TVGuide.com has been counting down to Noah Wyle's imminent departure from ER for a while now. This week, he finally says farewell in his last episode as a series regular (Thursday, 10 pm/ET on NBC). He's signed on to do eight more episodes over the next two seasons.
"I stayed exactly as long as I wanted to and wouldn't have left a second sooner," Wyle insists. "My initial hope was that the show would go on long enough to make some money — and then get canceled and free me up to pursue the feature-[film] career that I thought I was destined to embark upon. So the irony that, 11 years later, the show is [going on without me] is pretty thick.
"But, as I said at the party they threw me on the Warner Bros. lot on the night I shot my last scene, I found absolutely everything I was looking for in this show. I found some of the richest friend
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The doctor is making his final rounds.
Even though NBC recently renewed ER for three more seasons, the long-running medical drama will go on without one of County General's last original MDs, Dr. John Carter. Noah Wyle, who has played Carter since the show debuted 11 years ago, told TVGuide.com last year that he was "not going to be a series regular [this] year" so he could spend more time with his wife, Tracy, and their 2-year-old son, Owen.
He's kept mum since then. But now it seems Wyle will follow in the footsteps of George Clooney, Anthony Edwards, Julianna Margulies and Eriq LaSalle and leave the show for good following the May 19 season finale. He is, however, expected to make return appearances four times a year for the next two seasons."I know this was a hard decision for him to make. He really
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Best known for playing vixens in TV treats like Twin Peaks and Central Park West, Madchen Amick is really going against type on ER these days.She's currently halfway through a 10-episode stint as Noah Wyle's newest love interest, social worker Wendell Meade. "[That name] is clearly why she went into psychiatry," the actress jokes, adding that Wendell's lack of steamy hookup scenes is unusual for her. "I've been wondering, 'Damn, how long is this going to take?' [My CPW character] would've already conquered him and moved on by now. I've kept the handcuffs and the candle wax in my back pocket for later."
Of course, there's a good reason Carter hasn't been swinging from the chandeliers with his new GF. "They've been intimate, but you haven't been seeing it," Amick says. "[The producers] are playing it very tastefully. Carter's coming off a very intense relationship with Thandie
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Talk about a letdown. Sissy Spacek sounded so excited about this Thursday's ER, where she was slated to play the long-lost birth mother of Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes). At the last minute, she dropped out due to a "scheduling conflict" and Titanic's Frances Fisher was tapped to replace her. What exactly was Spacek's conflict?
"You know what? I don't feel comfortable talking about it," Innes politely tells TV Guide Online. "I know that it's a family matter with Sissy, and she's very disappointed not to be able to do the show. It's kind of her business. It had nothing to do with the show, it was more a family conflict that she had."
Fair enough. As for ER selecting Fisher to pinch-hit as Weaver's mommy, Innes says, "Frances was always among the people on the list. We felt like she's very right for the role. She's a wonderfu
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Ray Liotta's real-time tour de force as a dying alcoholic defibrillated ER's ailing ratings in November. So it's no shock that the NBC medical drama has lined up more big-name guest stars for February sweeps.
First up, on Feb. 10 is Sissy Spacek, who'll play the long-lost birth mother of Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes). How did ER land the Oscar-winning actress? "I'm a huge fan of [executive producer] John Wells," Spacek says. "We worked together on [the 2004 indie film] A Home at the End of the World, and since then, he's been sending me ER scripts. This one just spoke to me."
"The show has a pretty solid reputation for actors and if it didn't have that, we would've never had a snowball's chance in hell of getting her," executive producer Dee Johnson says frankly. "As far as I know, [Spacek appears in only] one episode, but it's not like she drives off a cliff at the end, so nothing's impossible."
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Say good-bye to ER's Dr. Jing-Mei Chen. Again. In tonight's episode (10 pm/ET, NBC), Dr. Chen (aka "Deb") quits her emergency-room job and leaves in a huff. This is the third time Ming-Na's character has stormed off the show! "Once again, she's a quitter," the 41-year-old actress laughs to TV Guide Online. "She's just a spoiled brat who can't handle the pressure."
Ever since Chen's parents had that off-screen car wreck — her mother was killed — the lady doc's been burdened with caring for her widowed father, who's "mentally given up on living," Ming-Na says. After yet another personal conflict at work, she's outta there. The real reason she's exiting ER, however, is lack of a meaty story line.
"I think it was a mutual decision," Ming-Na says. "The producers definitely talked about running out of stuff to do with the character. I felt like it's been that way for the past year; I wondered if there's anything left. We bo
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Forget cardiac distress. ER fans are just plain heartbroken by Noah Wyle's decision to quit playing Dr. John Carter at the end of this season. But is his exit really definite? Here, TV Guide Online's Daniel R. Coleridge presses the slightly coy TV doctor for some answers, stat! Wyle also dishes his moonlighting gig as an unlikely action hero in TNT's The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (Sunday, 8 pm/ET).
TV Guide Online: Why did you decide to leave ER? We're gonna miss you.
Noah Wyle: Thank you. It wasn't an easy decision to come to, that's for sure. I'm still doing a bit of soul-searching about it. Really, two years ago, when my son was born, I started thinking, "I don't want to spend 70 hours a week on a soundstage anymore. I don't want to be out of commission nine months a year." It really had nothing to do specifically with
ER. It had to do with other aspects of my life finally demanding their equal time.
TVGO: So
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Better have your box of Kleenex handy if you watch tonight's episode of ER (10 pm/ET on NBC). Goodfellas star Ray Liotta stops in as boozy no-goodnik Charlie Metcalf, who arrives at County General with a complaint of intestinal woe. He thinks it's merely a stomachache, but in actuality, he's drunk himself into a potentially fatal case of liver failure. Critics who've prescreened the episode already have started up Emmy buzz.
"He did something bad in his life," Liotta hints about Charlie. "He ended up in jail and got mixed up in drugs and alcohol, but at his core, he's a good guy. He's just made a lot of mistakes. As he's lying on his deathbed, he's trying to reconcile and reconnect with his son that he lost contact with."
The 48-year-old actor — who admits he'd never seen an ER episode before they sent him the script — took this TV gig purely for the challenge. "Acting is pretend," he says. "I like doing things where [the ch
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The staff changes keep coming at ER's County General. In fact, this fall, the NBC hospital drama will have more bodies checking in and out than a real emergency room!
Let's recap: Greene succumbed to a brain tumor two years ago, and Romano got crushed by a helicopter last season. This fall, Greene's widow, Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston), will also be gone after a few episodes. "She'll leave in a smart, real way," says executive producer Dee Johnson, who adds that ER simply couldn't think of what else to do with the beleaguered Corday. Meanwhile, hunky Goran Visnjic — who plays love doctor Luka Kovac — has been making noises about leaving the series for a film career. So where does all this leave us?
For starters, expect big story lines for twentysomething actresses Parminder Nagra (Neela) and Linda Cardellini (Nurse Sam Taggert), who'll return to the hospital after quickie exits at the end of last seas
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Checking out of ER was no great loss for Sharif Atkins. During his three seasons as boring Dr. Michael Gallant, he never really became one of the hospital drama's breakout characters. We're talkin' zzzz....
When last seen, Gallant — who paid for med school as an Army reservist — was shipped off to active duty in Iraq. Just before leaving, Gallant nobly took the fall for Parminder Nagra's Dr. Neela Rasgotra, whose professional screwup resulted in a patient's death. So it seems pretty darn safe to say Gallant's gone for good, which is just fine by his portrayer, who's trading in cold Chicago winters for the sunny shores of Hawaii! NBC's newest cop show kicks off Sept. 1 and co-stars Atkins as Honolulu police detective John Declan.
"There's worlds of difference [between the characters]," Atkins says. "John Declan is one of those guys who's born to do what he does. He never thinks he's not gonna catch the bad guy.
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