Carol Hathaway is a fictional character from the NBC medical drama series ER, portrayed by actress Julianna Margulies. She is the nurse manager in the ER. She regularly appeared throughout the series from the pilot episode to her penultimate episode of the show’s sixth season. She was mentioned throughout the series and made her final appearance in season fifteen, the show’s last season, when she is revealed to have a new career as a transplant coordinator.
Casting and early character development
The character of Carol Hathaway was supposed to die by suicide during the pilot episode of ER. Margulies explained in 2000 that the show's creator, Michael Crichton, "had something like that happen when he was a resident" at Harvard.
However, test audiences who viewed the show before its official premiere reacted negatively to her death. Her character was well-liked by test audiences. Some nurses also protested her suicide attempt, disappointed at how the death of such a strong, confident nurse would represent the profession on television. Foreign buyers of the show, too, were interested in the dynamic between her and the Doug Ross character as he was seen reacting to her suicide attempt in the pilot. As a result of these reasons, it was decided that Carol Hathaway should recover.
Then-unknown actor George Clooney, who had filmed the pilot episode with Hathaway's actress Julianna Margulies, called Margulies to let her know that he had overheard producers saying that her character might survive the suicide attempt after all and become a series regular. He encouraged her to consider waiting for ER producers to call her and not take another job. Clooney was right and Margulies accepted the role of Carol Hathaway on ER in 1994.
That same year, Julianna Margulies said of her character, “[Hathaway] is strong and controlling and that’s why she’s good at her job. She has a dry sense of humor and a very dark side to her that she doesn’t wear on her sleeve. She’s very compassionate, even if she’s dealing with her own demons.”
To prepare for her role as Carol, Margulies observed and shadowed medical professionals at hospitals in Los Angeles and Chicago, including Cook County General Hospital, the hospital that inspired the look of the show's emergency room. She ultimately based Hathaway on two nurses, in particular, whom she had observed working at Cook County General Hospital. Julianna Margulies has said that, when playing Carol, she developed a backstory in her mind that her father's death is the reason that Carol became a nurse.
Margulies initially worried that viewers would see Hathaway as too young to be the head nurse in the ER, but was reassured by the nurses she met that Hathaway’s young age made sense considering the stress levels and strength needed for the job.
Margulies also attended nursing conferences as research for the role. In response to Carol attempting suicide in the first episode of the show, Margulies did research on the high rate of drug overdoses in nursing professionals, citing the high stress levels and expectations of the job.
Carol Hathaway is a complex television character. Margulies has said that she pushed for Hathaway to be represented strongly on ER. "The first year it was really easy to write for her, because she was coming from such a low place that she could only go up after a suicide attempt," she said in 1997. “The second year, I felt that they lost sight of Carol Hathaway and that she sort of became a reactionary character to everyone else's life. So I went in [that year] and I said: 'Look, I love this character. I think she is one of the strongest women on television. I think she is an incredible role model for people because she is so human, and why aren't you writing for her?' They all agreed with me completely."
Margulies was also instrumental in keeping Hathaway a nurse on the show, as producers wanted to make her a doctor. While the character does consider medical school, and proves herself to be well-qualified, Margulies felt that making her character a doctor would do a disservice to nurses, who she was proud to represent on television. She also felt it would be out-of-character.
In a 1996 interview with US Magazine, the actress also expressed her disappointment that the show did not dive deeper into Carol's mental health struggles. She said, "[Executive Producer] John Wells says Hathaway’s ratings go up when she’s lighter, and I know they think the show is dark enough. But I think they missed the boat."