AIDS Activist and Actress Gloria Reuben Returns to ER
For one night only—tonight, January 3—actress and AIDS activist Gloria Reuben will reprise her role as HIV-positive former medical assistant Jeanie Boulet on NBC’s longtime medical drama ER, TV Guide Online reports. She played the character from 1995 through 1999, when Jeanie remained one of the few HIV-positive series regulars on network television (tvguide.com, 1/3).
On the episode, Jeanie returns to County Hospital when her adopted son—who is also HIV positive—passes out in gym class. After he is rushed to the emergency room, doctors find a spot on his brain and run tests to determine whether he has a lymphoma, an early sign of full-blown AIDS.
“Even though I’m doing just one episode on ER, it’s a very powerful one,” Reuben told TV Guide. “And if [HIV/AIDS] is brought back into people’s awareness even for a minute, it’s a good thing.”
Reuben recently appeared alongside POZ editor-in-chief Regan Hofmann as the narrator for Cable Positive’s Women and HIV, the third installment in the award-winning Positive Voices documentary series.
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Harland, , 2008-01-08 14:57:17
I watch the show. and I was very happy to see NBC step up and tart doing the right thing. No one has givien HIV/Aids a look anymore. We have all the awanres of heart and cancer. People who get HIV or Aids we been pushed down and no one has taken a stnd get us the people in the united stated to understand we are here. We live with this every day and some are now seniors with hiv or aids. how does it affect them also. Thank You Gloria ruben thank you NBC. I have been Have + since 2005