The ‘Pitt’ star ended up having a cameo on season 1 of ‘Friends.‘

Noah Wyle addresses rumor he auditioned for Ross on *Friends *before landing *ER *role

The 'Pitt' star ended up having a cameo on season 1 of 'Friends.'

By Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence is a former associate editor at **. He left EW in 2022.

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April 10, 2026 6:15 p.m. ET

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Noah Wyle as Doctor John Carter; David Schwimmer as Ross Geller. Credit:

Warner Bros. Television; Sven Arnstein/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

Noah Wyle is pulling the plug on the rumor that he auditioned to play Ross Geller on *Friends*.

Back in Sept. 1994, *ER** *and *Friends* premiered within days of each other on NBC, with Wyle starring on the medical drama as Dr. John Carter and David Schwimmer as Ross on the sitcom. But the internet has somehow ran with the idea that Wyle originally tried out for the role of everyone's favorite neurotic paleontologist.

"My memory is a little spotty, but I would remember auditioning for *Friends*," Wyle told *Variety*.

Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox with George Clooney and Noah Wyle on 'Friends'.

Fotos International/Getty

Even if that was a myth, Wyle did appear on *Friends*. Capitalizing on the immediate success of both shows, NBC had Wyle and *ER* costar George Clooney cameo in a first season episode of Friends as a pair of attractive doctors who take a liking to Monica (Courteney Cox) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston).

"I knew a lot of them before our shows broke," Wyle previously told EW of the *Friends* cast. "I remember thinking it was almost like a gas that we were doing it. It was just doing a walk-on. I didn't think it had any pressure or attendant pageantry. That's how naive I was. I'm sure at all the levels above us, they were just thrilled at this like, 'We're taking the guys from the *ER*! We're putting them on *Friends*!'"

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Wyle more recently explained to *Variety *that a big part of the reason why he knows he didn't go out for Ross and *Friends* is because he had "a little snobbery about doing TV." Only 23 years old when *ER* premiered, Wyle said he instructed his agents to focus on finding him movies or plays, and he initially read the two-hour *ER* pilot script from *Jurassic Park** *novelist Michael Crichton believing that it was a film.

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"When I found out it was a show, I didn't really care, because I thought, it's so good, they're going to cancel it. There's no way this is going to last," he recalled. "But I kind of turned my nose up at the idea of a television career, which is ironic, because that's exactly what I've enjoyed for the last 30 years. I love what I thought would be constricting. I found I love the consistency, and what I thought would get boring, I've managed to find infinite complexity."

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Source: “EW Comedy”