Edward's Graceful Exit from ER
Posted: May 4, 2002 @ 11:15 PM C
Source:
Zap2it.com
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Anthony Edwards will make his final
appearance on "ER" Thursday, May 9, as his character, Dr. Mark
Greene, succumbs to a brain tumor.
The show's creative team has been preparing for his exit for some
time, however. When Edwards made it known he wouldn't return to the
show, which he's starred in for eight years, after this season, they
began looking at ways to craft his exit.
"The challenge in writing an exit arc for Dr. Greene was that
he's always been the center of the show and the ensemble," Jack
Orman, an executive producer of "ER," tells the New York paper
Buffalo News. "Having him leave either to give up medicine or take
another job didn't seem satisfying or in character."
Those scenarios played out earlier in the show's life as other actors
-- notably George Clooney, Julianna Margulies and Eriq LaSalle, who left
earlier this season -- moved on.
Ultimately, says Orman, who wrote Thursday's (May 2) episode in which
the ailing Greene writes a letter to his County General colleagues,
death seemed like the best way to write the character out of the series.
Edwards "seemed game" when the producers approached him
about the storyline, Orman says, and the final shows will likely be
tearjerkers.
"It is hard to avoid," Orman says. "There certainly is
a life-affirming quality to the way we deal with the rest of Dr.
Greene's story, and that has to do with how he comes to terms with his
relationships. You also feel for the people he left behind. That may be
the legacy of the Greene arc."
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