Julianna Margulies reveals how George Clooney saved her ‘ER’ role after she ‘flunked’ audition

He gave her an emergency resuscitation. 

During a recent appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” on Nov. 8, Julianna Margulies, 58, admitted that she nearly botched her “ER” audition — and, after she got cast, her character was supposed to die after just one episode until she got some indirect help from costar George Clooney. 

“I had two other auditions afterwards, and there [were] probably 50 people in the waiting room, and they were running two hours behind, and I was pissed,” she explained. 

“I was like, ‘I’m gonna be late for my next auditions, this is not OK, forget it.’ And I actually, like, an hour or two [later], I stood up, and I was walking out. And the casting director called my name. … I rolled my eyes, like, ‘Oh, really?’”

“The Good Wife” star said that her attitude was wrong during her audition for the hit medical drama, which aired on NBC from 1994 to 2009.

“I was so pissed off that I did it really rudely, [with] a little New York anger,” she said.

“I knew I’d flunked, and I walked out of the audition, and the casting director said, ‘Hold on a minute, you’re not right for that part.’ And I was like, ‘You think?’ And he said, ‘You might be right for this head nurse, Carol Hathaway, but she dies in the pilot. But could you come and read for that?’ So I went back in, and I read for Hathaway with a lot of attitude. And I got the role!”

The Emmy-winning star revealed that her “ER” character, Carol Hathaway, was originally supposed to die in that first episode. 

According to Margulies, George Clooney, 63, who played Dr. Doug Ross, indirectly saved Carol and changed her fate. 

“The character dies in the pilot from a drug overdose,” Margulies said. 

“But the way the director shot it — he was great, Rod Holcomb, who passed away last year — he did it through George Clooney’s eyes, because … he was an old flame of hers.”

For the test audiences, it became “really important” that Carol not die, Margulies said. 

“The whole audience went, ‘No!’” she recalled. “Because they loved George Clooney so much — who doesn’t?”

Margulies said that Sherry Stringfield, who starred as Dr. Susan Lewis, also played a role in changing Carol’s fate.

 “When I get brought in on the gurney, she for some reason [put] her clipboard to her mouth when she said, ‘She’s braindead.’ So you don’t see it!” Margulies said. “They just looped different lines in saying ‘She’s gonna be OK’ or whatever, and they brought me back to life.”