Noah Wyle Turns TV Dad
It's Season 10 of ER, so maybe it's about time Dr. Carter grew up and got in the family way. But how did his impending fatherhood come about? Seems like he just got over Nurse Abby. Now, he's back from Africa with his lover, Kem (Thandie Newton), who's expecting his child! Turns out, this stork storyline sprouted from Noah Wyle's desire for some time off.
"My wife and I had a son last November," ER's leading man reminded reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour in Hollywood. "We brought him home from the hospital on [a] Monday, and I was back at work on Tuesday. It was a pretty grueling schedule, and I just felt that after nine-and-a-half years, I wanted to spend the fall not on a sound stage, but watching my son learn how to crawl and walk. And just be around to help my wife enjoy that time."
The solution to Wyle's problem? "It honestly couldn't have happened if we wouldn't have come up with a really excellent storyline that [made it] plausible for the character to disappear for awhile — and come back in a dramatic fashion."
Hence, exec producer John Wells introduced the Doctors Without Borders plot. "That particular organization is one that's very close to my heart," Wyle shared. "Initially, they gave that storyline to Goran Visnjic [who plays Dr. Luka Kovac]. It was sort of peppered over the last couple of seasons that his character was going off for varying lengths of time. So when John [Wells] and I had the conversation about [me] skipping a few shows, I think he had already been thinking of a way of bringing my character overseas with Goran, to sort of bring our characters full circle.
"Since we started off with such antagonism towards each other," Wyle added, "being on opposite sides of the Abby love triangle, it [is] really excellent to have a situation take place where we went through something harrowing enough so that we'd come out on the other side as friends. So it just dovetailed together beautifully."
