TV Shows
How This Beloved ‘ER’ Character Was Saved From Certain Death
Nurse Carol Hathaway was meant to die in the ‘ER’ pilot, but audience reactions to George Clooney saved the character, turning a one-episode role into six seasons.
It’s hard to imagine NBC’s hit medical drama ER without Nurse Carol Hathaway leading the charge through the show’s first six seasons on the air. After all, she was at the forefront of multiple plot lines, including a popular love story that helped catapult the show to the top of the ratings through much of its legendary 15-year run. However, the character was never supposed to last past the pilot episode.
George Clooney and Fans Saved Carol Hathaway
As fans know, the ER pilot that aired on September 19, 1994, featured Carol being rushed into the Cook County General emergency room after overdosing on pills. George Clooney‘s character, Dr. Doug Ross, had once been involved in a romance with Carol and looked gutted as it seemed like she was not going to make it. And, in fact, she did not make it, but the scene where she was declared dead was deceptively vague enough that she never really “died” by episode two.
During an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show in 2024, Julianna Margulies explained how Carol Hathaway ended up alive and well enough to go on and live happily ever after with Doug Ross after giving birth to his twin daughters. Test audiences saw the pilot scenes through Doug’s eyes, which changed everything.
“The way the director shot it, he did it through George Clooney’s eyes, because they had been an old flame … so suddenly her death seemed really important to the audience watching for him that she not die,” Margulies said. “So I guess they do test audiences, and when the character died, the whole audience went, ‘Nooo!’ Because they loved George Clooney so much. Who doesn’t?”
Thankfully, the showrunners were able to change course and bring Carol back as a regular character. When Dr. Susan Lewis declared that Carol was brain-dead, nobody could actually see or hear her say the words, so Carol’s resurrection wasn’t as hard as it could have been.
“Sherry Stringfield, who was one of the doctors in the operating … when I get brought in on the gurney, she for some reason [put] her clipboard to her mouth when she said, ‘She’s brain-dead.’ So you don’t see it!” Margulies explained. “They just looped different lines in saying ‘she’s gonna be okay’ or whatever, and they brought me back to life.”
That’s how a one-episode role turned into a six-year role. Clooney left ER in 1999 and Margulies left in 2000, but Clooney put in an appearance in Margulies’ exit episodes and both actors returned for the series finale nine years later, per IMDb.
