George Clooney has reunited with the cast of ER for an ‘Earth Day’ special – you can watch it below.
Cast members of the show reunited for a lengthy Zoom conversation in which they shared memories of working on the long-running medical show.
ER was first shown in 1994 and portrayed the lives of medical staff at Chicago’s County General Hospital and was praised for its ground-breaking story-lines. The hit show ended in 2009 after 15 seasons.
Clooney was reunited with co-stars including Noah Wyle, Julianna Margulies, Gloria Reuben and Anthony Edwards.
You can see the full reunion here:
Speaking about the potential for a revival of the show during the re-union event, Clooney said: “When you look at the show, it’d be hard to say that we could do it [again] at the level that we did it.”
“Because boy, I’ve actually been watching it a bit because my wife’s been watching it, which is very odd, and I have to say, it’s such great television.”
Margulies agreed with Clooney, adding: “You can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice. I think you have to leave what was so beautiful and move on, because it just feels cheap… It would cheapen it for me.”
Wyle also agreed praising showrunner John Wells against franchising ER.
“CSI and Law & Order…all those shows figured out how they could brand themselves and replicate the model in a different city and get a different show out of it, and I always thought it was classy that we never tried to do that,” said Wyle.
The cast also spoke about the show’s ground-breaking HIV story-line which drew acclaim.
Reuben, who played HIV-positive physician-assistant Jeanie Boulet in the show said: “It was literally at that cusp, as medicine was beginning to give people their lives back. I know this word is used a lot, but it truly was groundbreaking.
“We broke barriers — who gets HIV, how they get it… Jeanie Boulet was a married, professional, straight woman. It was like, ‘That doesn’t happen.’” Reuben went on to say she was proud to play a character who handled her diagnosis with “strength, grace and dignity.” She also praised the way the series “wasn’t going to let her die from it, because HIV didn’t have to mean death… I didn’t want [that] to be the message.”
Clooney added: “People were afraid to touch one another, and they were scared… It was making people a pariah in some way, and you were playing a character that was saying, ‘I’m going to continue to live my life with this. I was a victim of this in some ways,’ and I thought that was amazing to watch on a show that 40 million people might see.”
The special was organised to help raise awareness for Waterkeeper Alliance, an organisation that helps to ensure communities around the world have access to fresh water.
Reuben, who is also President of the Waterkeeper Alliance charity, said of the reunion beforehand: “I am absolutely thrilled to be reuniting with my ER family for a cause that is so close to my heart.
“I’ve been involved with Waterkeeper Alliance for 15 years, representing over 350 community-based Waterkeepers around the globe, and the work that they do is beyond comparison. We must continue to fight for clean water not just on Earth Day, but all year round,” Reuben added.
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