While Noah Wyle starred as Dr. John Carter on ER for 12 seasons, his kids have yet to binge-watch the hit NBC medical drama.
“Neither one of my older kids have watched. They’ve watched more Grey’s Anatomy than they have ER. It’s a point of contention,” the 53-year-old actor tells PEOPLE of his three kids — son Owen, 22, and daughter Auden, 19, whom he shares with ex-wife Tracy Warbin, as well as Frances, 9, his daughter with wife Sara Wells.
“However, the older they get and the more they seem interested in this business, the more I kind of want to hold that up as something that they might want to engage in. But you know, they’re watching The Pitt,” Wyle continues, referring to the Max original drama that sees him returning to the medical TV genre as senior attending physician Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch.
Admittedly, Wyle hasn’t rewatched too much of his past work, either. “I don’t like watching myself,” he says, noting that when he does, “I just tend to be more forward-facing when I do watch my older work. I tend to be a lot kinder to myself than I am the first time I watch it. The work tends to age better for me and then eventually I get to a point where I don’t even remember why I made a choice and I get to sort of enjoy it objectively.”
While he’s able to watch and appreciate when something “was good,” he does acknowledge he’s “had some beautiful failures” in his career, where he says, “The intention was always good in most of the jobs I took.”
However, since becoming a parent, his selection process has evolved. “My tastes changed radically after my son was born,” Wyle says of Owen, who was born in November 2002. “After I was a father, I suddenly was very conscious of the things that my kids would be watching their father do or say.”
He adds, “It curbed some of my impulses to reach for characters that are way more on the friend. You know, I’d rather play good guys.”
Additionally, Wyle is helping his kids navigate Hollywood as both Owen and Auden pursue careers in front of and behind the camera.
Currently enrolled in college, he says Owen is “taking all sorts of film classes with an eye towards ending up in this industry somewhere.”
“I tell him every day it’s a big tent. We’ve got truck drivers, lawyers, carpenters. But he really likes the circus and so it’s gonna be hard to keep him out from under the big tent.”
As for Auden, she’s “already embarked on her acting career. And she and I got to work together playing father and daughter on an episode of Leverage: Redemption,” Wyle says, referring to a moment from season 1 between their characters, Harry and Becky Wilson, before revealing that they have two more together “which are in the upcoming third season.”
“She just booked her first movie,” he adds of Auden, noting, “She’s well ahead of where I was at her age.”
When it comes to Frances, the actor says, “My 9-year-old is a dynamo who can do anything she wants with her life,” before adding that for all three of them, “I’ve tried to make this business seem difficult and challenging, which it is. And they don’t have any illusions that lightning strikes often in the same place.”
“So, like I said, everybody’s journey is their own and I make myself available [to them],” Wyle concludes.