ER Trivia!
We've done a little digging and found some interesting and quirky facts about ER! Some you may have heard of before, but we're betting that there are plenty of facts on here that didn't know....
1. Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) was supposed to be
brain-dead from a suicide attempt in the first episode, but the
character was revived for the series. For the first episode,
Margulies was credited as a guest star.
2. If anything had gone wrong during the broadcast of the live
episode (season 4), such as a technical failure or forgotten
dialogue, the producers had additional actors ready to improvise a
scene that would have been inserted to cover. This contingency was
never used.
3. The character played by Ming-Na was addressed only as Deborah
Chen when she first appeared in the series in 1995. When she
returned in 2000, she took to a more traditional name, Jing-Mei,
which was also the name of the character Ming-Na played in The Joy
Luck Club (1993).
4. Matthew Watkins, the child who played Reese Benton, Peter's deaf
son, is hearing impaired in real life.
5. Frank, the desk clerk (Troy Evans), always talks about life on
the "force" as a Chicago police officer. In a very early episode he
had an appearance as a police officer who was shot and treated by
the ER staff.
6. The character of Dr John Carter was named after the protagonist
in the classic "John Carter: Man from Mars" pulp sci-fi stories.
Michael Crichton, like many sci-fi writers, considers it an early
influence.
7. In the episode where Dr Romano is showing his prosthetic arm to
the staff at the desk, one of the other doctors refers to him as
"Robodoc". Paul McCrane played one of the bad guys in RoboCop
(1987).
8. Doug Ross frequently hung his head low, appearing ashamed or
thoughtful or privately amused, depending on the scene. This wasn't
just an element of the character: George Clooney had taken to
writing his lines on papers, sheets, and other props (especially
that complicated medical terminology).
9. The set for the pilot episode was a rundown hospital in east Los
Angeles, as they couldn't afford to build a proper set of their
own. As the rooms were quite small, this necessitated the use of
the Steadicam, which has since become the trademark of the show.
Real members of the public, would often pull up outside, mistaking
the set for the real thing.
10. Goran Visnjic named his own character after the writers were
unable to develop an appropriately Croatian name. The character is
named for Visnjic's nephew (Luka) and his best friend
(Kovac).
11. George Clooney's character was originally going to be called
Tom Ross, and Julianna Margulies was going to be called Barb
Hathaway.
12. Julianna Margulies originally read for the part of Mark
Greene's wife.
13. The original proposal of ER was written by Michael Crichton in
1974 as movie screenplay.
14. The most watched episode of ER in America was "Hell and High
Water", where George Clooney's character Doug Ross saved a boy
from storm drain.
15. Steven Spielberg was one of the original producers.
16. Anthony Edwards originally turned down an offer to be on the
series.
17. George Clooney was the first actor cast in the series.
18. Eriq La Salle wasnt cast until four days before the
pilot.
19. Every network passed on the show twice, said executive producer
John Wells. It had all these characters and medical dialogue, and
they found it utterly impossible to follow.
20. In the pilot episode of ER, George Clooney's cousin, Miguel
Ferrer, appeared as a guest star, and George Clooney's aunt,
Rosemary Clooney (Ferrer's mother), appeared in the second regular
episode. George Clooney did not appear together in any scenes with
either of them.
