ER Creator Michael Crichton Wanted To Kill A Major Character, But Everyone Else Overruled Him

In the success of the 1994 freshman season of Michael Crichton‘s “ER,” Julianna Margulies as Carol Hathaway played a pivotal part (just like she did in the next five seasons until her character was written out of the show). What many people may not know, however, is that she wasn’t supposed to be a series regular. In the original pilot script, Carol was meant to die of a drug overdose in a scene that was actually filmed, according to showrunner John Wells. As he revealed in the oral history of that first episode, “Hathaway was dead at the end of the pilot.