Noah Wyle on Quitting 'ER' and Falling in Love With Acting (Again) on CBS' 'Red Line'Īnother actor who came close to landing the role? “I recently had lunch with Noah, and he told me that he was once sitting on an airplane and the seat next to him was occupied by the actor Raphael Sbarge ( Once Upon a Time, Murder in the First), who had tested opposite him for ER. I think he said Raphael said, ‘I’m trying not to hate you.'” It was a brave and exciting audition, and the rest is history.” Noah tied off my bicep with some kind of a wrap, and then, using a pencil, he pretended to draw blood from me. Carter screws up taking blood from a patient, and it was physical comedy. There was a dialogue scene - which he read, of course - but there was also another scene where the young Dr. Crichton attended, and Noah did a fantastic thing. “I brought him into a producer session, and funny enough, it was the one producer session that Dr.
CAST OF ER PLUS
It was Doogie Howser plus five,” Levey said. And if you look back at the pilot, you see exactly how young Noah seemed and was. “Noah had a couple of films that he had completed, but neither of them had been released.
CAST OF ER SERIES
While Wyle’s agent had pitched him for the series multiple times, it took a while before Levey relented and brought him in to read for the role.
Young medical student Carter’s first day in the ER is the audience’s way into the series. The pilot introduced new ER doctor John Carter (Noah Wyle) on his first day of work at County General and the senior staffers that made the emergency room run smoothly: residents Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) and Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield), handsome pediatrician Doug Ross (George Clooney), hotshot surgeon Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle) and nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies), who was famously supposed to die in the premiere but was written back in because of the character’s popularity during audience testing.īelow, Levey tells THR about casting the original ensemble, plus some of his favorite guest-star discoveries throughout the years, in honor of the series’ 25th anniversary. And it was fun and exciting from day one through day two million.” And it was a fantastic example of what excellence and collaboration and community can produce. The medicine stayed the star, but the characters were new and different as the years went on. We didn’t do what lots of other franchises did, where you did a whole new version - ER Toledo or ER Boston - we just kept rejuvenating ER Chicago with new and interesting people. But people who ran the directors’ element or who were instrumental in the writers room, and then of course the cast changed and evolved. “We went through so many different showrunners, although John was there all the time. “It’s really just an incredible confluence of good luck and wonderful collaborative efforts,” Levey told The Hollywood Reporter.