Kerry Weaver is a fictional character, a physician, in the NBC television series ER. Dr. Weaver first appears as a recurring character in the second-season episode "Welcome Back, Carter!", which aired on September 21, 1995. Dr. Weaver is portrayed by Laura Innes, who was promoted to the role of series regular beginning with the third-season episode "Dr. Carter, I Presume", which aired on September 26, 1996. Innes made her last regular appearance in the thirteenth-season episode "A House Divided", which aired on January 11, 2007.
During the series' fifteenth season, Innes made guest appearances in the episodes "Heal Thyself", which aired on November 13, 2008, and the series finale, "And in the End...", which aired on April 2, 2009.
Very little of Weaver’s background is revealed to the audience in her early episodes. The character exhibits a limp in her gait, which is aided by the use of a forearm crutch. This was later revealed to be caused by congenital hip dysplasia in episode 14 of season 11, in addition to the fact that she had lived for a period in Africa.
Weaver arrives at County General as Chief Resident, and later becomes an attending physician, is promoted to Chief of Emergency Medicine, and finally becomes the Hospital Chief of Staff. She is ambitious, craves authority, and tends to be excessively bureaucratic in her approach. Her administrative position often requires her to make unpleasant decisions that draw hostility from her fellow physicians, as when she fires Jeanie Boulet in Season 4. However, she also engages in administrative politics to protect herself, sometimes at the expense of others. Although an excellent physician, she is portrayed as the villain in many episodes. She is a dynamic character who struggles with which choice is the right one to make.
Although Weaver has been involved in some heterosexual relationships, she eventually comes out as a lesbian. Her sexual orientation is a key point in some episodes, particularly when she fights in court to keep her son, Henry. She was included in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Lesbian and Bisexual Characters.
Seasons two through six
During Innes' first five seasons on the show, little was revealed about the details of Weaver's background which would later become some of her defining traits: her sexual orientation, political beliefs, and even the precise nature of her disability. She kept her personal details largely private to prevent discrimination and protect her career. She was also unable to fully confront internalized homophobia and regretted that she never knew her birth parents.
When she was first hired by Mark Greene as chief resident in 1995 most ER staff (who disliked her pedantry, fixation on her own authority, and her tendency to micro-manage) were unhappy. Early in her position, she regularly clashed with Doug Ross and Susan Lewis. In addition, her obsession with bureaucratic policies irritated and confused the entire staff (in one episode, Jerry, the desk clerk, brought the staff a cake to celebrate her day off). In Season 3 Weaver became an ER attending physician alongside Greene, with whom she began to compete to curry favor with hospital leadership. As a result, Weaver was not understood beyond her career ambitions and bureaucratic obsessions.
Weaver began to show her underlying kindness and sensitivity when she supported Jeanie Boulet, a physician assistant who contracted HIV from her adulterous husband. Weaver was surprised to learn that Helen knew nothing about it, and her long-held fear that the birth defect was the reason she was given up for adoption was resolved.
Aside from this episode, Kerry Weaver almost exclusively played supporting roles and was frequently absent from entire episodes. A negative contribution was that she played a major role in forcing Elizabeth Corday to leave County, though Corday deliberately provoked her into doing so because she could not work with Lucien Dubenko, a new surgeon that Weaver had hired. She also got angry when Susan Lewis complained about being denied a tenured position, stating that Susan's complete lack of grant earning was a major factor.
Season twelve
Kerry continued to play the background in most of the episodes this season. Even though she stayed very busy with her administrative meetings and tasks, Kerry occasionally took shifts in the ER to keep her emergency skills sharp. Kerry kept putting off hip surgery even though the pain had begun impacting her ability to provide care, but in the episode "Out on a Limb" Kerry did undergo the surgery to fix her hip dysplasia. In the episode "No Place To Hide," Kerry walked for the first time on the series without the aid of her forearm crutch. Kerry asked Abby (who was expecting a child with Luka) to be Henry's legal guardian in the event that something happened to her, but her surgery was entirely successful. (Reportedly, this storyline was done, at least in part, because Laura Innes really was starting to develop hip and back problems after ten years of walking with a fake limp and using a crutch for the sake of her role.) Laura Innes described this arc as the character "shedding some of her hardness and moving on in her life."
At the end of the season, Kerry faced criticism for hiring Dr. Victor Clemente (John Leguizamo) as an attending physician, after he was fired for his onscreen mental health breakdown and a case of medical incompetence that was never shown or fully explained. Despite being responsible for hiring him (and for refusing Luka's efforts to have Clemente fired long before the issues that did lead to his dismissal), Kerry tried to divert the fire towards Dr. Luka Kovač (Goran Visnjic), the Chief of Emergency Medicine, risking his job as a result.
Season thirteen
After saving Luka and Abby in the season premiere, Kerry realized that her constant attempts to protect her career had turned her into the kind of lying opportunist she'd always hated; she stopped the County Executive Board from firing Luka by solemnly confirming that she'd ignored or blocked Luka's efforts to get rid of Clemente and lied about it to save her skin. She was demoted from Chief of Staff as a result and was back to being an attending physician. Though she clearly struggled to adjust to her new position, especially with Luka being her new boss (though he wasn't angry at her after she told the truth), Kerry was pleased to practice medicine full-time again; she also developed a more friendly relationship with Greg Pratt.
Working back in the ER, Weaver caught the eye of a TV producer filming a news segment with Dr. Morris and literally steals the show. She's offered a job by the executives for news reporting. Shortly afterwards, Kerry and her producer Courtney (Michelle Hurd) developed a close relationship, one Kerry had not felt since her partner Sandy Lopez died. Courtney told Kerry how her great news broadcasting could open a successful career for her. Kerry decided to leave County General when ER chief Luka Kovač was forced to cut $200,000 from the ER budget and the only position that afforded that was Kerry's. Kerry accepted a television show offer at WTVJ in Miami, despite Kovač's last-minute efforts to convince her to stay.
Kerry Weaver's last regular appearance on ER was in the Season 13 episode called "A House Divided" Episode 280 in which Abby Lockhart expressed to Dr. Weaver that if it had not been for her, she'd never have become a doctor or a mother; she and Kerry shared a tearful farewell moment. As Kerry packed up and walked out of County General's doors for the last time, she only asked Luka to take care of the place for her and advised him not to make her mistake of getting involved in hospital politics, indicating that they were on good terms and sealing that with a warm farewell hug. Luka took her advice and stepped down as Chief towards the end of the season, just before he married Abby.
Laura Innes' last appearance as a series regular on the show was on January 11, 2007. Following her departure from the program, NBC received some pressure from GLAAD to introduce more LGBT characters.
Return to the series in the fifteenth season and the end
Weaver appeared in a flashback sequence in the Season 15 episode titled "Heal Thyself", which was set back in 2002, just months before Greene's death. In her scene, she walked into Trauma 1 and expressed how worried she was about Dr. Mark Greene, because of his treatment for brain cancer. She told him to step down and take a break from treating Catherine Banfield's son. After he refused, Dr. Weaver reluctantly left the room.
At the end of the Season 15 episode "The Book of Abby," long-serving nurse Haleh Adams showed the departing Abby Lockhart a closet wall where all the past doctors and employees had put their locker name tags. Among them, the tag "Weaver" was seen.
During Season 15 episode 19, former co-worker Dr. Doug Ross asked both Sam Taggart and Neela Rasgotra about Weaver (as he found out that they were from County), curious if she was still working there.
In the series finale, she flew from Florida to attend the dedication and opening of the Carter Center. She met up with Elizabeth Corday, Susan Lewis, John Carter, and Peter Benton after Carter's opening. The old colleagues went out to eat at an old tavern and catch up with each other. At the end of the night, she then told the group that she couldn't stay any longer, as she needed to catch a flight back to Florida. Kerry gave everyone a hug and left Chicago.