Best Use of Stunt Casting

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by Mandy Moore’s Appearance on last night’s “Scrubs”.

Stunt Casting is when a TV show has a guest star that’s a legitimate celebrity that’s arguably more famous than the regular cast, or at least a step above the usual unknowns filling short-term roles. When the promos hype who the guest star is more than tease you with the episode’s plot or jokes, you’ve got stunt casting.

It’s not a new thing, several shows from the 1970’s, like “the Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”, seem to be built around the ability to do as much stunt casting as possible. And while it’s sometimes distracting and awful, sometimes stunt casting actually works. Share your favorite (and least favorite, I suppose) examples.

In the dramatic category, ER is probably in the current stunt casting champ. They seem to have turned it into an annual tradition to bring in some star and give him some dread disease or injury for an episode or two. Bob Newheart, Ray Liotta, and James Woods have had their turns. I didn’t see Liotta, but Newheart and Woods did awesome jobs.

Appropriately enough, ER’s spunky little sister Scrubs is also a heavy user of stunt casting, and it’s usually worked out pretty well. Besides Moore, they’ve had Brendan Fraiser (as Dr. Cox’s brother), and a long-term stunt cast by Heather Grahm as the new Psychiatrist that befriends our heroes.

In older stuff, a classic Cheers moment was the appearance of John Cleese as a couples councilor that tells Sam and Diane that they’re incompatible. After an episode’s worth of whining and prodding by Diane, he relents, and declares them the best couple ever in a closing rant that’s worthy of anything from his Python days.

But the Gold Standard of stunt casting is Charlize Theron’s turn on Arrested Development as Michael’s new love interest, who was either a British spy, or mentally retarded. They even worked a “Monster” reference on there, and made fun of themselves for stunt casting in a later episode.

2

Futurama did a consistently good job, the highlights being Vice President Al Gore as the leader of the space-time continuum-protecting Vice Presidential Action Rangers (also starring Nichelle Nichols, E. Gary Gygax, and Stephen Hawking); Lucy Liu as a robot with a Lucy Liu personality download; and William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and Walter Koenig as themselves, trapped by a life form that made them play out his Star Trek fanfiction.

–Cliffy

3

Does Sally Field’s excellent recurring role as Abby’s mother count? Because that’s got to be the best example ever if it does.

4

Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg in different episodes of “Whose Line Is it Anyway?”

5

I Love Lucy did a whole string of episodes in Hollywood just so they could bring on various celebrities, so the practice dates back to the early days of TV.

But the best stunt ever wouldn’t officially qualify as stunt casting under the OP’s definition. It wasn’t hyped, promoted or even mentioned. It’s Suzanne Pleshette’s appearance as Emily in the final episode of Newhart.

6

Good Catch!

Besides Futurama (also had the Beastie Boys, and several other Head-in-Jar cameos), The Simpsons has led the way in animated stunt casting. Often, they’re godawful, but there’s a few gems in there: Albert Brooks as Hank Scorpio, Ron Howard as Himself, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Mindy Simmons come to mind.

Justice League Unlimited, and its predeccessor shows, use a lot of surprisingly well-known talent in its voice acting. Hell, at this point they’ve had pretty much the entire cast of Firefly join the Justice League. The only ones that felt gimmicky were Fred Savage and Jason Hervey as bickering sibling heroes Hawk and Dove. And perhaps Mark Hamill reprising his role as the Trickster.

7

I love the I Love Lucy with Superman (Steve Reeves?)

I really liked Christina Ricci the other night on Grey’s Anatomy.

Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis on Friends were both really good.

Nancy Reagan on Different Strokes is a camp classic.
Star Trek has a lot of examples but they aren’t really stunt casting. David Ogden Stiers on TNG was fantastic.

8

George Reeves. Steve Reeves was the former Mr. Universe who starred in numerous European Hercules movies.

9

Do I get half credit for that one?

10

Well, there’s Paris Hilton showing up in an episode of Veronica Mars…

Jean Claude Van Damm had a cameo on Friends, in a movie Joey was playing a bit part in.

Cher showed up in Will and Grace, and got mocked by Jack for doing such a bad Cher impersonation.

11

Also Brooke Shields, in I think the same episode.

–Cliffy

12

Hell, the had Stephen Hawking as himself in one episode. Via hologram. And boy, didn’t he look like he got a blast out of it.

“Oh, no! Not the apple story again!”

13

Homicide life on the street is one of my all time favorite shows.

Off the top of my head I can remember Robin Williams, Lily Tomlen, Bruce Cambell, Jay Leno, Alfie Woodard and James Earl Jones guest starring.

As a hijack, wholsome all american boy Steve from Blues Clues once was a scruffy drug dealing murderer once. Quite a shock I tell you.

14

One instance I always remember was Betty White on St. Elsewhere. She was a naval officer visiting the hospital. In a subplot, one of the psychiatric patients (an overweight man) was convinced he was Mary Richards from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Naturally, the two pass each other in the hallway and the man starts yelling, “Sue Ann! Sue Ann!”

Also, one of the psych ward patients was Mr. Carlin from The Bob Newhart Show.

15

The Brice Willis and J-C Van Damme turns on Friends were pretty good, but my personal fave was Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. The scene with Pheobe coaching her through “Smelly Cat” was priceless.

16

Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as “The Ghosts Who Stole Christmas” on The X-Files.

17

My favorite Scrubs cameo was “the minister who kind of looks like Mr. Sulu”–played, of course, by George Takei. (Not sure if such a cameo counts as “stunt casting”, though.)

18

Also excellent was the second Man in Black in the Charles Nelson Reiley episode (IIRC), but it wasn’t exactly the same kind of stunt because it wasn’t advertised but rather was a payoff of the episode.

–Cliffy

19

St. Elsewhere used to do stuff like that all the time. My favorite is when Timothy Van Patten (previously of White Shadow fame) showed up as a patient’s husband (IIRC) and Luther said “Hey! Salami!”

–Cliffy

20

Vince Vaughn, very unconvincing as some scamming Hollywood schmo who slept with Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City.