Yes, we all know George Michael is irreplaceable.  And I still want him in MY living room (aka the office of Yours Only George)!  From: On the Futon With … Eli Stone Co-creator

Brian Ford Sullivan: Let’s start with the question on everyone’s minds – why George Michael?

Marc Guggenheim: [Laughs.] Oh God. You know, let me explain, I’ll answer the question by explaining what life was like without George Michael. Because we wrote the show with George Michael in mind. And we wrote it basically like, we picked George because of a lot of different reasons I’ll get to – but we picked him sort of knowing that he probably wouldn’t do it… wouldn’t do it in a million years. So we wrote George Michael, we got word back from his agents saying that he wasn’t interested. So then we went about the part of trying to find a replacement. And through the process of finding a replacement, we learned – or rather, really saw – it was impossible to replace him. Because no one had the right mix of ’80s icon, but not overexposed today… fun, the right song, the right name, there were like all these elicit elements that worked perfectly with George. [There were] like five elements, another artist would satisfy maybe three out of the five. George was just perfect from day one. And I don’t think we realized how perfect he was until we tried to replace him. Luckily, a different agent of his learned about the script and said, “You know, I think this is something that George would like to do.” And he went to George – and George is a big television fan, a total TV-ofile. Even when he’s in England he downloads everything off of iTunes and watches a lot of American television. And he really responded to it – as a show, as something he wanted to do – so we really got lucky because I think I did four of five drafts for different artists and they were never as good as the original one we had for George.

BFS: And he comes back beyond the pilot?

MG: Yup. We bring him [back] in episodes seven, nine and 13. And in episode nine actually he appears, not as a vision, but actually as his flesh and blood self, and wants Eli to represent him in a legal case.