George Clooney Says He’s ‘Still Close’ with His ‘ER’ Costars: ‘That Was a Job of a Lifetime’

Clooney starred as Dr. Doug Ross on the first five seasons of ER, which followed the lives of the medical staff who worked at County General Hospital in Chicago

George Clooney knows the secret behind ER’s long-lasting success: friendship.

More than a decade after the show ended its 15-season run, Clooney, 61, revealed in a teaser for The Drew Barrymore Show’s Friday episode that the cast is still close today.

“I guess it was the friendship I have with all of them and that I continue to have,” he told host Drew Barrymore.

“I had [Anthony] Tony Edwards at the house in Italy three weeks ago — he and Mare came,” Clooney said, adding that he is also still “really close” with Julianna Margulies and Noah Wyle.

“They’re really good friends,” he continued. “And so I feel that [show] was a job of a lifetime. And it changed my career.”

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ER aired from 1994 to 2009. Created by Michael Crichton, the Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning drama followed the lives of the medical staff who worked at County General Hospital in Chicago. Clooney starred as Dr. Doug Ross on the first five seasons of the show.

In 2019, ER’s executive producer, John Wells, suggested that the possibility of the series scoring a reboot wasn’t completely out the window.

“We made an awful lot of ERs, 331 episodes,” he told Deadline. “That’s a lot of hours, so I can’t imagine that we would, but if somebody came in with a really interesting idea about how to do it, we might.”

Though a reboot has not yet been confirmed, the cast came together for a virtual reunion in 2021 to support costar Gloria Reuben’s organization, Waterkeeper Alliance, which aims to ensure that communities globally have clean water.

During the reunion, Clooney expressed how he was excited to connect with the cast again.

“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,” he said.

Wyle also revealed during the special how Clooney helped to set the tone for the on-set environment.

“George, very early on, remember: you called us all to your trailer and you said, ‘I’ve had the benefit of being on seven series that haven’t bond. Here’s what we’re going to do differently. We’re all going to be nice to everybody and we’re going to erase the line between foreground and background and cast and crew, and we’re all going to take our work seriously, but we’re not going to take ourselves seriously. We’re going to do our homework and we’re not going to waste rehearsal learning our lines,'” recalled Wyle, who played John Carter.

“You kind of laid out, you know, the ABCs of professionalism and that just became the standard that we operated under,” he continued. “It should be standard operating procedure, but in a way, it was something that we kept our own counsel and were harsher on each other as castmates than anybody else above us was ever going to be. And we kept each other honest.”