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Aug. 30th, 2023 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tellshannon815Who 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.)
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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Date: 2023-08-31 12:46 am (UTC)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.)
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Date: 2023-08-31 10:42 pm (UTC)What usually happens over here with children in soap operas is that they'll use a child actor much the same age that the character's meant to be initially, and then when the character gets to about age 13, it's quite common to recast with an older actor for the purpose of more mature storylines (the character's still 13, but played by a 17 year old actor). But someone born in 1995 would never be in high school in 2000 on a UK soap opera.
The recasting thing with a new lead for police shows does happen over here as well.
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Date: 2023-09-01 02:02 am (UTC)Long-time soap viewers just handwave ages or laugh at them. I've seen them de-age characters on soaps, a character should be say 45, but with a new actor, they become 35.
Also they often have a situation in which the people playing the parents are say, two-three years older, than the actor playing their son or daughter.
To make matters worse? In this same soap? They changed the ages of all the kids born on screen.
Josslyn was born in 2009 - she's now 20. (LOL!)
Spencer was born in 2006 - he's now 21
Cameron was born in 2004 - he's now 20 (he actually is the only who is the right age)
Molly was born in 2005 and is now being played by a woman who is 39, married and having a kid by a surrogate, also working as an ADA. She's older than all of them.
Logic kind of gets thrown out the window when it comes to soaps.
They start out trying to use a child actor who would be the same age as the kid in the soap, and to the extent possible try to stick with that child actor as long as possible.