Leslie Moonves on the development of "ER" - EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG

With ER, the funny story is, we saw the pilot and I loved it. I loved the script, I loved the pilot. That doesn't always happen, you know. The pilot was spectacular, and I think I had one note which John Wells didn't listen to. It was about the location of the doctor's apartment, and I said it looks like he lives in a lower-class neighborhood in Chicago because they had the L in the background. He said, 'You don't know Chicago very well. There are very nice apartments that are right under the L.' I said, 'All right.' So anyway, he left it the way it was, you know, which and that literally was the only note. Our test results were huge right off the bat. NBC, the executives didn't love it as much as we did. They didn't love the pilot as much as we did. They weren't against it; they claimed our research was out of whack. So they did a test on their own, and their research didn't match up with ours. So we said, 'All right, I'll tell you what. You come over to where we tested. You bring your executives, we'll retest it. We're that sure of how good it was.' And they did that. The result was exactly the same as our first test, which was huge, you know. Then it was about casting, then it was about casting. So there were a number of things that I remember about the casting process. One, obviously, George Clooney is someone who I had kept under contract, like four one-year contracts, and he kept doing pilots and TV shows for us. He did an arc on Sisters, and George was a good friend, and we became very close. And I just believe this guy was a star, you know. He was great-looking, he was unbelievably charming, had a great sense of humor, and you know, up until ER, he'd been on like eight failed series. But I said, 'This guy's got it,' you know. Once again, it's where my acting abilities came in. I said, 'This guy's got it. There's something about him that's so appealing.' Anyway, George stayed on Warner's all that time. There were two scripts that I sent over to George. One was ER, and the other was this series about two lawyers in San Francisco. And by the way, it was a much bigger part. I said, 'George, read these two.' One had been already picked up, which is ER, but he didn't know it. The other, if George wanted to do it, NBC would do it. That was sort of the deal. So he read the two, and he said, 'I want to do the doctor show.' I said, 'Really? It's like a quarter of the size because if you remember, they were really six or seven equal parts. The other one was like all George.' You know, he said, 'No, this script is fabulous. I want to do Dr. Ross. I want to do that.' John Wells wasn't that familiar with George Clooney; he didn't really know who he was. George didn't have to read for him, but he had to go meet him. So it wasn't like an automatic, 'Okay, George Clooney gets the role.' Anyway, they met, they had they hit it off right away, and the rest is history, you know. George was always great, always the most cooperative, never renegotiated his deal, played out his deal because he knew he was to become a movie star, you know. He played that out. The other part that was—I still remember Noah Wyle's reading, you know, as the insecure young intern. There were like four or five guys, and he came in, he just wowed us. He was the guy. And Eric La Salle was also another interesting story. He was doing another pilot for us. We were having trouble casting that role. We went over to NBC with an actor who was a decent actor, and I remember—I won't mention his name, I do remember what it was, you know. And we had the whole thing cast, and Don and I were—but you know, everybody was saying, 'Oh yeah, he's fine, he's fine.' Don Ohlmeyer and I looked at each other in the room, and to Don's credit, he said, 'Wait a minute, you know, I'm not sure,' and I could tell Les isn't sure this is the guy. So I said, 'You're right, I'm not sure this is the guy. We have a guy shooting another show for us. He's shooting a pilot or is a series at the time that's up in Oregon named Eric La Salle, but he won't be available for like two weeks or whatever.' Anyway, we juggled the schedule. To Don's credit, you know, it was like—I think it was like $20,000 more. We split the cost of the delay for that role and waited for Eric La Salle, you know, which made a huge difference. You know, the only other thing about casting is that Julianna Margulies was a guest star at the end of the pilot. She was supposed to have committed suicide. Now you talk about testing, we changed the ending slightly so she goes into the ICU but doesn't die, you know. She had the relationship with Dr. Ross, so she came back just because she was so good in the pilot. Wow, I didn't remember that. Yeah, yeah, it was an interesting story. So, you know, it was a great group for.