This interview is part of Variety and CNN’s Actors on Actors series. Watch the full video interview now at CNN.com/Watch (or on the CNN app) and on Variety’s YouTube channel starting at 11:59 pm ET.
Noah Wyle and Sally Field first worked together on “ER,” when Wyle was among that show’s breakout stars and Field was already an established legend. Now, they’re reuniting to discuss emotionally charged work they’ve done in the past season. On “The Pitt,” for which Wyle won the Emmy for best actor in a drama last season, protagonist Dr. “Robby” Robinavitch had a seasonlong existential crisis, culminating in his admitting to thinking about suicide. In the TV movie “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” Field’s Tova, an aquarium janitor who is herself grieving, finds a new lease on life thanks to her bond with an octopus called Marcellus.
Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety
Noah Wyle: Hi, Sally. Look at the lengths we have to go to to get together.
Sally Field: You grew up very well.
Wyle: Thank you very much. Glad you think so.
Field: I wanted the opportunity to talk to you about what you’re doing. It’s so jaw-droppingly good. I look at it and go, “How the hell is he doing that?” Especially this last season — I know what it takes for that emotionality all the time. It takes a piece of your soul with it. And the relentlessness of the show, I can’t even imagine how you shoot that. It’s like the old days of network television.
Wyle: Which is where I got my training. So it’s not a muscle that hasn’t been worked; it’s just a muscle that hasn’t been worked in a long time. The older you get, the more precious the work becomes. You don’t want to do it as often, and when you do it, you want it to be cathartic and feel creative.
Field: You’re acting, you’re writing it, you’re directing it: I can’t imagine.
Wyle: I have had a couple of fallow periods in my career where it really rocked my sense of orientation not having a place to go and be creative and feel like I was part of something. So that mitigates my fatigue. It’s the enjoyment of being in the element that I like being in. I don’t get tired talking shop.
Field: The whole notion that each episode takes place in a day, and you watch the wonderful performances of all of these characters who become more and more exhausted themselves. They’re legitimately worn. I, too, have done network television and worked like that, and I know how exhausted you are by episode 12.
Wyle: That’s where we get helped by the longevity of the season. As the show goes on, they stop putting the concealer under your eyes and they stop doing your hair and, eventually, you just start to go to work as exhausted as you feel, and it tends to show.
Field: I worry about Dr. Robby. The last two episodes of this season are just heart-wrenching. Dr. Robby is having a hard time. He says that he doesn’t know that he wants to be anywhere anymore and I went No, no, no, don’t say that. I’m just going to go with the idea that he’s going to come back and be okay.
Wyle: What I think we saw was him lashing out, reaching out, begging for someone to intervene. And we’re not always very graceful when we’re at our most desperate. So his character was less than noble at various points in the season.
Field: He’s so complicated. He can be so empathetic and then he can be such a jerk and so mean to people. That’s what people are.
Wyle: He’s very three-dimensional. And we want somebody who is this thoughtful around, but he needs to figure out a way of offloading what he’s taken in. I don’t know how you feel when you approach this sort of emotional work. I get very excited about it, because it’s usually something that I’ve been carrying through the course of the season that I then get to put down. The emotion is usually there, and this is the day I don’t have to mask it anymore. So I reverse-engineer it to get to that place, so that those aren’t hard days. Those are great days.
Field: I don’t feel that way anymore. It terrorizes me. I’ve always felt terrorized by the really big emotional scenes. And you would think that it would be water off a duck’s back — no, it is not. It’s like lopping off a limb for me. Maybe as a result, I overprepare. I always feel I’m trying to reach something that’s so elusive to me. And I torture myself when I have to do it because I don’t want to let myself down.
Wyle: That moment at the end of the film when you have that monologue, talking about your son who passed away, and about a fight that you had right before the end — as you begin to divulge that memory, the emotion that comes up in you is so honest and gut-wrenching, and it’s been suppressed the whole time.
Field: That time specifically, I had a note in my pocket from my youngest son Sam. I kept touching the note. It had some cooties on it.
Wyle: Let’s talk about “ER.” You played Maura Tierney’s mother, who was bipolar, and you were one of the first big gets that we got on the show. It was hard to pull movie stars to television at that time, and it was a big gamble for you to do it.
Field: I started in television in 1964 [in “Gidget”], and it took a long time to get out of television. But then I felt, because I’m female and it always has been so hard to find roles you want to do. When John Wells came to me and said he was interested in doing a real arc on a character that was bipolar and wanted to show all the levels of bipolar — at that time, it wasn’t even called bipolar. It was manic-depressive. It was really not a well-known illness, even though it can be a devastating one. And so he set it up so that I could really research it at UCLA, talk to people, talk to doctors, the different stages of what it can be.
Wyle: Do you remember your first time coming to set?
Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety
Field: I was nervous as could be. It was the family you all created there which was extraordinary and allowed me to play with this very troubled person.
Wyle: As you say, you’ve been doing this since 1964. The longevity to a career like this — which is usually very hard on women and usually gives you a very short shelf life — you have defied all expectations and odds and had to redefine yourself a million times. You’ve pivoted — TV, movies, theater. How do you do that?
Field: I’ve always just gone to the role, wherever it is. I’m an actor, period. Whether it’s on stage, or film, or television. “ER” — absolutely. I didn’t hesitate.
Wyle: Do you always know a good part for yourself when you read one?
Field: Yeah.
Wyle: Did “Norma Rae” scare you when you read it?
Field: Yeah.
Wyle: Did you want it badly?
Field: Well, yes. “Norma” was the first film I had ever starred in. In those days, if you started in television, you stayed there, especially if you were a woman. The struggle to get out of that was so enormous. [Director] Marty Ritt had seen “Sybil” and even though no one in the studio wanted me, he said “I’ll fight for you and I’ll win.” I didn’t feel triumphant. I went, “The work begins.”
Wyle: This new movie you sought out.
Field: It came to me in galleys — it had not been published. This new production company Night Owl brought it to me, and I read only a few chapters before I said, “Yeah, let’s see if we can set this up.”
Wyle: What about the character was that intriguing to you?
Field: Early on, I don’t think it was the character that attracted me. It was the uniqueness of the relationship she has with Marcellus the octopus. Right before the pandemic, I had worked a lot. I did a play in London, which you’d probably love doing at one point, and came back and did something in Philly, a limited series that was was [she whispers] really horrible. [In a sarcastic tone] It was a great experience. By the end of the year, I had been gone so much, I just wanted to go home.
I looked up this person online that bred little Cavapoo puppies. [The breeder] said that no one ever wants the black ones. I said “I do!” In the beginning of 2020, I drove out to Bakersfield and got this little Cavapoo, a little black guy with a white chin, and took him home. And three weeks later we were in shutdown. And I was shut down with this little creature. And I honestly never had a dog —
Wyle: You never had a pet growing up?
Field: Not really. My children did. I took care of these big goldens that could have cared less. And now I had this little thing and it changed me. He taught me. And so the relationship that Tova has with Marcellus struck me.
Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety
Wyle: Not an easy one to pull off onscreen, because he’s not there. You’re acting with a co-star that is a [CGI] figment of your imagination. Is that what you use?
Field: Aren’t there times when you wish that people across from you aren’t there? I’m just going to pretend you’re not here. I saw Marcellus in my head anyway. He was there.
Wyle: I have always wanted to develop an acting technique that you could literally put in a backpack and take anywhere in the world and have at your disposal at 2 in the morning, on your birthday, in the rain, 30 below zero, whatever — that was just bombproof. I always marked that as the mark of the professional. I’m watching those last scenes of the film and you’re outside in the rain in the middle of the night putting Marcellus back in the water — and I know that was excruciating filmmaking. You’ve been doing this for so long, and yet you’re still bringing it every day. I find that so inspirational, Sally, I can’t even tell you.
Field: I don’t feel that way. Half the time, I feel like “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Give me more time. I’m not there yet!” There’s some tape I have to run through and know that that’s the finish line, and I’ve done it.
Wyle: I feel very much like you. Nothing is a guarantee, and I want to sing for my supper and earn my keep every day. The idea of ever getting comfortable or confident is almost counterproductive. You don’t want to get to a place of relaxation. I like feeling a little scared, a little out of my depth every day.
Field: You said you had fallow times when that was jarring to you — but every actor does.
Wyle: Yes, but I got spoiled so early. I had this front-loaded success to a career. It was inevitable that I was going to come down, and I hadn’t really built those muscles of interior validation, where you’re not looking to feel good about yourself through a job.
Field: As an actor, do you feel validated by the audience’s approval, or is it something else?
Wyle: The reaction and the resonance of the job is almost gravy after the fact if the process has felt creatively satisfying. “The Pitt” was like, “Let’s throw a party for ourselves. And if it’s a fun enough party that we enjoy, other people will want to come to it.” It felt very insulated and very personal. And that has been very hard to protect as the show goes on and scales larger and larger and everybody’s getting famous and other opportunities — keeping that sense of ensemble and intentionality behind it. Recognizing what was special about it and preserving it is going to be an increasing challenge.
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