noah was that we don’t really want to tell those stories anymore. This is not where you’re going to get your romantic Dr. Ross and Nurse Hathaway story, and it’s a bit liberating.

Last time we spoke, you said that the most troubling recent conversation you’ve had with an executive was about shooting outside of L.A. What else worries you?

The lack of big swings. It’s a very dangerous moment in the industry. So many people have been let go. So many executives are no longer executives. So many people are out in the marketplace looking for work. And that has had a chilling effect on taking risks, especially since shows have gotten more and more expensive. People are frightened in the executive ranks. It takes tremendous courage to say to somebody, “Go make this show, here’s $60 million for 15 episodes or $80 million for eight episodes.”

So what can someone in your position do about it?

We have to be aware of how much these shows are going to cost while we’re writing them. You have to be thinking how you’re going to produce the show before you even sell it. Otherwise, somebody is going tell you to make it in Budapest.

When did that become part of the job?

When everything exploded, and we were making so many shows with not a lot of concern about how much those shows were costing. It was out of control. A lot of people made a lot of money. And that’s great. But we’re on the other side now, and [studios] went from wanting it to be under $10 million an episode to under $8 million to $6 million.

How would you define a big swing in this marketplace? Is it Donald Glover shooting Mr. & Mrs. Smith all over Europe or adapting big IP?

I don’t necessarily mean a big financial swing. And is that actually what the audience is watching? I have kids in their 20s, and they want to know how many episodes there are going to be if they get involved with something. They don’t want six or seven episodes. They’re like, “Are there 100 episodes of this?”

One thing I don’t think gets enough attention is how harmful the delays between seasons can be to audience relationships with the material. Is it important for you to get The Pitt back on the air as soon as possible?

I completely agree. How am I supposed to keep a fandom with something when I can’t even remember what happened two and a half years later? We’re essentially returning the exact same day that we premiered. It will be the eighth of January — 365 days later. And with all due respect to all of my friends who make TV, there is no reason these shows can’t be on every year. These delays are becoming even more conspicuous now that the series load is diminishing. It was so crowded that you could almost use that as an excuse.

In this trepidatious if not fearful marketplace, what are buyers looking for right now? What are you hearing that people want?

I keep hearing that people want The Pitt. (Laughs.) People want shows that can come back on a regular basis with a strong cast and at a number that makes sense for the studio and platform that’s doing it. That’s nothing new, but it seems like we’re having to rediscover it again as if we hadn’t all known this for a long time.

What other trends have you noticed?

Netflix is trying to build this huge library because they don’t have one. And everybody is suspicious now that everybody else is selling stuff to them again. Animal Kingdom was the No. 3 show on Netflix the other day. That was a good show. We had a good time making it, but it’s also been available on Amazon ever since we were on the air. Shameless was on Showtime for years. Then Warners sold [the library] to Netflix in our year five or six. It turned into a huge hit on Netflix. We had been winding down and ended up doing five more years because of that. Ask somebody who made Shameless and they’ll probably tell you Netflix.

Speaking of Shameless, you cast Jeremy Allen White in his breakthrough role. He’s kind of a big thing now.

He was 18, just out of high school. He showed up, did a fantastic job and then stayed the entire 11 years. I couldn’t be happier for him. A similar thing happened with George Clooney. We cast him, and that first year he’s “the sexiest man alive.” But he stuck around for his entire five-year contract, and he never asked for a raise. I’ve been very fortunate to work with a lot of people like that. Noah, of course. Regina King on Southland. Watching her success has been fantastic.

Who are the executives you’ve had the best experiences with?

There have been a lot of great creative partners. It sounds funny now, but the three executives on ER were David Nevins, John Landgraf and Kevin Reilly. Jinny Howe worked as my assistant before she ran television here. Now she’s head of drama at Netflix. But TV exec is a really, really hard job. Warren Littlefield was at NBC when we were making those shows, and I watched him just get beat to hell. Pounded over and over for having good taste. When I was at ABC, Brandon Stoddard literally lost his job for putting Twin Peaks, China Beach and thirtysomething on the air. They fired him for being too elite.

What’s some bullshit that you had to deal with back then that you’d never have to deal with now? Not because of your stature but because of how things work.

Liz Meriwether was surprised that I still get notes, and I want to dissuade anyone from thinking that having had success means that the job itself changes substantially. It gives you more credibility in responding to notes, but it does not change the amount coming in. But I really appreciate not dealing with standards and practices on a daily basis anymore. It’s fear-based and doesn’t respect the audience’s intelligence and sophistication.

What are some of the more infuriating ones?

I had huge discussions during the ER days about racial storylines. “Could this Black character actually kiss this white character?” This in 1998! I was like, “Guys, what are we even talking about?” A big storyline we did in the third season of ER was Gloria Reuben’s character being HIV positive. There were real conversations where they said, “So, she’s going to survive? Should she survive?” It’s HIV. It’s terrifying. But there were already many, many people in the world dealing with it. And to suggest that anybody who becomes infected dies, that’s not the message that we wanted moving through the world.

You’ve been coy on this, but there must be a line you’re not willing to cross on The Pitt in terms of the graphic medical stuff.

We want nothing to be gratuitous, and it’s only what the doctors would really see. We don’t want to do emergency medicine porn, where we’re just daring the audience to watch.

Do you have any squeamish people on staff?

I’m squeamish about eyes. I just shot the first episode of season two, and there’s an eye thing. I said, “Do I have to do the eye one?”

With distance from it now, how do you look back on the experience of Aaron Sorkin quitting The West Wing in season five and leaving you on the hook to keep it going?

That was not what I was planning to do that year. (Laughs.) Professionally, as a writer, that was the hardest thing. It’s not like we didn’t still have a great staff in place, but at that point it was widely considered to be the best show on television — though there’s certainly people who’d argue for The Sopranos. And I might argue that for some of the episodes, for sure. But it was pressure. We went back in the writers room, looked at each other, and I said, “Aaron doesn’t have any idea about where the story goes, so we’re just going to do the best that we can and hope that the audience would come along.” And they did. I would never argue that I wrote an episode as good as Aaron or rose to those same heights, but I was proud that we maintained that show.

Many actors, and even Aaron, occasionally tease reviving that show. Do you think there’s a way to do it?

Aaron and I have talked about it a number of times. My worry — and never say never — has always been that when the show existed, it was not perceived as one-sided. It was clearly liberal, but it wasn’t progressive. It was actually very centrist. What’s happening now, that’s not the world in which it was written, so I’d be worried that it would be perceived as a statement. What the show was trying to do is highlight the sacrifice in public service, that these people are really good, well-meaning people, and I don’t think anybody would let us do that in this polarized climate.

You’ve launched many shows over the years. You’ve made a lot of movies. What’s a misfire that you think should have done better?

Ten years ago, I did a pilot at Fox with Krista Vernoff. While we were casting, I was in London, where I’d been asked to watch this small film for some other reason. But there was this young woman in it, and I thought, “Oh, she’d be perfect for our show.” It was Florence Pugh! She was only 18 years old, and we brought her over to shoot this pilot. She was incredible. It was the biggest shock when they didn’t pick it up.

What about something that made it to air?

We did a show called Smith [in 2006] with Ray Liotta and Virginia Madsen for CBS. Great cast. I really loved it, but no one showed up. They only aired three episodes. I don’t want to say “ahead of its time,” but it was very violent for a broadcast network at the time. And it was a show about the bad guys.

That show was dark. CBS might not have been the place for it.

Les Moonves later told me that it definitely was not. (Laughs.)

This story appeared in the Aug. 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.