George Clooney On Whether He'd Do an ER Reboot: 'It's Hard to Catch Lightning Again'

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[size=48]George Clooney On Whether He'd Do an ER Reboot: 'It's Hard to Catch Lightning Again'
"The hardest part is that when you look at the show and consistently over so many years — it would be hard to say that you could do it at the level that we did it," the actor said at the idea of a potential ER reboot
By Ashley Boucher
April 23, 2021 12:11 AM[/size]


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George Clooney on ER
 
| CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
George Clooney is weighing on whether he'd join a reboot of ER, on which he starred as Doug Ross for 15 seasons.
Clooney, 59, opened up about the possibility of a reboot during a live virtual reunion of the ER cast on Stars in the House to support costar Gloria Reuben's organization, Waterkeeper Alliance. The nonprofit aims to ensure that communities globally have clean water.
The star said during the special Earth Day episode — which streamed exclusively on PEOPLE's social platforms — that he's not sure whether the magic of the original series, which ran from 1994 to 2009, would be able to be recaptured.
"I don't know. The hardest part is that when you look at the show and consistently over so many years — it would be hard to say that you could do it at the level that we did it," he said of a potential reboot. "I'm not sure that that's available."

The Ocean's Eleven star shared that he's been rewatching the show recently with his wife, Amal Clooney, calling the series "such great television."

RELATED: George Clooney 'Laid Out the ABCs of Professionalism' on ER Set, Says Costar Noah Wyle
"This is better than anything I see in film or anywhere. This is stunning. It's stunning work," he said of the season 1 episode "Love's Labor Lost."
"I felt that way about a lot of episodes I watched," Clooney added. "I'm not sure [about a reboot]… it's hard to catch lightning again."
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"You can't capture lightning in a bottle twice," Julianna Margulies, who played Carol Hathaway, agreed. "I think you have to leave what was so beautiful and move on, because it just feels cheap… It would cheapen it for me."

While the cast seemed to generally agree that a reboot wouldn't be the same as the first go-around, Ming-Na Wen, who played Jing-Mei Chen, said she'd enjoy a reboot to reconnect with the rest of the cast if nothing else.

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CREDIT: STARS IN THE HOUSE

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RELATED: Julianna Margulies Admits She and George Clooney Had a 'Crush on Each Other' During ER
"I would love to reboot only to be able to hang out with this group of people, the talent," Wen, 57, said. "As you get older, the appreciation level and the awareness is so much greater. Just such great fortune. I would love to have been, even now…  just even this, surrounded by these people."
That was a sentiment that Clooney could get behind — the actor said he was "excited" when asked to join the reunion call.
"I'm excited to see this gang," he said, going on to address his former cast mates. "These are people that I really love, you know, and that — we grew up together, really grew up together, in many ways, and it's fun to see you guys."[/size]

For a really brilliant writer, this would be an incredible challenge: the re-boot would have to follow the characters where they would be now, all these years later, so the format would have to be completely different as none of them would be working together on the ER anymore.  Or even in the same city. Or even in medicine!

The writer would have to have a lot to say on how medicine has changed since then, as well as how practitioners have evolved in their attitudes to their job.

I think that the last ER season was quite a challenge, and I really liked the way they included Doug Ross and myself , although they didn't know they actually saved Carter's life.
Or in the very last episode, when Mark's daughter Rachel appears and in the end is called 'Dr. Green'.

I actually can't imagine how they could do a reboot, maybe a sort of a 'class reunion' cor a special ocasion, but that's what they actually did last night - apart from the fact that they talked about their own lifes and profession instead of medical careers and their fictional lifes.
No, I don't have enough fantasy to imagine a script which could fulfill all our expectations...

I think a reboot would be a mistake. I think George and Juliana think so too from their comments in the story.  The show captured a time and place and had an awesome dynamic about it.  It was on for so many years so why go there again.  I just don’t know why you would want to mess with what was a really successful show.

I think that with all that's been going on the last few years - what with drumpf and the pandemic and all the changes we've had to our lives - a lot of people are looking back to before all this mess happened. There's a sense of security in the familiar, and I think that accounts for wanting reboots of favorite shows from the past and for the proliferation of tv channels broadcasting shows from the past. Maybe for a little while people can feel like none of this stuff ever happened.