As Warner Bros. stands to be swallowed whole by Netflix, Noah Wyle — the recently minted winner of Best Actor in a Drama Series at the Critics Choice Awards (for his turn as the commanding attending physician on HBO Max‘s The Pitt) — is thanking his circle of collaborators, supporters and friends, not to mention the industry giant itself.
When Wyle, who was nominated against Sterling K. Brown (Hulu’s Paradise), Diego Luna (Disney+’s Andor), Mark Ruffalo (Task, also on HBO Max), Adam Scott (Apple TV’s Severance) and Billy Bob Thornton (Paramount+’s Landman) took to the stage for his acceptance speech, he began by noting that it “seems so presumptuous” to have words at the ready while competing in a category with such a high “caliber of performers.”
“I can’t even tell you how moved I am,” he continued. “I owe everybody at this table everything: from my partner [R.] Scott Gemmill [creator of The Pitt], to Sarah Aubrey and Joey Chavez at HBO Max, to everybody at Warner Bros., to my beautiful wife Sara [Wells], to my costars, to my cowriters, to the directors who make the show, to our crew, to our cast.”
Watch on Deadline
The Emmy winner — whose career broke out thanks to another Gemmill, John Wells and Warner Bros. Television-produced medical procedural with ’90s hit ER — concluded: “To that grand old lady, Warner Bros., long may she stand; she’s been so good to me my whole life. I owe this to her. Thank you Warner Bros., and thank you all.”
Totaling 15 seasons and well over 300 episodes, NBC’s ER catapulted Wyle to stardom in 1994, when he first began portraying green med student John Carter, eventually becoming one of the show’s longest-tenured cast members. Earlier in the night, host Chelsea Handler joked about Wyle’s shared heartthrob status during the era: “Congrats on getting rid of George Clooney; he was clearly holding you back,” she quipped.
Early last month, Netflix announced it would be buying WBD’s streaming assets in a deal worth $82.7 billion, a valuation of nearly $28 a share. Shortly thereafter, Paramount revealed its hostile tender bid, a cash offer of $30 per share. Following the whiplash news, entertainment industry leaders and political officials have sounded off about monopoly concerns. WBD has since rebuffed the latter conglomerate’s second and amended offer, which would also include a buy of the company’s cable arm, previously proposed to be spun off.