This time last year, Kellie Martin was an art history major at Yale. She was also a major ER fan. "At school, everything stops for ER and South Park," she reports. Then she got a call from ER exec producer John Wells, who remembered her from Life Goes On. "He asked if I was interested in doing the show," marvels Martin, who was equally awed her first day as med student Lucy Knight. "I was starstruck, but then I went, 'Okay, these are your coworkers - you can't ask for autographs.'"
It was exactly this sort of naivete that led Wells to cast Martin. "She has that general medical-student combination of enthusiasm, intelligence, and deer-caught-in-the-headlights," he says. Sounds like Noah Wyle's Dr. John Carter in the first season, although now he's matured into the role of Lucy's mentor.