tellshannon815 | (no subject)

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Who was the worst-cast actor in a show or movie? (Not necessarily a bad actor - just wrong for the role.).

In the situation I'm thinking of, I'm not sure I can say it's a case of bad casting in the moment, more a case of not knowing how the storyline was going to pan out/writers making it up as they go along without a real plan (something this show is always getting accused of!) The real issue is the age of the character versus the age of the actor.

I am referring to Ethan Rom from Lost.

William Mapother was born in 1965, making him 39 at the time he started filming that role in 2004. At the time when the character first appeared, that was a non-issue - Ethan's age hadn't come up as a plot point in season 1, so I guess if anyone thought about it at all, it would have been assumed that the character was somewhere in that age range. So far, so no big deal. Flashbacks are shown with him in 2004 and 2001, his age still not an issue. Then in season 5, canon confirms his birthdate as July 1977, making him 27 when he dies. So we have an actor who is clearly much older than his character, can't easily pass for 27.

At the time of casting, I honestly don't think it mattered how old the character was; I suspect they hadn't planned at that point to go back to DHARMA era and to have Juliet (who also didn't exist as a character at the time) be present at the birth of someone she had known. And the fact is, there wasn't a prominent Other of the right age for anyone else to have taken that role; Tom, Goodwin, Danny, Colleen, Mikhail, Bea and Richard were all also too old, Karl too young, the circumstances of Alex's birth already known. There were some random Others who didn't appear that much who would have worked in terms of age, but wouldn't have worked in terms of fan reaction - while Juliet, who had known them, might have reacted to the name when Amy said it if such a character had been chosen, to a lot of fans it would have been a case of "Who's So and so again?" So I think the writers were kind of stuck, had to pick *someone* the fans would know, but then found themselves with a character too young for the actor.

On a similar note, something I've been thinking about recently is the issue of child actors ageing. For something like Once Upon a Time, where the seasons spanned several months, the character Henry was ageing at the same rate as the actor, so it was a non issue, but there have been other examples of the actor ageing out of the role.

Avoiding spoilers, but some of you will know who I mean:

Show A: Character was written out by having him escape, did make some appearances where he was shot at odd angles to try and disguise his height, appearance in a flash forward scene.

Show B: Character killed off. It wasn't feasible in this case to have this character move away anywhere. With a clearly confirmed time of characters being stranded and no confirmed time of shooting even without the strike, there was always the likelihood of this actor ageing out of the role. I don't actually think killing the character was always the plan - when the extremely persistent and annoying "Character A from the present is really Character B from the past!" was doing the rounds, the producers admitted they had considered it, then gave a different reason for scrapping it, so I'm not sure they thought of it initially. However, if they had decided to pursue that, there was:

Option C: Recast with a younger actor.

Just curious, what do people think is the best way of handling that issue: to recast, or write out the character?

(I'm seriously already wondering how From will handle this with Ethan Matthews.)

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I do prefer recasting, but I had Bewitched as my prime example of switching actors midstream, granted with an adult character, to inform my tastes. And all the soap operas on Day Time TV.

Worst casting of an actor to a role is harder for me to pinpoint. I mean, the actor that was playing Mat in Wheel of Time didn't seem to be forming the right chemistry with the rest of the cast, but for whatever reasons, he was replaced for the upcoming season. I don't do the books, so I can't say if it was poor casting to the role, or just actor differences throwing me that vibe.

I've got some actors I never gel to no matter the role, but I honestly cannot think of a role where I feel like a different actor would have made much of a difference.

On the topic of age...

I love him in the role, but Tom Welling as Clark Kent in Smallville.

I was supposed to believe that that 24-year-old gentleman was a 14-year-old boy? Are you kidding me, casting? Like, just, what.

I think a bullet was dodged when Stuart Townsend was originally cast as Aragorn.

I watch daytime soap operas - they recast for every reason under the sun. They recently recast not one but two actresses, who'd been in the show since 2010, much to fan dismay and confusion. Well, one made sense - she drove drunk the wrong way on a major interstate in Southern California.

Also, we SORAS on soaps - which is basically Soap Opera Rapidly Aging Syndrome. They recast a younger actor with a hot older one - so they can do a hot teen storyline.

And I watch Doctor Who - which also recasts on a dime. So I'm used to recasts. It kind of goes with the territory for long running serials...that have been on the air since the 1960s.

That said? It is disruptive and jarring, and even more so for non-soap operas. Prime Time Shows like LOST, I'm not certain it works for?

In soaps, they often recast if they have the wrong actor (but again they do it for just about any reason they can come up with). I have seen prime time shows do it - but usually they will either kill off or write out the character, and bring in a new one. (This happened with a John Ritter sitcom, he died, and they brought in James Garner to play the Grandfather and take over the show.) And I've seen them do it with a lot of police procedurals. Usually doesn't happen with shows that have a lead. But it has - Roseanne is a prime example. They killed off Roseanne (because the actress kept getting herself into all sorts of trouble) and renamed/rebooted the series as The Connors.

Child actors? I've seen all three - in soaps and prime time. What works best is killing off or writing them out, unless the character is central to the plot, then recasting may become necessary.
But it is really hard to recast without jarring an audience, particularly with lead characters. Audiences are more willing to handwave minor character recasts, but not lead or major characters, and the longer an actor is with the series the harder it is to recast.

Example? They'd have had to kill off Buffy - in order to do the show without her. And possibly rename the series. Fans still won't accept another actress playing that role. Same with the other characters in that series. Recasts weren't possible. Now, if they were playing a monster under loads of makeup? Not a problem.

LOST - would have been easier to do recasts, because so many characters plus the sci-fi angle. (It's easier to do with fantasy and sci-fi series). But they just killed off characters or threw them off the island. (I listened to and read a chapter from Burn it All Down - which went into depth on what was happening behind the scenes on Lost. That was a toxic show.)

Ethan Rom gave me the creeps. Not sure it's William Mapother's fault, but when I look at him I try to see resemblance to his cousin, Tom Cruise (whom I dislike, and perhaps it rubs off on poor William.)

I thought Diane Keaton was miscast as Kay Corleone in the Godfather movies, especially the first one. In my mind, she's primarily a comedienne, and I expected to see her start mugging in her serious scenes with Michael. Maybe it's just me.

It is a problem and along with rules on how long child actors can work compared to adults, might be a reason most 'high school' characters are played by actors in their late teens/20s.
"Locke and Key" had their youngest child visibly growing up over the 3 seasons and since the show did have a few time jumps it just about worked.
I'm partway through 'from' s2 and Ethan already looks much older. Maybe they can handwave it with the mysticism!
I'm not keen on recasting. I can't think of any examples where it worked well off the top of my head. In a sci-fi or fantasy show you might get away with it easier as in Dr Who. Temporary body swaps, odd clones, evil not quite twins, magical mishaps etc. My nephew watched "Worst Witch" for a while and didn't mind they changed one girl (with alleged magic gone wrong) as she looked quite similar and she wasn't his fave but when they changed the main character he got bored with the show and stopped watching, so I think he feels the same!

Like others, I watch a lot of soaps, so I'm used to recasts - though less often with Primetime shows. I'm also not a huge fan of MCD, so I probably would have preferred if Show B had just recast, though I understand why they went another way. I think if it makes story sense, getting rid of the character is fine.

Stacey

I know recasting can be hit or miss but sometimes, it is the best option. I never watched How I Met Your Mother but they did film the ending right away because the kids would get too old and well, that ended badly for them, from what I've heard. But I think they learned their lesson and are careful not to show them in How I Met Your Father, at least according to my sister who watches.

Belatedly, I have to go with Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, on two levels. First because the charactwr in the books is in his early 30s if you go by JKR's (admittedly atrocious) math, and there's just no way. Which takes away from the tragedy of Harry's parents dying as young as they did, especially since all the other actors, including Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, and the actors who played James and Lily were all too old as well. But I'm singling out Rickman because casting him made Snape sexy, which has led to some truly atrocious fic (not to mention the Snapewives) over the years. Snape is not supposed to be sexy, people!

The main reason why I haven't watched Good Omens is because the casting off Crowley and Aziraphale is just off to me. I love the book, so perhaps I just have my own vision of what the characters are supposed to look like. I'm usually more lenient when it comes to casting because it's about an actor's portrayal of the character more than their physical appearance. They are good actors, and they may even be good in those respective roles, but I just cannot get over how wrong it is, personally.

Another example are the adults in Harry Potter, as there's been debates among fans about how miscast they were. Clearly the chosen actors are veteran British actors who wanted to be part of the franchise, which is understandable, but they certainly weren't the ages of the characters from the books.

When it comes to child actors, it's quite a tricky situation. It's obviously known that child actors aren't going to remain like that forever, so there needs to be planning ahead of how to handle them as time goes on. To go with the Harry Potter example again, it was smart of them to cast the kids as the actual ages they would've been for the first movie and continued on filming each installment so they kept being around the same age as the characters. Otherwise you're going to have a situation like Stranger Things where there is going to be time skips because these kids are going to be well into young adulthood by the time they reach a certain point.

Just curious, what do people think is the best way of handling that issue: to recast, or write out the character?

Recasting can also be a tricky thing, although sometimes it is necessary if the character is an important factor to the story where killing them off or writing them out ("putting them on the bus") isn't that much of an option. But even then, it can depend on the circumstances involved, so it's really hard to say.

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