Julianna Margulies made her film debut in Steven Seagal’s 1991 actioner “Out for Justice,” which according to the Washington Post, was simply “unnecessary.” Thankfully, Margulies wouldn’t be slumming it in middling action thrillers for long. Three years after that lackluster outing, she was cast in “ER.” NBC’s seminal medical drama (which is still one of the network’s best 10 p.m. shows ever) proved to be exactly what her career needed, with the actress staying on the show for six seasons (returning as a guest in the 15th season) and winning a Primetime Emmy and six Screen Actors Guild Awards (two individual awards and four ensemble) for her portrayal of head emergency care nurse Carol Hathaway. With that in mind, it’s a good thing the actress didn’t skip out on her “ER” audition, though she came very close to doing just that.
As part of the Television Academy‘s oral history of the show, Margulies recounted the story of her casting, revealing that she almost ducked out of the waiting room before her audition because the process was taking too long. According to the actress, she was still very much an up-and-comer in the early ’90s but had performed in some stage productions in New York. As a result, she was known by casting directors. However, when Margulies travelled to Los Angeles for her “ER” tryout, she was surprised to find that she wasn’t treated the same as in her native New York. “I had three auditions the day I auditioned,” she explains. “I went into the waiting room, and it was jam-packed. I was waiting for two hours, and I was getting p***ed because I was there on-time. And no one had come out to check in or apologize, and I just thought, ‘Well, that feels a little rude.'”
The “ER” try-outs were held in Burbank, where Margulies had another audition booked. As time went on and her anxiety set in, she decided to leave. “I was feeling worried that I was going to be late,” she says. “And I don’t like being late. I thought, ‘LA is not for me. I’m out of here.'” But as she got up to leave, casting director John Levey called her name. Of course, the audition ended up going better than she could have imagined.
Julianna Margulies flunked her ER audition, but aced her second chance
When Julianna Margulies attended her “ER” audition, she was actually trying out for a part that wasn’t Carol Hathaway but simply a “love interest” of Doug Ross, the doctor played by George Clooney. (Incidentally, the actors honor their iconic characters to this day.) Margulies recalled auditioning for pilot director Rod Holcomb and executive producer John Wells (who more recently executive produced the hugely popular HBO Max series “The Pitt,” for which former “ER” star Noah Wyle won the first Emmy of his career). “Instead of reading this love interest of Doug’s sweetly, I read her like a p***ed New Yorker,” she told the Television Academy. “I just wanted to get out of there … But John Levey came running out after me, and he said, ‘You’re not right for that part.’ And I said, sarcastically, ‘You think?’ I was so sassy! I can’t believe I was like that.”
According to Margulies, this was the point at which Levey asked her to read for Carol Hathaway, who was supposed to die in the pilot. Amazingly, Margulies turned down the offer, telling Levey “I don’t do cold readings. I prepare for auditions.” To her surprise, he responded by handing her the script and telling her to sit in his office until she was ready to read for Carol.
After she spent some time learning the new lines, Margulies returned to the audition room and read Carol “with a real edge.” She then attended the other auditions she had booked that day, convinced she would never appear on “ER.” To her amazement, she soon got a call from her agent, who informed her she had been cast as Hathaway. “I was absolutely gobsmacked,” Margulies says, “I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?”‘ But that wouldn’t be the end of the unlikely developments for Margulies and her “ER” experience, as she was soon upgraded from a single episode guest appearance to a series regular and, ultimately, part of the main cast.