Actors in a TV series who appeared together in an earlier work

A lot of actors from Lost appeared in the Hawaii Five-O reboot. Daniel Dae Kim, Jorge Garcia, Terry O’Quinn, Jeff Fahey, Henry Ian Cusick, Rebecca Mader, Cynthia Watros, Tania Raymonde… probably others.

In the British TV comedy actor circuit there are many recurrent co-appearances that its not feasible to list them all. As well as established comedy pairings like David Mitchell and Robert Webb (Mitchell and Webb Sound, Mitchell and Webb Look, Peep Show, Back, Ambassadors) there are lots of co-appearances of actor/writer/producers with pairings like Rebecca Front and Julia Davis (Big Train, Nighty Night), Ruth Jones and Julia Davis (Nighty Night, Gavin + Stacey). There’s probably a big Excel spreadsheet somewhere.

Does the US have comedy pairings any more - the last one I remember is Lewis and Martin? Time to lift their game, or work out how to sustain working partnerships beyond a single project.

Dan Castellanata and Julie Kavner were on The Tracey Ullman Show and The Simpsons. (So were Nancy Cartright and Yeardley Smith, but only as Simpsons characters.)

Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry, married, starred on L.A. Law together as well as Hill Street Blues. They have done lots of plays and some movies together as well.

Mel Blanc, June Foray, and Frank Welker have all done a ton of voice work together on Warner Brothers cartooons but I am ill prepared to untangle the specifics. All three were in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Roger Allam and Anton Lesser acted together in Endeavour between 2013 and 2023. They’d previously appeared on screen together in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stanger Tides, as courtiers flanking King George.

In 1962, Carroll O’Connor was the guest defendant on an episode of “The Defenders.” Also appearing in that episode was none other than Jean Stapleton.

Key and Peele? I always assumed this (highly NSFW) sketch of theirs was a send-up of British comedy double-acts, especially the Two Ronnies:

The assassination of Ceasar was in an episode of Xena?

Like Mel Brooks,Wes Anderson has a group of actors that have been in several to many of his movies.

Wikipedia has a nice chart for this: Wes Anderson filmography - Wikipedia
Actors: the Wilson brothers (Owen, Luke, and Andrew), Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Bob Balaban, and Tilda Swinton

I started His & Hers on Netflix last night. In the first episode, Pablo Schreiber appeared. In the second, Chris Bauer. The pair were father and son (the Sobotkas) in season 2 of The Wire.

Lucille Ball appeared with Harpo Marx in Room Service. Harpo later did a guest shot on I Love Lucy.

For movies, some film directors had “stock companies” of actors who the used multiple times. Preston Sturges used William Demerest and Eddie Bracken in at least two films.

Woody Allen cast Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow opposite him in more than one movie.

John Ford used John Wayne, Ward Bond, and Victor McLaughlin in several films

Cary Grant played opposite Katherine Hepburn in Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, and Bringing up Baby.

If I see a still photo of Ron Howard (in a letterman jacket) and Cindy Williams (in a poodle skirt) together it would be impossible for me to tell you if it was from American Graffiti or a certain episode of Happy Days.

Ben Browder and Claudia Black appeared together in TV SciFi shows Farscape and then in Stargate SG1.

TCMF-2L

Have Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan (and Chis Parnell and Rachel Dratch) of SNL and 30 Rock been mentioned yet?

And later in Matlock.

She had a thumb in everything from the Akedah to the Sword in the Stone.

Some friends and I were once trying to figure out what the oldest and most recent historical figures she knew were.

She knew Abraham the Father but only by implication (the characters’ names are changed slightly, like “Icus” for “Isaac” & “Zora” for “Sarah”); King David she knew by that name. Albeit, there is some recent archeological evidence for David, the only source for either of Abraham or David is pretty much the bible. The oldest well-documented character is Homer-- but only Gabrielle met him.

That makes Hippocrates the oldest character Xena met.

The most recent were the knights of the round table-- but again, they may be legendary, and no one says “King Arthur” or “round table” although the round table is there, and so is the sword in the stone.

The most recent documented character is probably Boudica, who lived around 60 CE. Xena fought with her against the Romans in Britannica.

That was a lot of the fun of the show.

Speaking of SG1, it was very MacGyvery.

Cary Grant played opposite Irene Dunne in My Favorite Wife, The Awful Truth, and Penny Serenade.

There are lots of films from the golden era with the same leads-- I’m trying to come up with the same family group, or lead-lead-director group from then.

Hitchcock liked using the same female leads, but did not reuse men as much. He used Cary Grant a couple of time, and James Stewart 3 times, but not too many others I can think of.

John De Lancie and Richard Dean Anderson were also in Legend.

Many of the stars of the Canadian police drama 19-2 also starred in Letterkenny, including Jared Keeso and Dan Petronijevic. Many other actors starred in one of the shows and played recurring characters on the other (Tyler Hynes, Adrian Holmes) and many actors starred in one show and had bit parts on the other (Kaniehtiio Horn). Of course, many of the Letterkenny actors are also in the spinoff Shoeresy, so it’s a triple.

If you haven’t seen 19-2, try to find it. I had to download it through Hoopla via my library. One of the best police dramas out there, and from a Canadian perspective.

Since The Simpsons started as just a segment on The Tracy Ullman Show I wouldn’t count that.