Noah Wyle revealed that there was almost an ER revival — until there wasn’t.
“This has not been talked about, but that’s kind of the road we had started down,” Wyle, 53, said on the Monday, June 24, episode of the “Still Here Hollywood” podcast.
Wyle explained that he was receiving mail from first responders in 2020, which prompted him to reach out to producer John Wells.
“So I emailed him and I said, ‘Hey, I’m getting all this lovely sort of mail from people that are thanking us for keeping them entertained, or inspired them to go into the careers that they’re in in the first place, and I just have to say thank you. Except for my children, this is probably the best thing I’ve ever done with my life, and I just want to say thanks,’” Wyle recalled to host Steve Kmetko.
Wyle continued his message, expressing his interest in an offshoot of the show.
“I said, ‘I know you don’t want to reboot the show. I don’t either. I thought it was very smart not to franchise and dilute what we did,’” he said. “‘But if you’ve ever wanted to do something much smaller, and much more contained — more of a character piece kind of catching up to an old character and just finding out how they feel about what’s happening right now in healthcare, kind of use them as a jeremiad opportunity to say what you want — I would vote for that. I would be on board for that.’”
Wells, 68, thought about Wyle’s proposition, and the twosome had conversations before eventually bringing in writers Scott Gemmill and David Zabel.
“We came up with a concept and it really never got out of the starting gate,” Wyle said, adding that they had some issues with negotiations and the estate of ER creator Michael Crichton.
He continued, “In a lot of ways, it was a dodged bullet and a blessing, because that would’ve been the focus. It would’ve been on, ‘Hey it’s the brand again and who’s coming back to play?’ And, ‘Oh, my God, he looks great.’ And I really want the focus to be on the content of what we’re trying to put across.”
Wyle played Dr. John Carter on ER, starring in 254 episodes during the show’s 15-season run. The medical drama, which ran from 1994 to 2009 on NBC, also included George Clooney, Julianna Margulies, Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle and Sherry Stringfield.
Since the show wrapped, Wyle revealed that the cast of ER still sees each other. “We get together all the time,” he exclusively told Us Weekly in 2019. “Thankfully, nobody’s filming it.”
