(no subject)

[tellshannon815]

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.)

Comments

[shadowkat]

Except, with few exceptions, most of the teens in these shows are in their 20s. It has to do with child labor laws. Very few of the actors playing teens, if any, are actual teens. No one in Smallville was a teenager, they were all in their 20s. In Buffy? Only teens in that show - were well Buffy (Gellar was 17 or 18 at the beginning - playing 15/16, Dusku was 17, and Trachenberg 14 but everyone else was over 24). Beverly Hills 90210? Luke Perry was playing a teen at the age of 30.

Vampire Diaries? They were all in their twenties when they were in high school - it's why they pushed them out so fast.

Very few teen shows actually have teens cast in them.

[ilyena_sylph]

Yeah, I know, but Tom was very, very adult even in the first season. He stayed young-looking through the show, which is amazing, but it's just... wow.

[shadowkat]

It may have been deliberate though? They may have wanted him to come across as more adult, bigger, etc than the others?

[svgurl]

Yeah, all those high school shows especially set around the 2000s had actors who were older. I've always thought that part of the reason was that these shows had all these teenagers having sex and they felt better about them looking older.

As far as Smallville goes, I believe Allison Mack, Kristin Kreuk and Sam Jones (who played Pete) were all 18 when the show started but that's as young as it got.

[ilyena_sylph]

Yeah, that makes sense.

I have a personal theory that the explosion of shows that cast adults as teens is responsible for a shitton of body-image-fuckery/trauma/disorder in teenagers today, but that's a bit off the topic.

Yeeah, which did not help with having Clark look so very... Off.

[svgurl]

I agree with you regarding the body image issues. A lot of teens were probably disappointed/frustrated at not looking like these characters not realizing that no, teens are not supposed to look like that in the first place. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how old John Travolta was in Grease (because he is someone who also stands out as not looking the right age) and apparently he was also 24 (probably 23 when filming) so it has been an issue for a long time.

I think they had an episode with Lana in her underwear in s1? That would not fly if the actress was under 18. And Clark was shirtless a lot too.

Even as recent as "Never Have I Ever", I believe one of the actors was in his late twenties playing a high schooler. He ended the show in his first year of college but I think he was already in his early 30s at that point.

[shadowkat]

Not just in teens today. The teen shows in pretty much most of the 1980s-1990s had twenty-thirty-somethings. I'd gotten used to it. And also people did get screwed up by it. The movies were just as bad. We had twenty-something actors playing teenagers in the films. Ferris Bueller's Day Off? The leads were in their late 20s, early 30s. Breakfast Club? Everyone was in their 20s. They weren't child actors.

This was also true for much of the films in the 70s and far earlier.

Judy Garland was in her 20s when she played Dorothy Gale in Wizard of OZ (who is supposed to be 14 years of age).

[shadowkat]

It had nothing to do with the sex - although that could be a factor, it's just cheaper to have eighteen and above play the parts. Everyone under 18 has to have a parent or guardian on set with them, time off for school or a paid tutor on set, and can't work more than a specific number of hours daily. Kids are expensive, tough to work around, and its really hard to find good professional child actors.

Remember they had 22 episodes and it was broadcast network television. Now? They have maybe 6-10 episodes, and it's on streaming. It's easier to high teens for streaming shows.

On Smallville, I looked it up, you're correct Mack and Kruek were about 18 and 19, Welling was 24 and Luther was 29, but he was supposed to be older. It's kind of similar to what they did with Buffy - when the show premiered and they were all in high school?

[tellshannon815]

The other classic one there is Riverdale. I remember when it first started, to me Cole Sprouse was "Ben from Friends" and it seemed strange to me to think of him being in his twenties - that was in 2017, and by that point I was so used to teens in shows being played by 20 something actors that I pretty much rolled with it. Then came the decision to send all the characters back to 1950s high school for the final season, so the show ended up with 16 year olds played by a bunch of 30 somethings.

[ilyena_sylph]

OH yiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.

[shadowkat]

They had 30 somethings playing teens in the final season? Oh that's hilarious. Also so 90210. In the 20th century - teen shows were mainly made up of 20 somethings and often thirty-somethings. (Charmed, 90210, Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, etc.)