Here is the transcript from the round-table interview with four ER cast members courtesy of Parade.com.  See what George Clooney, Linda Cardellini, Anthony Edwards and John Stamos had to say about ER.  Check out the ER QUIZ for Fans only now! 

GEORGE CLOONEY 

Q: DID YOU SENSE FROM THE START THAT E.R. WOULD BE A BIG HIT? 

GC: I learned that  never worry about those things because I’m a product of what everyone said was never gonna work.  We did a test screening of “ER”.  And “ER”, the first couple of seasons -- It was a terrific show, but the first couple seasons it was really an astonishing show because there was no plot.  It was just medical dialogue.  And there were 50 cases flying through.  And nobody understood any of that.

 And I was at the test screening -- the first screening.  - just the studio heads.  And they screened it for the big decision makers and I swear its the absolute truth.  They stood up at the end of the screening.  They were like, “What the hell did you do with our three million dollars?”  And they were furious.  And Les Moonves was going, “Did you like it?”  And they were like, “It doesn’t matter whether we like it.  America is never gonna get it,” you know, because obviously if you’re a network executive, you’re smarter than everyone else, you know? 

And then we tested it.  They sort of didn’t even trust the test.  They pulled in a Jay Leno audience.  Tested it again.  It tested well.  And we averaged 40 million people a week on that show that didn’t understand a word we were saying.  Really.  They would go, “I have no idea what it is, but I really am into it.”  And they felt smarter by doing it.  And it actually did effect some change.  And people had different opinions about walking into an emergency room. 

JOHN STAMOS 

Q: WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT DOCTORS FROM E.R.? 

We had doctors on set every day.  And doctors on the writing team.  And one thing I learned is that one doctor’s opinion is just one person’s opinion.  They’re an expert in human heath, but nobody knows all of the answers.  So second and third opinions are a great idea.  And you might get a different answer from each doctor you ask, concerning any kind of symptoms or ailments.  I also learned that it’s nice to have friends, who are doctors.  They can help you in your time of need.  And you can ask them a lot of questions.  And they’ve helped me and my family in many ways, in giving us advice. 

Q: SO E.R. WAS KIND OF YOUR SCIENCE AND MEDICAL CLASS? 

It’s always wonderful to have an acting job, but this job you actually learn things that are very practical.  And you learn things about your own human body.  And you learn things about medicine.  And you’re constantly learning something that you can use in your everyday life, in terms of knowing more about your physical being. 

Q: AND ALL OF THE MEDICAL TERMS - WAS THAT TOUGH? 

So it’s part of the gig.  It gets a little easier, but I really have to work on it.   And you can't just learn it that day or the night before.

Because it has to sound like it’s part of your language If that’s not hard enough you had to  say that complicated language and do a lot of very precise things. Do this, hand this, do this, press this, take the needle here, do this, kiss the girl like that, and then you’re done. 

Q: WHEN YOU JOINED THE SHOW AS A “NEWBIE”? 

I’m always trying to put myself in a situation where I’m going to learn.

Like this show, I’m coming onto this established show with these brilliant actors and this great writing.  It was scary.  It was uncomfortable.  And I think I try to put myself in uncomfortable situations.  And sometimes it’s worked. 

Q: YOU HAD EXPERIENCE BEFORE ACTING IN A HOSPITAL SETTING. 

I started on “General Hospital” when I was 18.I’m always surprised that people remember.  Oh, it’s flattering.  Yeah, “Hey, Blackie, Blackie.” 

Q: AND ALL OF THESE YEARS YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING ON THE ROAD WITH THE BEACH BOYS? 

I started in ’85, so they were all around, except for Dennis had died.

But I played with Brian and Carl.  I’ve been in every incarnation of the Beach Boys.  I played with all the different bands.   I love the music.

And I don’t care which member is playing it.  It’s still that music.

It’s still those songs that bypass the brain - I always say - and go right to the heart.  So I play wherever I can.  Mike Love is the touring Beach Boy now.  And that seems to be where I fit in the best.  It’s kind of the more commercial side of things.  But I’ve played with Brian.  I’ve played on on Al Jardine’s album right now.  So it’s a dream come -- My all time favorite band and favorite music in the world-- I’ve gotten to play with them since I’m in my early 20’s.  It’s great.

I(t’s one of those shows, where you know every song.  And I look out in the audience.  I see three year olds and 90 year olds.  It’s a beautiful celebration of that music that just won't seem to go away.  Thank God. 

LINDA CARDELLINI 

Q: YOU AS A NEWBIE ON ER? 

LC: when I first joined the show I was terrified.  Like is this going to be a downer everyday.  Am I going to come to, you know come work and, and leave work, you know, filled with all the tragedy that I said that I pretended to deal with at work.  But it’s actually a very silly place to work.  And, which was the greatest part about it.  And the people that we worked with, I mean the other actors are so fantastic We have a lot of fun.  Which is sometimes hard to say because we’re dealing with some of the most, you know, terrible things that actually, truly exist.  But , you know, we have the, we have the gift of it being, make believe 

Q: MOVING IN THE OPERATING ROOM AND HANDLING THE JARGON? 

Harder for me, more so than the vocabulary, even though that is difficult and sometimes you get stuck on a word and you can't get it all day long, is the choreography, in terms of the procedures that we’re pretending to do and how many times we have to do them in a day of shooting over and over and over again and making them look chaotic but realistic and handing people a scalpel in the correct way.  And they’re all little techniques that you have to learn.  And learning that somebody’s blood pressure is 105 over 86, what that means.  And [SATS] are dropping and what the numbers mean.  Numbers are all relative to the situation.  And the numbers all mean different things.  And not only are they hard to remember because they’re out of sequence with any kind of conversation that you’ve ever had before. And most of all it was fast. Yeah, it’s very fast.  It’s very fast.  We learned to move fast on the show. 

ANTHONY EDWARDS 

Q: DID YOU KNOW IT WAS SPECIAL FROM THE START? 

AE: it always comes down to the writing and the timing . I think,  we knew it was special because there was such general excitement both within the medical community working on the show and uh, and the filmmakers and the writers too, that, they were actually telling a new story but being very honest to it.  And I think in a simple way the fact is that, it was a really good environment to tell stories from because anybody can come through the doors of an ER.    I think they just capitalized on that.  And always went back to  making it real and um, by being really true to the reality of situations. I think the audience was uh, drawn in even more. 

Q: DR GREENE DIED ...SO WEREN’T YOU SURE HE COULD NEVER COME BACK? 

Yeah, for six years I thought that you know what it basically what happened is I was, uh, uh, at home and , an email from uh, John Wells saying,  ‘Listen, we’re all sitting here in Hawaii and we’re trying to figure out the last season of ‘ER’ and we’ve come up with  a way of getting Greene back and we’d love to bring everybody back into the show for the audience sake.’   And  it made such perfect sense how they did do it.  But I certainly could not have pictured it before.   

Q: EVERYONE WASN’T WILLING TO RETURN BUT YOU LIKED THE IDEA? 

I could understand people’s hesitancy about  coming back because you, you know when you’re part of something that you feel like you did so well, you kind of also don’t want to screw it up. I think there’s a natural respect for the show you that you want to, you know, you want to be respectful of.  For me what really kicked in also, perfect timing in the fact that I was um about to launch a big fund-raising campaign to big the largest children’s hospital in Africa.  And that’s with the charity I work with, ‘Shoe 4 Africa.’  So when John Wells asked me I said, ‘I’m happy to.  But don’t pay me.  Let’s get, let’s get Warner Bros. to uh, to donate to the hospital.’  So, uh, in lieu of payment they gave me $125,000, gave the hospital $125,000 which, you know Steven Spielberg found about and he matched.  And John Wells kicked in $50,000.

So you know, for me it was really great because you know, there are two things that are really dear to me, which is the experience that I had for eight years which certainly changed my life.    And then this whole new uh, part of my life which, uh, has to do with running and it has to do with children’s health and it has to do with Africa.  So um, you know, it was really a, a win/win for me. 

Q: WERE YOU WORRIED ABOUT YOUR COME BACK BEING BELIEVABLE? 

You know, I had, honestly and it, it sounds kind of silly but I mean I did really have eight really great years on the show.  And so much of that is about trust.  And I, I’d had a 180 episodes of trust knowing that they were going to do interesting stories and they always did.  Uh, which is why.  So I, I really wasn’t, uh, I knew they would take care of him.  They’d take care of, cause they, you know, it’s a funny thing.

You feel as a, as an actor that you own the character.  But the truth is so do the writers.  The writers really feel a, a, an ownership of Greene.  So they want to do right for him.  Um, so there’s actually more people looking out for you than, than yourself in the end. 

It was really like going back to high school.  And in the best way.  It was like going back to your favorite class.  Having your favorite teacher and, and there was no test that day.  It was actually, you know, uh, what, everything that you liked about it.   Um, you know, none of us got any older and uh, that was um, you know, it really, it took about a half an hour.  And after about a half an hour it really felt like I’d never left.  Um, the same conversations were happening that were happening six years ago.  The same dynamics between the crew members.

The same jokes, um, the uh, you know, and they had gone to great effort to make it look like it did six year, you know when I look at the show now I see how different the ER looks than when I was on it.  And they went to great effort to have all the props, everything back to 2002.

So um, it was really, it was, it was, it was, I had a really great four days there and then, you know, followed with some time in Chicago which was great too.  So, and I got to work with Angela Bassett, so how lucky was I. 

AE: You know, it isn’t because obviously you know when you do a series and you do television like that for so many years, so much of the character is, is similar to yourself.  You know, writers pick up on things that you do that they add to the character.  So, um, you know I’m not as, I’ll never be as smart as Dr. Greene, but there’s a lot of familiarity in who is he is.  So I mean, I think that bottom line thing that I always cared the most about him, it was there which is that he really loved being a doctor.  So, that’s  not a hard thing to jump back into.  Television lives on.  It’s like, I’m reminded of it everyday.

You know, people are always, I mean, stopping here and all around the world, you know.   Because I’m, I’m Dr. from ‘Urgence.’   And uh, it, it kind of lives in other people too. 

AE: You know it’s, I used to joke about it and I think part of it’s true, though, is that, you know, people would watched Greene and think, ‘You know what my life will never be that bad.’   And as good as things

that went for him, you know, he always had problems.  You know whether it was with dating or women or relationship with his daughter or work and bosses and, uh, you know ultimately dealing with dying.   I mean he really just had so many kind of struggles that I think people all related to in away.  Uh, so I, I think people liked him that way.  And I think it’s that thing of, uh, I don’t know when you get on an airplane you hope that the pilot really loves flying, I think that’s what Greene had.  I mean he’s, he you do want to go to a hospital and have the doctor who loves being a doctor there.  And that’s, that’s what he had, I think.’ 

Q:WERE YOU EVER SQUEAMISH ABOUT BLOOD AND GUTS? 

I wasn’t except when it came to little kids.  Cause during the course of ‘ER’ I had four children.  So, I was kind of very much at work or with a newborn for eight years. So I was cool except for whenever it was, kids, pretending to be sick.and you know uh, there’s just something to me about the sound of a kid in pain that’s really hard to take  That was, I never liked that.  But um, you know, for the most part, there was this contrast always to, always to the heaviness of, of the subject that when you weren’t, between action, you know, after action and cut, it was mostly a lot of, of uh, of laughter.  So I was thankful for that. 

AE: You know it’s funny, cause, you know, I’m here in New York City and, you know, there isn’t a day that I don’t go by where some little old lady doesn’t stop me and goes like, ‘You ruined my Thursday nights when you left.’  You know, (unintelligible) grief about, you know.  So like I said, you know people have such a connection that it’s hard to get away from it.  You know it’s either they, they’re yelling, you know, if I’m at a car race, you know, they’re all yelling ‘Goose.’  And most everywhere else people are referring to me as Dr. Greene.  You know, it’s a, it’s a pleasant, uh, annoyance that goes along with success.   

Q: That’s great.  And what surprised you most about the experience of returning? 

AE: Um, not that I didn’t think that I was going to have fun. I just didn’t think I’d have as much fun as I did.  It was really a pleasure.

I mean I really, it was so fun to be able to see my old friends on the crew and, and uh, uh, and all around the show, writers and, and different directors.  People stopped by.  And to be able to not just have like 10 minutes and leave.  But actually spend all day with them.

So that was really, that was really a nice gift.  I, I thank them very much for that. 

Q: UM, MAYBE JUST ONE MEMORY OR ONE MOMENT THAT STANDS OUT? 

AE: There really is.  It happened  in New York in that we had done this pilot that we all had no idea where we were and what corridor and what hallway and what these, you know, we, we’re using all these tools that we didn’t know what they were.  And debating and doing all this stuff in this pilot.   It was crazy and exciting and, but we didn’t know really what it was.  And then we were at the, I guess they call the Up Fronts here in New York.  And we were all together, the cast, cause they were going to announce the show.  And they showed like a 20 minute clip of the show.  And to see it cut together a it was really chilling.  We really were like, ‘Oh my God, we are part of something that is so much better than we are individually.’  And it was very, very exciting.  You really felt like, ‘Oh wow.  This is something special.’ 

Q:WHY DID YOUR CHARACTER HAVE TO DIE? 

AE: Well it was kind of a good experience because, you know, what happens in television is people say they’re going to leave and then they don’t leave or they leave and then, or they all of sudden leave abruptly out of something um, and I think what happened here was, something that happened out of a contract which was basically when I had my renegotiation and I said I would do eight years.  That I said, ‘Yes, I really am going to leave after eight years.’  Since they knew that that really was my stop date they were able to tell that story over two years.  Not thinking, ‘Oh shoot, he’s going to renegotiate.  And then we’re going to have keep him alive for another. . .’  You know, so because of uh, the reality that yeah I was going to leave after eight years, um, it made for the storytelling of Dr. Greene leaving and that’s when John Wells says to me, ‘Well if you’re going to leave, you know it’s such a central character.  We really probably should kill you.’  And I was (unintelligible).  You know, um, and let’s just do it like anything on the show, just, do it, do the best way you can.  So it was kind of, it was very intentional so that that the second to last year before I left, it was to be able to explore kind of the medicine of brain cancer and. . . 

AE: the, all the, you know, all the different um, protocols and what he went through for the, and kind of the hospital part of the, of what happens in that world.  Um, and then, so then the second, the actual year that I left, they were, they’d done the medical part of it.  So then they could do more of the emotional and the family and the other storytelling so that it didn’t just have to end with Dr. Greene in a hospital bed dying of cancer because that’s where the medicine ended.  

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