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# A painful entry at ‘ER’
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/a-painful-entry-at-er/
- Published: 2005-10-14T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T07:58:13.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By DAN DUNN BY EMILY CHRISTIANSON Special to the Daily Press*

Paging Dr. Clemente. Emmy Award winner John Leguizamo joins the cast of ER this season for 12 episodes as Dr. Victor Clemente, a dynamic supervising physician at County General who shakes things up with his unconventional ideas and cutting-edge technology. Leguizamo’s debut episode airs on NBC at 10 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20.

Were you a fan of ER before this? “I was a viewer. I wasn’t a fanatic … I did enjoy what I saw and there were some great episodes last season that I felt were better than most movies out there. The Ray Liotta one and the red buttons just rocked my world.”

Tell us about your character, Dr. Victor Clemente. “I am bringing a lot of gadgets in (and) new procedures. I’m stepping on a lot of toes to light a fire under everybody’s butt. I’m a genius doctor, really bright, really ambitious and a little self-serving.”

What has it been like working with the cast of ER? “The first day I had a lot of stuff to do, like four or five scenes to do and they were really long with a lot of dialogue. True to the “ER” myth, people were playing practical jokes, except I wasn’t laughing I was kind of upset. I was like, ‘dude this is too hard I’m too confused.’

“Somebody tied my surgical gloves so when I finally got the scene right and I pulled my hands out and they were all knotted so I look like a clown. When I get to episode 12 I will be the funniest prankster. I will be Ashton Kutcher, but right now I need to be left alone. I never thought I would be saying those words.”

If you had to go to the real emergency room would you want someone like Dr. Clemente caring for you?

“Now you are getting into my own personal POV of things. I’m very anti-medicine. I’m much more of a hippy, granola, homeopathic type of dude. Let your body play it out. My kids were home births. I’m very kind of anti-medicine until you need it. If I’m in crazy pain then cut me up and do whatever and if I’m near my end then do whatever … I want the coolest gadgets, I want the cra-ziest procedures. At that point go for it and if that does-n’t work than please pull the plug.”

Does your wife agree with that philosophy? “She does. She wasn’t so crazy about the home birth part of it. It’s easy for a guy to say let’s do it at home without any medicine, let’s do it without drugs. My wife said ‘This is the wrong time for me to quit drugs John.’”

Have you spent any time in a real emergency room? “Yeah, I’ve spent time in the ER. I was doing King of the Jungle and the stunt was going well, but then I got carried away full of adrenaline and I banged my head against this iron fence and I split my skull and I was bleeding, but the true actor that I was, I walked right to camera so they could see the real blood. I went to an ER in Manhattan and they took me right in and gave me microsurgery.”

Do you go home from work talking like a doctor? “Actually I come home with a lot of fake blood on me.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/101405-19_01.jpg)

(Photo: Special to the Daily Press)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 14, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/101405.pdf?ref=smdp.com)