Interesting. Jack Lord was a guest star in one of the earliest episodes of the show. He was a good guy, and it was heavily implied he’d make a great addition to the team.
Don’t remember if Fred MacMurray or Van Johnson were ever in an episode, but David “Larry Tate” White and Elizabeth “Samantha Stephens” Montgomery did one together. It was weird watching them as lovers. I kept waiting for Darrin to storm in at any moment and demand an explanation. :eek:
(I think Elizabeth was nominated for, or maybe even got, an Emmy for her performance in that one.)
Yeah, I was skeptical too, which is why I qualified the statement.
But as for Ursula, Kudrow’s recurring character in Mad About You, I don’t think that originally had anything to do with the creation of the Phoebe character. From what I understand, the writers came up with the idea to make Ursula and Phoebe twin sisters only after Friends was already in production.
Actors that were considered for the role of John Rambo in First Blood: Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Clint Eastwood, Robert Deniro, Steve McQueen, Al Pacino, John Travolta, Powers Boothe, Nick Nolte, and Michael Douglas
Speaking of Stallone films, United Artists wanted Robert Redford, Ryan O’Neal, Burt Reynolds, or James Caan to play Rocky Balboa, but Sylvester Stallone insisted on playing the role himself.
Non-fiction: William Shatner was the first and only choice to host “Family Feud”. Until Richard Dawson’s agent threatened Goodson-Todman to have Dawson no longer say anything and just hold up cards on “Match Game”.
Lisa Kudrow was originally cast as Roz in Frasier, but was replaced because she didn’t come off as the tough professional that Roz was supposed to be.
Frances Fisher (Rose’s mother in Titanic) was set to play Jill Taylor on Home Improvement, but was replaced because of “lack of chemistry.” Specifically,she seemed intimidated by the Tim Taylor character, while Patricia Richardson had no problem calling him out.
Supposedly the producers of *Modern Family *had narrowed the choice of Jay’s character to either Ed O’Neill or Craig T. Nelson before finally going with O’Neill.
Ray Liotta turned down the role of Tony Soprano , did not want to do a TV series at the time. Around 20 other actors from Goodfellas ended up in the Sopranos. Lorraine Bracco turned down the role of Mrs. Soprano for the role of Dr. Melfi.
Nominated for “The Rusty Heller Story” as a scheming, charming, deadly Southern prostitute trying to become a power in the post-Capone Chicago underworld. Norman Fell was also in the episode and years later “Three’s Company” went through 3 different pilots until Aaron Spelling saw a test of Suzanne Somers, remembered her from the “Tonight show” and realized there were two great reasons to cast her as Chrissy. He producers thought John Ritter was playing playing Jack Tripper as too clumsy and making him look too effeminate and thought of replacing him with Barry van Dyke or Michael Lembeck.
The pilot for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E” was originally filmed with the head of the agency being Mr Allison, played by Will Kulava. NBC executives told the producers to get rid of the actor with the K in his name. So they replaced Kuluva and hired Leo G Carroll to play a similar character named Mr Waverly and re shot the scenes with him in it. It turned out NBC wanted to get rid of the character Illya Kuryakin played by David McCallum but by then contracts were signed. As it turned out Kuryakin was very popular with McCallum getting the most fan mail.
As I understand it, in between NORTH BY NORTHWEST and CHARADE, Cary Grant in fact got offered the role of James Bond — and in fact accepted that offer, on the condition that he was only signing for one movie and not for sequels.
Which is, apparently, why the role went to a former bodybuilder from Scotland.
1935’s “Captain Blood” was first offered to Robert Donat, fresh off the success of “Count of Monte Cristo”. Donat turned down the role, fearing his asthma wouldn’t let him do the action scenes. A series of film tests led to the casting of a virtually unknown Australian actor, Errol Flynn. Jean Muir was originally supposed to play the female lead but after Donat turned down the movie, they got Olivia de Havilland, who had done three movies before.
