Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2018 August 19

= August 19 =

Same characters played by different people
Why are some film and TV characters played by different actors? InedibleHulk (talk) 23:41, 20 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Often it has to do with money and willingness to play the role (or not). In the case of Harris, he was unavailable for the later Harry Potter films, having died. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:49, 19 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Holmes wished she could come back, but decided not to and doesn't regret it. Whatever that's supposed to mean is left up to public interpretation. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:55, 20 August 2018 (UTC)


 * In some cases, it's health-related. For Bewitched, Dick York just wasn't physically able to continue, while Alice Pearce died. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:03, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It happened twice on Dynasty, when different actors played two siblings (Steven and Fallon Carrington) at different times. My favourite was the Steven Carrington character, who sustained hideous injuries in an oil rig explosion. His face was covered in bandages for a while after plastic surgery, and when they were removed, hey presto – he looked completely different! --Viennese Waltz 07:50, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I remember the case of Miss Ellie Ewing from when I was a kid. "Hey! they can't do that, that must be illegal or something!" Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:45, 20 August 2018 (UTC)


 * There's a series of Stargate episodes (three episodes of SG-1 leading into Atlantis), where in the first two episodes the character of Elizabeth Weir is played by Jessica Steen, and then the third episode (and thereafter on Atlantis) she is played by Torri Higginson. Never explained, just a completely different actress! They don't look or act anything alike. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:43, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I remember that in soap operas, it used to happen frequently. There would just be a brief voice-over stating "the character of xxx will now be played by yyy" before the new actor made his or her first appearance, and they would go on with the show with no further ado. Those types of shows used to demand a huge time commitment from actors, in return for low pay and recognition (except for leading parts), so there was a significant turnover of actors in supporting roles. Xuxl (talk) 12:41, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * They still do, although usually after the previous actor has been away for a while. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:49, 21 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Loosely related question —Tamfang (talk) 01:53, 21 August 2018 (UTC)


 * It's kind of pointless to talk about generalities; is there a specific switch you're interested in? Matt Deres (talk) 12:27, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * But the questioner asked about generalities. --Viennese Waltz 06:45, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I took the role from the original questioner (who left for "legal issues") to salvage this series. As myself, I already know more about the sort of switches I find interesting than anyone here can teach me. But I believe my character is largely motivated by a specific desire to learn more about Jack Crawford and John-Boy Walton (having been satiated by what Bugs and Hulk told her about Rachel Dawes and Albus Dumbledore, irrespectively). InedibleHulk (talk) 18:20, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
 * In its entry on "Actor Swap" TV Tropes distinguishes "three main reasons why a show or film might end up having multiple actors play the same role" :
 * "The original actor might have left, due to injury, contract dispute, illness, or even death. The most common way to handle this is to dispose of the old character in some way, and add a replacement. However, if a producer is too stubborn to write out the original character, they will need to do an actor swap. Three ways to do this are:
 * Fake Shemp: Hide it by minimizing the audience's view of the substitute.
 * The Nth Doctor: Explain it on-screen, using Applied Phlebotinum or Magic Plastic Surgery.
 * The Other Darrin: Just do it with no explanation.
 * In some cases, an actor may be replaced in the middle of production. Obviously, it would be too confusing to have the same character be played by two different people in the same film/episode. That is, unless your name is Ed Wood. Therefore, this can only be handled by:
 * The Other Marty: Reshoot everything with the replacement.
 * Alternately, the character might need to be aged, or made younger, beyond the capacity of cosmetics to do convincingly. Again, an actor swap is needed. Two common examples are:
 * Time-Shifted Actor: When the show has hefty time compression, squeezing decades into hours.
 * Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: The show is in real time, but the character ages unnaturally fast."
 * (I linked directly to the corresponding TV-Tropes-articles) ---Sluzzelin talk  13:14, 21 August 2018 (UTC)


 * My favourite example was Jeeves & Wooster, where the character of Madeline Bassett was played by Francesca Folan in series 1, Diana Blackburn in series 2, and Elizabeth Morton in series 3 and 4. The character of Florence Craye was introduced in series 3, played by Fiona Gillies, who was replaced in series 4 by the first Madeline Bassett, Francesca Folan. --Nicknack009 (talk) 14:46, 23 August 2018 (UTC)