“I Think I’m Going to Go Mental.” John Leguizamo Was Supposed to Replace George Clooney in ER, but the Role Was Too Much of a Challenge
John Leguizamo could have become an ER star, but filming a medical TV series proved more difficult than he expected.
George Clooney was the star of the medical series ER, which he left after the fifth season. He still appeared later with a cameo, but his adventure with this production largely ended with the end of the fifth season, after which the creators had to find some kind of replacement for the character he played to fill the gap left by him.
That job was to go to Dr. Victor Clemente, played by John Leguizamo. But the actor parted ways with the production after only twelve episodes, a result of the fact that the role was too much of a challenge. He admitted that the pace of the medical TV series was not for him, it exhausted him too much, so even though he entered the project with high hopes, in the end it turned out not to be for him (via AV Club).
I was supposed to be the new doctor to take over for George Clooney, and become the head doctor until the end. But I came from doing theater and movies where you give 300 percent. And working 16 hours a day, I was so burnt out after the first few episodes that I was like, “I think I’m going to go mental. I can’t keep up. I can’t keep going at this pace.” And so I resigned. It was the first time I resigned from anything, I quit anything. But it was so demanding, such hard work. Now I know why they get those big dollars, because that shit is brutal.
Leguizamo told what it was like working on ER, where he had to get up early in the morning in order to first meet with real doctors who would tell him about their work and show him what they would be doing during the scenes of the operation, as well as discuss the script with him so that he understood what he was talking about. Then it would come time to move to the set, where, according to Leguizamo, they would shoot 80 pages of script in 50 minutes, although usually only 50 pages are completed in that time.
It was tough, man. That was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. I was like, “Thank you for this experience. I didn’t know that it could be this, this rough.” It made me appreciate going back into independent film. I was like, “Oh, this is so easy. Ten pages a day. What a luxury.”
The actor decided to fly the white flag and end his adventure with ER after twelve episodes. Clooney, whom Leguizamo was to replace in the TV series, instead appeared in one hundred and eight episodes.
