Dr Carter’s defining ER stab scene
Every fortnight, we ask artists and performers about how some of their most famous work happened. This week, ER‘s Noah Wyle talks about the 2000 scene where his character, Dr John Carter, is stabbed by a mentally ill patient.
That’s a very interesting scene, because I was pulling from something very specific. I had worked on a film in Czechoslovakia years before called Swing Kids (1993) and I worked with an English actor who was named Carl Brincat.
We got to talking late one night and he tells me this story about having been in a fight in a bar in London where he felt like a guy was tickling his leg.
"I also have this weird trick where I can roll my eyes back into my head." Noah Wyle, actor
When the guy ran away he realised he hadn’t been tickled – he had actually been taking a razor blade and shredding his thigh with it and he didn’t feel it.
It wasn’t until he looked down and saw his leg in pieces that he actually felt any pain.
For some reason, that story registered with me and when we shot that scene I remember thinking that when he puts the knife into my back I’m going to do that.
I’m going to pretend like I didn’t feel the pain and that it’s more of a sort of a tickle, almost, and as long as I can sort of keep the realisation of what was happening from myself and then the audience was a step ahead, the scarier that scene would be.
It worked beautifully. I also have this weird trick where I can roll my eyes back into my head, so as I fell onto the ground, I did my little trick to make it look like I was losing consciousness slowly which I thought also made it look all the more harrowing.
That scene redefined the character [of John Carter] in a lot of ways, because it was that stabbing that caused him to begin to self-medicate and become a drug addict for a while.
After his drug addiction cleared up, he started to put himself further and further into harm’s way and that led to his trip to Africa where he met the love of his life.
That moment, that stabbing, was the sort of catalytic converter for the second-half of the character’s arc, in my opinion. He was one man before that and he became a different man after, in my opinion.’’
– As told to Dani McDonald