Noah Wyle is in the final stages of negotiations to extend his"ER" contract through the show's 11th year-a deal that adds a year to his commitment on the NBC show and also gives hima 'few'episodes of next season.
Three? Five? "Some where in there," answers TV's current MVD (most valuable doctor) from Hawii location of the series , where they've been filming the stunning Congo-set storyline that will have his Dr. Carter reunite with Goran Visnjic's Dr. Kovac on tonights(5/15) season finale. Noah's looking fowardto a little more time with wife Tracy and their 5-month-old, Owen. "I want to watch my son learn to crawl and walk," notes the actor. He has had the family with him in Hawaii because "I'm not about to leave them for 24 hourse, let alone the three weeks we're shooting here."
The "ER" team is shooting two episodes ahead for next season, which will continue the doctors' oredeal as they try to treat refugees of a devastating civil wa. (Noah , who is deeply involved with the Doctors of the World Organization in real life, has been wanting to do an "ER" storyline dealing with refugee medical aid for years.)
In Hawaii, "You don't have to play heat. You don't have to play bugs. We've been shooting extremely long hours-but it all lends to the authenticity of what we're doing. It's actually liberating. Creatively, I'm more satisfied than I've been in years. I'm really gratified," Noah adds, "that after 200 episodes everyone is still interested in taking chances and making the shows better and better. I think the last two seasons have had some of our strongest episodes."
MEANWHILE: There's also Wyle news on the big-screen side. In July, he'll head to San Francisco for five weeks to make a feature film-an updated remake of "The Bostonians" called the Californians." He and Illeana Douglas will play twins at odds; he a developer trying to build mansions along the Califormia coastline, she an environmentalist.
*according to USATODAY Noah Wyle will miss the first nine episodes of Season 10, i'm okay with that because it will give us a chance to see the other characters without a carter storyline ontop.
*still now word on if noah will stay for season 11- theres a 99% chance he'll stay!.
Charity
Golf Classic
Sally Field and Don Cheadle were both nominated for outstanding guest actor/actress awards, ER should of won for best special/visual effects , cause paul mccranes arm was great.....The article below is from this months EMMY magazine(obviusly none of the members read it)
Anatomy of a Hit
Cancer, child abuse, broken hearts- the nurses and docs of ER have had their charts full for nine seasons.
By Libby Slate
It's September 1994 premiere was more explosion than series debut. Gurnerys and tempers flying- for two hours on Sunday and one hour the following Thursday-ER revealed an intesity not seen before in a weekly drama.
With rapid fire action(wasn't that where we first learned stat?) and emotional storylines, ER captured, visually and viscerally, the adrenaline rush of real-life emergency rooms. Cancer, child abuse, mass food poisioning, drunk-driving victims-the nurses and docs of Chicago's County General had a lot on their hands that first week-not to mention one of their own showing up drunk( George Clooney's Dr. Doug Ross) and another one attempting suicide( Julianna Marguiles' nurse Carol Hathaway).
The NBC show quickly made stars of Clooney, Marguiles, Anthony Edwards, Eriq LaSalle, Sherry Stringfield and Noah Wyle, the latter the only original headliner to last the entire run. While the cast has changed, the only caliber of the acting, writing directing has remained constant and compelling. In recent seasons fans have had plenty of resons to TiVo-the death of Dr. Mark Greene(Edwards) from brain cancer and struggles of nurse Abby Lockheart(Tierney) with her bipolar mother(Emmy winner Sally Field) and brother (Tomas Everett Scott).
ER has set the dramatic series record for Emmy Award nominations-104 thus far-and has won eighteen times including a nod as outstanding drama series in 1996. It was TV's top-rated drama series for eight years and has collected mutiple People's Choice Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards for ensemble performance as well as the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award.
ER actually started twenty years ahead of its time. In 1974 author Michael Criton wrote a docu-style film about a day in an emergency room, based on his experiences as a med student, only to see it rejected repeatedly by studios and networks-'too fast-moving,' some said. In 1989 Steven Spielberg expressed an interest in the ER project, which got put on hold while he and Criton worked on Jurassic Park. Ultimatly the project took shape as a TV series, with the two as executive producers.
May 8 marked to two-hundreth episode of ER, the penultimate of its ninth season. The series has- no suprise-been renewed for fall, and, says NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker, 'There's no reason to think it won't continue past next season. ER is the most important drama by far on our schedule and the cornerstone on our entire schedule. It has redefined dramas for the past decade-everyone has been trying to live up to the standards ER has set."
The show impressed one exec berfore it even aired: Warner Bros. Television President Peter Roth, then president of Fox Television, which had its own new hospital series, David E. Kelley's Chicago Hope, scheduled opposite ER in fall 1994. "I was up in my hotel room after the upfronts of May, and I saw the first promo," he recalls. "Up until then we had been almost cocky[about Chicago Hope], but seeing that, I got terribly nervous. I thought, 'I think we're in trouble.'"(Chicago Hope lasted six seasons.)
It is this what Roth calls ER's "visual uniqeness-its energy, the handheld cameras, the urgency of its pace" that executive producer John Wells believes has had a particular impact on television. "The pace, the rhythm we established hadn't been availible before. It freed up other shows," says Wells, who went on to cocreate and executive produce one show, NBC's Third Watch, and is also an exec producer of The West Wing. " It had different narrative techniques-it was crammed full of stories and assumed to audience could keep up emotionally."
Wells cites ER's "extraordinary" cast and its raw, dramatic storylines for keeping viewers interested all these years. And, says executive producer Jack Orman, who wrote and directed the two-hundredth episode, "When Night Meets Day," there's more complicated, multilayered storytelling. "When you're a writer on this show, you have to be a choreographer," he says. "But it all goes back to the character."
The virtues for ER are not lost on Tom Shales, Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic for the Washington Post. "ER layers a kind of medical encyclopedia over its melodrama about the extended family working and learning together in the hospital;" he says. "Combine a great anthology with a great 'family' drama, and you are likely to have a great show, which has happened here-a best-of-two-worlds deal."
So how does the hsow feel, turning 200? "We were delighted to make it to twenty-two in the first season so the notion of 200 is extraordinary."