'ER' Still in Wyle's Blood

[Brett Ferino]

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Noah Wyle misses some of his old "ER" buddies.

"There's really no escaping missing some of the friends that I started out with on the show," says Wyle, the only member of the show's original core cast who's been around for all nine seasons. "When a funny anecdote from the pilot pops into my head, there's no one really to share it with anymore."

Which is not to say that he's looking for a way to leave. Wyle's contract runs through next season, and his representatives have started talking with Warner Bros. TV, which produces "ER," about going beyond that. "My interest is as strong as ever, and I'm as interested in the stories we're currently telling as I've ever been," he says.

Wyle's commitment to "ER," NBC's top-rated drama series, comes as good news to executive producer John Wells. Wyle's character, Dr. John Carter, has grown over the series' life from a callow medical student to one of the leaders of the emergency room at County General.

"Most of the early shows that I wrote had [Carter's] name in the title," Wells says. "I just was really enjoying being able to use the character as a way to look at this world. This series has always been about the growth of this med student, coming in and becoming the person who he, and we as the audience, admire."

"ER" has gone through a lot over nine seasons and approaching 200 episodes (the 200th is scheduled for Thursday, May 8). In addition to the cast turnover, the series has shifted away from the "get me 50 CCs stat" action of its early days to more character-driven stories.

"The show has naturally evolved toward the characters and the way in which we told those stories within the [fast] pace," Wells says. "Not that many different things happen medically in the ER, and once we've taken people into that world and they've seen and experienced it, they're interested in getting other things from the show."

Much has been written this season about whether "ER" has finally started to falter in the ratings, and it's true that CBS' "Without a Trace" has performed better than any competitor in recent memory. Yet "ER" is still the No. 2 drama on television (behind "CSI" ), drawing close to 20 million viewers a week.

For his part, Wells thinks something other than the Nielsens will tell him when it's time to shut down the series.

"We take a lot of our cue from the creative community rather than the ratings," he says. "Now, we still have wonderful actors who want to guest-star on the show, and directors who want to work with us. ... At some point the creative community will say to us that they're not as interested in the show anymore, and that will make it less interesting for us."

Wells estimates that about 3,400 people have had guest roles on the show -- from Emmy winners like Sally Field to various Patient No. 3s. Wyle says he was particularly grateful to work with Alan Alda, who appeared in several episodes in 1999.

"He was a hero to me as a kid, and he still is," Wyle says. "As John and I talk every three years about whether I'm going to stick with the show, [Alda] is the model I have in my head of an actor who's had a really beautiful career but for the most part is identified with one role. That doesn't scare me when I think about it in those terms."




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