Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV

by Warren Littlefield, Former NBC President of Entertainment

  Noah Wyle: And your leading man shows up drunk in the first scene of the pilot.

  Warren: The network put together a promo for ER that featured two iconic moments in the show. One was Eriq La Salle’s display of triumph over the success of a difficult procedure, and the other was George Clooney confronting an abusive mother with the words “He’s just a little kid!”

  John Miller: That line made Clooney a hero and appeared in most spots. We knew we had something special with ER. In the final broadcast of Hill Street Blues, we put in a spot for L.A. Law, and in the final episode of L.A. Law we ran a sixty-second spot for ER. With ER we had a very strong show taking the mantle from L.A. Law.

  Eriq La Salle: Rod Holcomb, the director, said, “Okay, when you come through the door, I want you to do a ‘yeah’ or ‘yippee.’ ” And I just said, “Rod, that just doesn’t feel organic to who this man is. This man is so grounded, and everything he does is really about being grounded, and I feel to physically jump off your feet, I think, literally and metaphorically, it feels wrong.” Rod was trying to make his day, so he was like, “Well, whatever.”

  We didn’t get into this philosophical debate, but fortunately, by this time, we had worked long enough for him to trust me, and for me to trust him. At that point, I felt that he trusted my instincts, so at some point you don’t need a huge, philosophical debate. It’s like, “You know what, just show me something.”

  So just remembering my martial arts, that just felt so appropriate. I didn’t think about this, but it was just the opposite: instead of taking it up, he took it down. And again, I’d love to say I thought about it in such detail. I wanted a powerful moment, a powerful gesture, a powerful physicality that felt organic and true to Benton’s celebration.

  John Miller: Fine use of words, music, and great cutting in the promo. You play reach and frequency, and you play impact. The ER promo was about impact. We carved out the time for it, and that minute was worth probably $1 million to the network.

  We were positioning ourselves for the fall. I don’t think we knew what we had in Friends at that point, but we knew what we had in ER.

  Warren: Networks commonly say each May, “This was our highest-testing pilot,” but with the data that came in on ER, we really had hit levels that NBC had never seen before. You hope to have one character test in the range of a strong lead. It doesn’t happen very often, but that’s what you aspire to. ER had five characters in a strong lead character category. Test audiences thought of the show as an action hour. They loved it.

  At the upfronts in New York in May 1994, we gave the affiliates (and the cast) a taste of the look and feel of ER.

  Noah Wyle: The first frame of the show any of us had seen was when Warren brought us all to New York for the upfronts at Avery Fisher Hall. We were watching from the wings, peeking around the curtain. The voice-over said, “If you thought there were no heroes left in the world … from the creators of Jaws, Close Encounters …,” this whole list of credits. They ran a four-minute clip. It was followed by silence and then this thunderous applause.

  Anthony Edwards: The moment we knew we were on something really special was at the upfronts. We saw the first twenty minutes of the pilot. It had the music and the logo, and I still get chills. It was like, “Oh, shit.” We all knew the show was something special.

  Warren: The upfronts make for a great show, particularly when you have a sensational program to introduce and showcase. They’re always in New York. We usually held ours in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. The business of the upfronts is to preview the fall schedule for advertisers, affiliates, and journalists, but we also managed to have an awful lot of fun with our presentations during the Must See TV years. One year, I even allowed myself to be played by Bob Balaban. Why the hell not? He’d played me everywhere else.

  In the 1992–93 season, Seinfeld explored the story of Jerry being wooed at NBC with a deal to develop a show. Balaban played the character of Russell Dalrymple, network president of NBC. In the episode titled “The Pitch,” NBC asks Jerry to come up with an idea for a series. George decides he can write it but comes up with nothing. Sitting on the couch in Russell’s office with Jerry, George explains that there are no stories and nothing really happens. To which Dalrymple replies, “Well, why am I watching it?” George: “Because it’s on TV.” Russell: (threatening) “Not yet.” Bob Balaban made a number of memorable appearances playing that character. I was both honored and entertained.

  Then, when Bill Carter’s book The Late Shift was developed for HBO, Bob Balaban was hired to play me once Peter Horton, of Thirtysomething fame, turned down the part. So it wasn’t much of a reach for me to recruit Bob to appear at the upfronts one May during our Must See run. Preston Beckman, John Miller, and Mike Mandelker all warned me that Balaban’s appearance would be too inside baseball to appeal to advertisers, affiliates, and the press. This was one of the rare times when I failed to take their advice.

  Fred Silverman and Brandon Tartikoff had taught me that we weren’t just in business; we were in show business. I was convinced that Balaban’s appearance at the upfronts—playing me one more time—had a good chance of bringing the house down.

  Conan’s band, the Max Weinberg 7, got the crowd going before the announcer Don Pardo took to the mic and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the president of NBC Entertainment, Warren Littlefield.”

  Out walked Bob Balaban in a new Armani suit I’d bought for him. The closer he got to the podium, the louder the laughter grew. Bob looked out over the audience, smiled, and proceeded to launch into a laundry list of NBC’s achievements. More laughter. The crowd loved it.

  Finally, I walked out and joined him. “Bob, what are you doing? You’re a wonderful actor, but I’m Warren.” It was a great, warm, funny moment onstage. The audience roared, and it served as a chance for me to truly enjoy who I was and what I had achieved with my team at NBC.

  Noah Wyle: After the upfronts, NBC threw a party at Match, the SoHo restaurant. Warren, in his cups, got up on a table and said, “I’m so fucking excited.” I thought, “I like this guy.” That was also the first night I took two women back to my hotel room. Memorable.

  Warren: After screening the two-hour pilot, advertisers thought we’d be about a 23 share—the same number they were estimating for Chicago Hope. Don was pissed off again. He asked us how could they not see that we were so much better? He suggested we not sell much of our ad inventory at that low estimate. Bold move, but we’d all seen Chicago Hope by that time, and we had audience “intent to view” research for ER that was looking really strong. We agreed with Don—let’s not undersell the show.

  We couldn’t afford to run the two-hour pilot of ER on Thursday night. Preempt Seinfeld? Never. It would have been a massive loss to the bottom line. That airtime was just too valuable, so we premiered on Monday night, September 19, 1994. The football game on ABC was Detroit playing in Dallas against America’s team, the Cowboys.

  I’d seen ER so many times, and I had to keep flipping back and forth to check out what was happening on Monday Night Football. I didn’t care who won; I just wanted it to be a crappy game. Naturally, it was an absolute nail-biter with Detroit winning in overtime. I was afraid everybody would be watching football. Sleepless night, but the overnight ratings were quite good. The nationals were great. Nearly twenty-four million people watched that night. Then, on Thursday, in the head-to-head matchup with Chicago Hope, we had twenty-three million, and Chicago Hope had under fifteen million (Nielsen Media Research). And it just kept getting better each week.

  Anthony Edwards: The success of the show came in an abstract way. In overnights. I knew things were good when George got excited.

  Noah Wyle: I remember Clooney calling me and saying, “We did a 42 last night.” I said, “Is that good?” I just didn’t know.

  Warren: Ka-boom! Now the sales department could take the available commercial inventory and sell them at over a 40 share. While we didn’t own the show, it was goi
ng to be a huge profit center for us.

  Remarkably, Rod Holcomb only directed the two-hour pilot of ER (and the final two hours fifteen years later). While we all desperately wanted his vision on the series on a full-time basis, he had a conflict. Before series production was scheduled to begin, Rod’s agent called to tell me that Rod had previously agreed to direct a cable-TV movie and he was going to honor his commitment. I believe I said, “This is Hollywood. Who does that?”

  I called Steven Spielberg and asked if he’d direct an episode of the show. I figured there was no harm in asking. Steven told me, “I would if I thought there was something I could add, but no matter how many times I watch it, I don’t know what else I’d do.”

  Eriq La Salle: I remember we were on the cover of Newsweek, and this was the whole Hillary Clinton time and the introduction of a lot of the same medical issues that we have now.

  Noah Wyle: That Newsweek cover was very big. They’d sent me to New York to school me in publicity. I think I did Regis and Kathie Lee, sort of the spring training of talk shows, and a guy came up with the Newsweek cover. I thought it was one of those things like you can get printed at Disneyland. I said, “I’ve got to get me one of those.” He pointed at the newsstand. It didn’t make any sense to me. I walked over to the kiosk and was staring at twenty images of the cast.

  John Wells: ER took off in that weird Beatles way. The cast suddenly couldn’t go to the supermarket anymore.

  Julianna Margulies: ER ruined me for life. People say now, “You got really good ratings, a 13 share.” I’m used to a 44 share. We got Super Bowl numbers. When they tell me now we’re in the top ten with a 13 share, I’m shocked. I can’t believe it.

  John Wells: I remember talking to Julianna Margulies, who was going to New York for Christmas, and I came to understand she was flying coach.

  I said, “You can’t fly coach. You have to be in first class. You don’t realize what will happen.”

  She said, “I don’t want to be in first class. I don’t want to waste the money.”

  I told her, “People will be angry at you for flying coach. They’ll think it’s not cool for you to be in coach. You’ll have a miserable time. You’re a star. People expect you to be a certain person and act a certain way.”

  She flew out coach. She flew back first class.

  Anthony Edwards: Most of the time, people are really respectful. Dr. Greene was that guy mothers wanted their daughters to marry. The guy daughters thought they ought to end up with.

  Fans relate to you depending on their interests. I’m a race fan, and when I go to races, it’s all Top Gun fans. Actors make a choice about whether to be removed or not. You can play the role of a celebrity or not. It’s a part too.

  Noah Wyle: If I hadn’t had George and Anthony and, to an extent, Eriq as well as guides through those uncharted waters, I don’t know how I would have made it. I credit them with keeping my feet on the ground and giving me a sense of perspective.

  John Wells: Sherry Stringfield couldn’t handle the lack of anonymity. She was coming apart at the seams. I tried to tell her it was a momentary thing. The moment could last three or four years, but it can’t be recaptured. You may regret having stepped away because it won’t happen again. You only get to do it once, and you may not want to miss it.

  The agents and the press agents and managers are the biggest problem. The desire to take this person and turn him into a commodity. Sometimes it works, but mostly it’s a disaster. It’s the same thing that happens with professional athletes.

  Tony and George had seen this sort of fame and been around it, and they tried to counsel the cast. Eriq La Salle had a hard time with it. Noah Wyle had a hard time but came through it whole. Sherry couldn’t. Julianna turned into a diva for a while, left the show and had a real-life experience, and is still a lovely person I like. She walked away from $26.2 million for two years for a movie career that didn’t happen. That’s the toughest part of these Zeitgeist shows.

  Julianna Margulies: Because I’ve been lucky enough to have some success again, I understand now, and there’s never a moment when I don’t appreciate it. But for ER, I wouldn’t know how to handle what I’m doing now.

  Noah Wyle: We were on a seven-day shooting schedule, so the average workday was fourteen to seventeen hours. I remember thinking the analogy was Neil Armstrong, who said he always felt like he missed out on the moon landing because he was on the moon. I felt like I missed the initial splash of the show because we were always onstage filming the show.

  Anthony Edwards: We never had any time. We’d go over to the Friends set, and they had all kinds of time. “What do you mean you come in at noon?”

  Julianna Margulies: When actors walk on the set of The Good Wife and say, “I’m so tired,” I think, “You have no idea.” ER was the best lesson for being an actor—film or television.

  John Wells: It’s that whole watercooler thing that it’s almost impossible to have happen anymore. On the show, we were the last to know. We were nose to the grindstone. I remember the movie-of-the-week guy here at Warner Bros. came over and said, “You guys are a big hit.” It was after the second week, and I remember looking up at him oddly. We were just trying to make enough pages for the next day. Our heads were in the feed bag, just trying to get the damn thing done.

  Anthony Edwards: It was always clear to me that the person who was telling the story was John Wells. Inspired by the experience of Michael Crichton, but it was obvious that John Wells was in control.

  Because the material was so good, we had to keep our game up. All of us. The writers, the actors, the art department, all of us. I knew if I was going to get through this material, I had to be prepared. We were doing eight to ten pages a day. Forget one minute a page. We were probably at thirty seconds a page.

  We kept the actors on the stage and the writers in the writers’ room. We decided early on that if you had a problem, you had to deal with it early. We just didn’t have the time.

  Noah Wyle: I got spoiled on ER. I think all of us have gone on in our careers and walked onto sets and said, “This is grossly inefficient, or this is very unprofessional, or I can’t believe nobody has the esprit de corps like we had on ER,” but the world doesn’t work that way.

  From the top on down, the crews don’t really hustle like they did on ER, the writers don’t push the envelope, and they don’t have the support from the executives and the network to take those risks and those chances anymore.

  Anthony Edwards: It felt like John Wells was always pushing the writers, and we were always pushing ourselves as actors, and the camera people were always trying to push what they were doing. If you’re interested, the audience is too.

  The show needed the consistency of a backboard. That was my job as Dr. Greene. It wasn’t flashy. It didn’t win me any Emmys, but it was important to the show, and it was fun to play Dr. Greene. I was part of a good team.

  Noah Wyle: I think I hold the record for most love interests on ER—Rebecca De Mornay, Mädchen Amick, Maura Tierney, Thandie Newton … I’ll forget a bunch.

  I was at a party four or five years ago, and somebody said, “Do you know Rebecca De Mornay?” I said, “No, but I love your work.” She said, “Noah, asshole. I did six episodes. We had a sex scene.”

  John Wells: We had good fortune with the cast because the cast had a lot of fun with each other. We had great good fortune with George, who had been around for a long time. He understood that as he started to break out of the cast, it was incumbent upon him to make sure that he didn’t break with the other cast members. He went to great lengths to remain humble with them, include them in everything, and kind of talk himself down. That worked for about three years. He didn’t stop doing it, but they stopped believing him.

  Noah Wyle: George is an amazing individual. He’s one of the few men I know who can engender goodwill among men without it being competitive or jealousy based. He’s the only guy I’ve ever met who every woman wants to go home with and every man w
ants to buy him a beer.

  Eriq La Salle: In the first year, when we started doing interviews, one of the moments that I was very proud of was when George one time said, “I think Eriq La Salle has the hardest job on this show because we all know him, we know who he is, but each week he comes in and he plays this character to the hilt who is not always the most likable or whatever, but it’s the commitment of being an actor.”

  I’ll make my own mistakes, but I’ll also be that much farther ahead of the game and have more victories because of what I learned by having a front seat in one of the biggest shows in history, and one of the best TV shows ever. Damn, we did get a lot of shit right.

  Noah Wyle: There was one mandate: don’t stop. If you take a private moment, it has to be earned by the content of the episode. If any of us tried to take a little acting moment, you knew you were going to be in the crosshairs on Wednesday.

  When Alan Alda came and did a turn on the show, he said that’s what they’d done on M*A*S*H. They’d call it a gut-check session. He said if somebody took an inappropriate moment or milked a line, they were merciless with each other.

  Anthony Edwards: We decided if you had a moment, walk away from it. We didn’t linger, because real doctors never stay for a moment. It was who could get out of the scene faster, and the directors trusted us on it. It became the style of the show. The audience had the moment, not the actors.

  That was the trouble with Chicago Hope. They lingered. “God, it’s hard being a doctor.” That sort of thing.