The Forgotten, a Jerry Bruckheimer show set to appear on ABC in the Fall, was going to be Rupert Penry-Jones' stab at US stardom - sort of. He was to play the part of Alex, a former cop whose daughter was kidnapped and never found, and who now runs a network for identifying dead bodies. You can read all about it in my ABC fall preview.
However, Penry-Jones - and just about every foreign actor in every pilot - was dropped from the show, along with former 24-star Reiko Aylesworth. No reason's been given but the general assumption is that to save cash, the networks hired cheaper actors from outside the US for the pilots, with the intent of dropping them in favour of bigger, more expensive names once the pilots had gone to series.
Anyway, our Rupe has been talking to Simon Mayo about being dropped from an unnamed US pilot (ie The Forgotten) and what he thought of it.
I may be running a competition to win a prize on this 'ere blog very soon.
Wow, that was vague, wasn't it?
See, I haven't decided on the prize. There's a range of options, all of them DVDs or Blu-Ray disks, most of them Film4/Channel 4 content, but I'm not sure what y'all would like best. So I'm going to give you the options, you say which one you'd like to win best, and I'll see if I can swing it with TPTB (no guarantees).
Slightly trickier meme this week. As you know, many shows last several seasons/series. Actors can get bored, get ill, have contract negotiation issues – or sadly they can die. In the case of pilots, they may not work at all well and might need to be gotten rid of.
In these cases, the producers can write them out or recast the character. Sometimes, this can actually be for the best, with the replacement actor turning out to be better than the original.
So meme of the week this week is
What's been your favourite piece of recasting?
There's a lot to choose from. Dynasty and Dallas did a whole lot of recasting – was Emma Samms a better Fallon than Pamela Sue Martin, who was also recast on The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew? Doctor Who recasts all the time. Bewitched recast the original Darren, and then reused all his scripts. Roseanne replaced Alicia Goranson with Sarah Chalke. The A-Team recast Face in between pilot and series. Ruby keeps dying in Supernatural and being replaced.
I'll open it up as well to US/UK remakes of shows, just in case you preferred Harvey Keitel (or even Colm Meaney) to Philip Glenister in Life on Mars. And I'll let you have movie series as well, just in case you think Robin Curtis was better than Kirstie Alley in Star Trek, for some reason.
As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.
Ah, men. It's all falling apart, isn't it? No longer king of the castle, the divorce rates through the roof, the wife always getting custody of the kids. Let's face it, women are succeeding where none-too-bright, male former sports stars are failing - you know, by working harder and being smarter. Damn them.
Is there nowhere, no realm where men have a unique selling point, "a special tool" if you like: an area where they're the best and no woman can succeed?
Read more on What have you been watching this week? (w/e 3 July)