Noah Wyle Recalls the Moment the Cast of ER Knew the Show Would Be a Hit — and How He Eluded George Clooney's Pranks

It is hard to imagine a world in which Emergency it doesn’t exist, but it seems that public perception of the show wasn’t very high before it premiered in 1994.

While on Still Here Hollywood podcast on June 24, Noah Wyle, who played John Carter on the hit NBC drama, revealed some of his fondest memories from the show’s early days — including the moment he felt opinions about the show had finally changed for the better.

“You know, I remember my audition very well. I remember the finale very well. I remember one of my favorite memories was when we were shooting the pilot, and it was very speculative about whether it was going to be flat or successful,” he told host Steve Kmetko.

The cast of the series ‘HIT’ in the second season of 1995.

Jeff Katz/NBCU Photo Bank

“Chicago Hope debuted at the same time on CBS and had a very established cast… And our reputation was like that [ER] it was dark [that] it was hard to follow and it was very technical,” Wyle, 53, explained.

However, when the cast attended a preview screening of the pilot episode, they all realized they had a hit.

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“They had George [Clooney]Sherry [Stringfield]Tony [Anthony Edwards]Erik [La Salle]and I — Julianna [Margulies] she hadn’t been cast as a main character yet because she originally died in the pilot — and we’re in the wings of Avery Fisher Hall,” he recalled. “And then [they] just started showing these clips from the pilot. Just boom.”

“And then it stopped and there was silence. And then the place went crazy, like clapping, cheering, stomping, we all got a rush. And I just remember Tony making us all say, ‘Let’s go.’ ”

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George Clooney and Noah Wyle on “ER” in 1997. Sven Arnstein/NBCU

Emergency, of course, it turned out to be “astronomical from the moment we hit the airwaves,” confirmed Wyle. Premiered in 1994, the series ran for 15 seasons until its finale in 2009.

And while it served as a springboard to launch the careers of many cast members, it also turned out to be the foundation on which George Clooney honed his ability to prank his co-stars and friends.

Wyle, however, adopted a strategy to avoid ending up on the receiving end of a scam.

“I kind of set him up for observation early on and convinced myself that I was more of an accomplice than a victim,” Falling Skies joked the actor. “And it’s best if you don’t leave the table first. Whoever leaves the table first, George will inevitably go, you know, ‘What should we do?’ ”

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Although he was the ultimate prankster, Clooney is also credited with being the person who made sure everyone got along. During the virtual gathering at Stars in the house back in 2020, Wyle revealed that Ocean’s Eleven the actor was a consummate professional while on the show.

The cast of the series “HIT” during the first season of the series in 1994.

NBCU Photo Bank

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“George, very early on, remember: you invited us all to your trailer and you said, ‘I’ve had the advantage of being in seven series that weren’t connected. Here’s what we’re going to do differently. We’re all going to be good to everybody and we’re going to delete the line between foreground and background, cast and crew, and we’ll all take our jobs seriously but not take ourselves seriously ‘We’ll do our homework and not waste rehearsals learning our lines,’ Wyle recalled.

“You kind of laid out, you know, the alphabet of professionalism and that just became the standard that we worked to,” he continued. “It should be standard operating procedure, but in a way, we took our own advice and were tougher on each other as colleagues than anyone above us will ever be. And we were fair to each other.”

The early camaraderie carried over on and off screen as Clooney admitted he was “still close” with his former cast members while on the film The Drew Barrymore Show 2022, before calling his time on the show his “life’s work.”

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