Recast, Write Out, Replace?

[selenak]

Soooo, any new watchers marathoning B5 are bound to come across a certain event that happens more than once, and a friend of mine just have. This has reminded me that actors for some reason becoming unavailable is of course hardly a B5 only phenomenon. And many a show I've seen deals with it in a variety of ways. Blake's 7 wrote its leading man (and one of the supporting characters) out after two seasons, though it brought him back for two more episodes. Alias responded to Lena Olin not being avalable for season 3 by giving her character a sister to cover for her temporary absence, then brought her back in seasons 4 and 5, though not to the same extent as she'd been present in s2. Farscape killed off a supporting character when the actress had too much trouble with the extensive make-up. JMS switched leads but also tried recast in one case - Na'Toth - which didn't really work out. The last example not withstanding, my own fannish instinct is to wish the show in question would go for a recast - unless the character departure was an intended part of the story, as with Ned Stark in Game of Thrones - because if Ive gotten invested in a story and its characters, I don't want said character's development suddenly cut off because the actor leaves for whichever reason. What do you think?

Poll #26784 Recast, Write Out, Replace?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

View Respondents

If an actress/actor becomes unavailable, the character should be....

View Answers

recast - Loss of actor should not lead to us losing the character as well!
16 (39.0%)

written out, because new actors take me out of the story and abrupt departures happen!
18 (43.9%)

replaced by a new character getting essentially their story
7 (17.1%)

Comments

[lirazel]

I'm one of those people who gets really attached to the character as played by the actor. I'm trying to think if I've ever been okay with a replacement (within the same TV show--other adaptations or reboots or spin-offs or movie versions are different), and I can't think of one.

So my vote is for written out. At least 95% of the time. Though I might be okay with replaced if it's done really well and doesn't feel forced.

[ruuger]

Same (unless it's a super minor side character). To me a recast character is already fundamentally a different character. I'm also trying to think of any instances where a striaght-up recast has worked for me (within the same canon continuity - I don't mind recast in prequels/reboots/etc). For example when they recast Capheus on Sense8, the original was one of my favourites and the new version didn't work for me at all.

So I'm Team write the character out completely or give the storyline to another character, whichever works best for the story.

My choice of icons is intentional)

[chelseagirl]

Depends. One of my fandoms is a show from the early 70s when things were more episodic, of course. One of the lead actors killed himself, and the network insisted they just carry on with a new actor subbed in. The co-star was not happy, everyone involved needed time to mourn, but they were thrown back to work.

Ironically, the new actor was a good friend of the late actor's, so he was being resented for replacing someone he was also mourning.

It would have been better if they'd created a new character in that case. And preferably the rest of the season off with a new start the next year. But no.

Re. B5, at least they did something interesting with O'Hare's character when they wrote him out. (My partner is a HUGE B5 fan.)

[kathyh]

I know which show you are talking about and, while I’m usually OK with recasting, in that particular instance they really shouldn’t have done. I like to think that these days everyone involved, actors and fans, would be treated with more sensitivity in such a tragic situation if only because the online outcry would be so huge.

[chelseagirl]

Agreed.

Although if they'd just pulled the plug, there wouldn't have been enough episodes for syndication and we might never have seen it again. The eternal dilemma.

Nowadays I like to think they might have suspended production, wrote their way around it, and come back with a revamped storyline. But who knows.

[watervole]

I agree, it worked in B5. But mainly because he was able to come back on a few occasions and finish his own story line in a way that really worked for the series as a whole.

Kudos to Straczynsky for making it work.

[aurumcalendula]

It depends imho.

I think Due South did an interesting version with Ray.

[topaz_eyes]

I wish these were checkmarks instead of radio buttons, because each works depending on the situation and the actors chosen to replace the original. I think a minor character can be recast without affecting the storyline too much, e.g Melissa Gilbert replaced Beth Toussaint as Anna Sheridan in B5.

I don't think a major charcter can be re-cast and not affect storylines, unless it's baked into the show like in Doctor Who (even then that's more a replacement than a recast), or the actor is strong enough to make the role theirs. David Bradley's turn as the First Doctor was a stroke of genius. Sarah Chalke replaced Lecy Goranson as Becky Connor in Roseanne and the show just rolled with it.

It might be easier for movies: Richard Harris and Michael Gambon played Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies, Mark Ruffalo replaced Edward Norton as The Hulk in the Marvel movies, Don Cheadle took over for Terrence Howard as James Rhodes.

[yhlee]

This - I voted for one but honestly I'd say it depends on the individual show/movie and the circumstances and the specific actors involved.

[kore]

And IIRC, Roseanne did a fun credits sequences riffing on the Patty Duke theme song ("They're Beckys, identical Beckys") which was cute.

I agree that recasting a minor character, or a part that requires heavy makeup, goes a lot more smoothly. That's a good point about recasting being easier in movies too, maybe, because there's typically a lot more time in between installments and they're much shorter than TV shows.

[ratcreature]

Yes, this.

I think with movies it's also easier because the narrative often makes a real jump. It's kind of similar to casting different actors for a character at different ages (which I find okay, rather than doing creepy CGI), if a bit less clear.

[genarti]

Agreed!

If I had to pick one, I guess I'd say recast, but really it depends on so much. Can the character be written out in a way that works, or will it just feel cheap? What were the circumstances -- how the rest of the cast and crew feel about working with a replacement? How inimitable a performance was it? Is it the kind of SFF show where you can have a macguffin account for some of the changes?

They've recast Mat in the new Wheel of Time show, for instance, after the actor left the show, because that's an adaptation where you genuinely cannot write out the character without wildly breaking the plot. It remains to be seen how the new actor will do, of course, but I can't imagine them doing anything else. Whereas in a show that doesn't have preexisting source material, you've got more freedom to decide how to do it. I do often feel that writing out a character feels cheap and abrupt, though, unless the writers really manage it very well.

Edit: the more I try to think of examples of successful recasting, though, the more I think what I really mean is "whatever works for the show/movie/etc, but make sure it's something that respects the storyline and character as well as the logistics."

(The answer I absolutely do not want, however, is weird uncanny valley CGI recreations of an actor. Looking at you, Disney.)

[jesuswasbatman]

I don't think David Bradley's First Doctor worked at all, and I don't know who was most to blame out of actor, writer, or director. "Twice Upon a Time" just treated him as a stereotypical grumpy, bigoted old man, with none of the whimsy and mischief Hartnell brought to the part.

[schneefink]

It very much depends, also on how big the role was until now etc., and of course there is always some luck involved/it depends on how good the casting is for a recasting. One example of a recast that I thought worked really well was Dufresne in Black Sails: his role was not that big before but big enough that a character change would have to be explained, and they had iirc a good reason for the character to switch up his hairstyle etc so it genuinely took me a while to notice. But if it is a main character in a show I am not sure a recast would work for me. Though maybe, if well done.

[trobadora]

Idk, I feel like a character on film or tv is too much a co-creation and doesn't really exist independently of the actor, so if you lose the actor, you can't meaningfully keep the character. They become someone else. And sometimes that's preferable to writing them out entirely, but still.

[likeadeuce]

I put recast though really I'm an 'it depends.' Sometimes what makes the character cool or interesting is really tied to the performance and if it's not crucial to the planned story for them to be part of it, then it can be handled other ways.

I'm trying to think of an example of a really successful recast and nothing much is coming to mind. At best, they are kind of invisible.

I think the Star Wars sequel trilogy would have benefited greatly from recasting Leia but in the context of Carrie Fisher's importance to the franchise, I understand why it wasn't done.

[likeadeuce]

Oh also as much as I like James Marsden, X3 definitely could have recast Cyclops rather than doing -- that, but there's a larger issue of that franchise not valuing the character enough anyway.

[lirazel]

Honestly, I can't think of a recast that's even invisible. I always notice and it always bugs me.

[salinea]

Crazy Ex Girlfriend recast an actor after a long absence of the character. I could never consider the character as the same person. I'm not sure anything more graceful could have been done given that they wanted to bring back the character... so i guess written out or replaced is my vote.

[ironymaiden]

I appreciated they way they just rolled with the idea that both of them had changed that much. I also never warmed to new Greg, but who could ever replace Santino Fontana?

[muccamukk]

my answer does not apply to Doctor Who.

[musesfool]

I'll echo the people who say it depends - I think it can work in certain circumstances (the MCU ones mentioned below for example) but not so much in others, even with small parts - I thought recasting Avasarala's husband, for example, was really poorly done on The Expanse and it threw me out of the narrative every time he appeared.

[thawrecka]

I think it depends on the sort of story it is. There are some shows, mostly comedies (Roseanne, Bewitched), where I don't care about the recast or watch them only intermittently and don't even notice. But I think a lot of the shows I watch are stories where you can do interesting things with writing a character out, whether it be 'the villains killed them' or 'they got a job on another spaceship because their career was stagnant here' or 'they transformed into a fish' or whatever.

I have tried to avoid spoilers but ...

[redfiona99]

Oooh, I had been thinking about this in light of how "In the Shadow of Zha'Ha'dum" would have worked with Sinclair, or rather, I'd been thinking about how Sheridan would have worked if Sinclair had still been there - I think JMS said he was always going to appear. Now whether Sinclair would have "spoiler" anyway or how that story would work if Sheridan would have "spoiler" instead, and just the idea of Sheridan Starkiller as "spoiler".

In general, I think I prefer written out, but it has to be done well. In an ideal world the new character would have their own story or at least be different enough that it's not an obvious cut and paste job, but I'm willing to grant creators a couple of episodes' grace while they figure out who the new character is, especially if the reason has been sudden.

An example of it being done well would be Worf for Tasha Yar. An example of it being done badly would be Ryan Wolfe for Tim Speedle on CSI Miami. It was a mixture of things, partly that Wolfe was unlikeable (seriously new guy, you have not earned being mean to Delko rights yet. You never earned being mean to Delko rights.) and partly you could tell they'd written some of the script for that season for Speedle because lines sounded so much like him and nothing like what they'd established of Wolfe.

[st_aurafina]

I like getting new characters in? It expands the world, gives us more points of view. I'm thinking of Ezri, and I know she was controversial, but I liked her, and I liked the alternate point of view on Trill life that her character afforded us.

[settiai]

I'm very much for writing out the original character and/or introducing a new character. If a show recasts a character, it completely throws me out of the story, and - especially if it's a major character - that's often enough to make me have to quit the show because my brain refuses to accept the fact that everyone on the show has gone blind and deaf enough to not realize that someone looks, sounds, and acts completely different.

[nomadicwriter]

Recast for minor characters, written out for major ones. I'm not great with faces and not likely to even notice the recast of background or occasionally recurring characters, but I get to know the main characters' voices very well and that provides a great deal of my feel for their characterisation, so a new actor with even slightly different line delivery or rhythm of back-and-forth rapport with other actors will ping me as a completely different person, and I can't marry the two together in my head. (Sometimes you do get an amazingly good impression of the original actor, but I feel like casting for that tends to be not so great unless it's just for a brief cameo to patch over actor unavailability or seamlessly mesh with existing canon in a flashback/time travel incident, because it generally means prioritising the impression over other aspects of their acting ability or chemistry with the cast.)

So I definitely prefer a new character to be brought in, and all things being equal, if I was a fan of the original character I would probably prefer the new one to be different and doing their own thing rather than just taking over the previous character's storyline. I feel like Babylon 5 is a slightly special case in that regard because it was so planned out and JMS did give forethought to how to keep storylines going in the event of actor replacement, but usually it's not that considered and feels more awkwardly wedged in to have the new character to just come in and take over a storyline that was written around someone else.

[cahn]

WELL. Um. B5 is kind of convincing me that I like "replace by a new character." In the hands of a good showrunner, anyway, where the new character isn't acting just like the old character -- and where the character has a storyline that is important (so it's not just episodic).

As others have said, it seems to work a little better with movies than with TV shows, but even with movies I never really liked, for example, new!Saavik, because the actor really is a key part of the character for me. In terms of "replacing," I'm trying to remember how I felt about Ezri Dax! I think she annoyed the heck out of me at first, but gradually grew on me.

[watervole]

It sort of depends on whether I'm more invested in the character or the actor and how much their story intertwines with the plot and other characters and how much I trust the director...

I mean, can you imagine anyone else as Londo other than Peter Jurassic?

But I think it also depends on how far into the series you are. I actually wish Talia had been recast as a lot of interesting plot threads went with her.

[jack]

Ooh, that's an interesting question.

I think it's the sort of thing where there's pros and cons for all the options, and creating a TV show is the art of balancing which trade-off is best for the show in a particular circumstance. All creative works are full of this sort of trade-off, and ones that involve a large number of different people massively more so. When I was younger, I used to resent the need to compromise, and think "surely they could have done something better without cutting corners". But now I realise that everything is always a compromise, creating something is the art of making sure enough of it is outstanding, not finding a single "right" way. What partially helped me make peace with it was realising how often something I loved in a show was originally suggested by a practical constraint (e.g. when a character is written out, but the way they're written out actually turns out to be better for the plot).

And all of these have a trade off. Is there a potential actor who DOES really capture the character? I'm always sceptical because sometimes there's a recast that other people like and I don't, but the same is true for any plot development. Does writing the character out suggest any actively interesting plot developments that might not have come up? Is there a "character a bit like this but not" that people think would fit well? I think there's a place for all of them. For that matter, there's other potential compromises too especially in sci-fi, like inventing an in-universe reason for the character to turn into someone different looking, or a robot, or a ghost, or something.

So I can critique the times B5 didn't handle it perfectly, but I'm not sure I have any guide to doing it better. Changing the commander after S1 annoyed me at the time, but was probably one of the best replacements in any show considering that it let the rest of the series succeed. (I'm trying to think of any other notable successes. Recasting Mariachi as Antonio Banderas possibly? Maybe "recasting" Ray in due south?)