There was a character named Willie in S1 of Outlander. He was supposed to die a tragic death at the battle of Prestopans in S2, but the actor decided to take another role elsewhere (the podcast is very interesting, you can tell the showrunners were very Not Happy and didn’t even say his name) and they ended up having to kill off another character instead. So you can have an actor find out due to circumstances not related to plotline find out he’s out of a job.
I’m not sure that works any more… Any more, when I hear that an actress (and it’s usually said of women, not men) is “difficult to work with”, I assume it means “refused to sleep with the director”.
Is it? The last time I really heard this reputation, it was about Katherine Heigl. Is that what happened with her? I thought she was just a pain to deal with and so they cut her out of movie roles.
Nah, she just had a habit of being a diva on the set and badmouthing projects after the fact.
Well, in the famous MeToo cases, that’s how the women who said “no” were punished. Is that the only reason a director would call someone “difficult to work with”? Probably not. But one has to wonder, now, whenever one hears it.
“Hey, Bob! We need you to read a bit part for a crooked lawyer. Yeah, just a couple episodes. Sure, We’ll provide lunch. See you Thursday, Mr. O”
Wasn’t that the same for Ben Linus in Lost?
IIRC on Star Trek:TOS only Shatner and Nimoy were signed for a full season. DeForest Kelly, I think, was guaranteed 13 episodes and all the other cast members even less than that. Grace Lee Whitney was fired after eight episodes, and the last one she shot only showed her in the background, with no lines.
Thomas Waites (“Fox”)was originally going to be the main protagonist in the film The Warriors. Something you can pick up on from his prominence in the earlier scenes. But he fell out with the director and they killed him off halfway through, basically re-writing the film with Michael Beck (“Swan”) as the new lead.
Even better, she played a bit role as Dara in Half a Life and based on that got the role of Ensign Ro