ER cast reunion: All the special moments

The hit, long-running NBC medical drama ER featured a very special reunion on Thursday that should delight fans of the series. The ER cast reunion featured multiple ER alumni, including stars George Clooney and Julianna Margulies.

Before there was Grey’s Anatomy, there was ER, a medical drama that set the precedent for the genre in many ways. This ER cast reunion united multiple key players. Apart from Doug Ross and Carol Hathaway, the reunion also inivted Noah Wyle (John Carter), Gloria Reuben (Jeanie Boulet), Laura Innes (Kerry Weaver), Ming-Na Wen (Jing-Mei Chen), CCH Pounder (Angela Hicks) and Anthony Edwards (Mark Greene).

The special also included a pre-recorded messages from Alex Kingston (Elizabeth Corday). Sadly, Paul McCrane, who played Robert Romanco, was unable to attend and had to back out at the last minute.

Highlighting several special moments from the ER cast reunion

Julianna Margulies almost left the show early. It’s possible that Carol Hathaway could have died like everyone thought in the beginning because Margulies had gone on to film a few episodes for another series, Homicide: Life on the Street. She was all set to do more because she assumed Carol had died. But then Clooney gave her a call and discouraged her from doing more Homicide, a few weeks later, she got a call confirming the executives wanted to make her a series regular, and the rest is history!

Forward-thinking storylines. One of the most groundbreaking storylines in the series was the HIV storyline in 1995 when Reuben’s character, Jeanie Boulet, was discovered to be an HIV-positive physician assistant. “I thought that was amazing to watch on a show that 40 million people might see,” said Clooney.

Reuben was proud to play the a character who handled her diagnosis with “such strength, grace and dignity.”

Recognizable faces. The cast talked about how surprised they were to recognize so many familiar faces on the show. If you rewatch ER now, you’ll likely be equally shocked by how many guest stars have gone on to become big stars. According to Wyle, he thinnks that had a lot to do with Clooney’s involvment because he really made an effort to treat everyone kindly and “erase the lines between foreground and background, and cast and crew. We’re all going to take our work seriously, but we’re not going to take ourselves seriously.”

ER cast reunion: Could there ever be a revival or spin-off?

Considering our culture’s obsession with revisiting old hits, it’s not surprising the question came up of whether or not the ER cast would ever return to reprise their old roles. If fans were hoping for another iteration of ER, don’t expect the original cast to return. Clooney said that it would be hard for them to reclaim the former glory. “It’s hard to catch ligning again.”

Margulies echoed her co-star’s sentiments, adding that it would “cheapen” the experience for her if they were to try to and “capture lightning in a bottle twice.”

Wyle compared the experience to how other shows franchised like CSI and Law & Order, he was always thankful that John Wells decided against doing that for ER.

While we might not get a revival, it would be nice to get some kind of special edition Blu-ray release of the show!

You can revisit the entire series of ER right now on Hulu.