Tina Fey wrote her new NBC comedy, 30 Rock, with certain actors in mind. Among them: Rachel Dratch, a former Saturday Night Live cast mate with whom Fey also starred in a two-woman comedy for the stage in 1999 and 2000. Fey was looking forward to writing for her friend, but after the first episode ?
with Dratch in a starring role ? she was left to reconsider. "I think what we learned from the pilot is we want to change her role a little bit," said Fey, who gamely put a positive spin on the decision to refocus the show.
Though still with 30 Rock, Dratch has been reduced to "playing a wide array of characters on the series" ? pretty much what she did on SNL. The actress fell victim to a regular TV occurrence: recasting.
In late summer, the pages of Variety magazine are littered with succinct recasting notices: Sometimes the actor being replaced isn?t even mentioned by name, as if he or she never existed. For viewers, of course, that is the case.
(Dratch, who still has a job, is the exception.) The real reason for such changes is rarely announced, but sometimes one is made because the producers want to modify a role. Last year on Commander in Chief, for example, the actor originally cast as the teenage son of the president (Geena Davis) came off as scholarly and nerdy.
After the producers decided to depict his social life, the part was given to hunky Matt Lanter ? apparently a more-believable chick magnet. And sometimes a change is made because an actor tests poorly with focus groups.
The process is as cold as it sounds: A random group of people available to evaluate a show just doesn?t like what it sees. I can?
t think of any equivalent assessment in the real world. The rest of us don?t get the job of a lifetime only to have, say, the postal carrier, the pizza-delivery kid and the man who makes our lunchtime soup tell us they just don?
t think we look right in our cubicle. This TV season has featured more than half a dozen recast roles, including, perhaps most prominently, that of the mother on ABC?s drama Brothers Sisters.
Betty Buckley was originally cast and filmed in the premiere episode, but she was replaced by Sally Field. Series producers also swapped out a brother: Matthew Rhys as Kevin instead of Jonathan LaPaglia. (The premiere was reshot.
) Two characters on the CW comedy The Game were recast (Derwin and Kelly), as was the daughter of Ted Danson?s character on ABC?s Help Me Help You.
So was Nicole?s former football-playing husband, Yonk Allen, on CBS? The Class.
(Coincidentally, the actress who plays Nicole, Andrea Anders, earned her previous job when the role of neighbor Alex was recast on NBC?s Joey, the pretend-itnever-happened spinoff of Friends.) For as often as roles are recast, however, few such decisions have saved the show.
Much of the TV recasting that made news in the past decade came in series you?ve long since forgotten about, including UPN?s The Mullets (2003), Fox?
s Septuplets (2002) and UPN?s Love Inc. (2005).
Caroline in the City, which aired on NBC from 1995 to 1999 and starred Lea Thompson, would have been different had it remained on CBS, where it originated with Judith Light (Who?s the Boss?) as the star.
And Brooke Shields? sitcom Suddenly Susan scrapped its cast, producers and concept before airing ? and it still was never funny.
Perhaps the best-known recasting success story can be found in the sitcom Frasier. Peri Gilpin eventually earned the part of Roz, Frasier?s wiseacre radio producer, but Lisa Kudrow initially won it.
Kudrow, of course, went on to fame and fortune as Phoebe on Friends. The final irony in Dratch?s 30 Rock situation lies in the show?
s premise: A network honcho (Alec Baldwin) forces the show creator (Fey) to add an actor (Tracy Morgan), taking screen time from the character now played by Krakowski. Dratch can now tell Krakowski exactly how that feels.
News RSS