I’ll go along with you on the first half of that. Guillaume was brilliant on Soap, but Benson became a completely different character in the spinoff. The Benson of Benson never struck me as a very interesting character or demanding role.
I’ve always thought Polly Perkins (Paltrow’s character) was the biggest weakness in what could have been a better movie, but I’ve never figured out if she was miscast or just mis-directed. She really needed to be more decisive and spunkier. As I’ve said before, Blythe Danner, in her prime, would have been perfect.
John Goodman as Dan Conner in Roseanne (and for that matter, Sara Gilbert as Darlene).
David Tennant as Hamlet
Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park
Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner in The Avengers
Alan Rickman as the Metatron in Dogma
Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes in Elementary
Ted Danson as D. B. in CSI
Bad:
Ben Affleck as Matt Murdock/Daredevil in Daredevil
Everybody (not just Jessica Alba) in Fantastic Four
Many years ago, there was a Lifetime-esque TV movie starring John Ritter as a man who was going through a divorce that seemed amicable until his STBX started dating a man their kids hated, and he turned out to be a psycho stalker. Ritter’s character was a real estate developer, and he ended up killing the psycho stalker and burying him in a fountain he was constructing on one of his properties.
The psycho stalker was played by Henry Winkler. :eek: And the casting was PERFECT because he doesn’t usually play characters like that.
More recently, there was a very good movie called “Things We Lost In The Fire” that didn’t get wide release. It stars David Duchovny and Halle Berry as a married couple, and they fit their roles perfectly.
AND
The interracial issue was never discussed, most likely because it just plain old wasn’t in the original script.
For that matter, Tricia Helfer. It would have been so, so easy to cast someone who was stunning, but not especially talented for that role - but Helfer had amazing levels of talent, across a wide range. It’s a shame that she hasn’t been cast in a similarly challenging set of roles since, so far as I know.
It would have been very easy for them to just hire the first dwarf actor to walk in the door, but they got someone who can act like a boss. Dinklage, if you ever see him in other work, is a hell of an actor.
My pick for best casting role is William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard in “Fargo.” I know they gave the Oscar to Frances McDormand and good for her, but Macy was the true star of the movie, playing a hard role as well as it could possibly be played. His assumption of that character is so flawless that even after seeing him in a dozen other movies I find it disconcerting to see him interviewed and find out he’s NOT Jerry Lundegaard.
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For that matter, Tricia Helfer. It would have been so, so easy to cast someone who was stunning, but not especially talented for that role - but Helfer had amazing levels of talent, across a wide range. It’s a shame that she hasn’t been cast in a similarly challenging set of roles since, so far as I know.
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Tricia Helfer was legitimately scary-ass creepy in the role of Gaius’s “vision girlfriend.” Menacing and weird; she was often the most unsettling thing in the show. Why she doesn’t get more work I cannot imagine.
But I don’t even think she was the best cast female on the series; that goes to Mary McDonnell as President Roslin, who could not have been better chosen and turns in as fine a performance as anyone ever has in television history.
This is who I was going to mention. I read somewhere that initially they had the original Tick costume covering his eyes but because of Warburtons’ facial expressions they took the eye coverings off so we could see his eyes and eyebrows.
He still does the eyebrow and squinty thing on Rules of Engagment and it always reminds me of him playing The Tick. If I won the lottery I would pay to bring the show back.
Also on Rules of Engagement Adhir Kalyan as Timmy is the perfect straightman to David Spades’ Russell.
Other goods:
Jim Parsons as Sheldon
And I agree Sheldon and Niles Crane in the same show would be hilarious.
Pretty much all of the cast of Arrested Development, but I’m going to single out Will Arnett. He had an especially difficult job because he was playing a character who had to simultaneously be overbearingly arrogant and desperately certain he was going to fail - and he nailed it.
This is a bit unfair because it’s really the reverse; Chandler WAS Matthew Perry. His specific job was to act like himself, and the character was written to be like him.
I agree that all the roles were well cast. Even, umm, whatshername, Bland. But I’m arguably most impressed by Tony Hale as Buster. If you’d shown me some of the scripts on paper, I could have come up with a pretty good mental image of who GOB was supposed to be and why he was funny, but no mental image I came up with of Buster would possibly have matched up with what the character ended up being.
What about the Golden Girls. The producers want Rue McClanahan for Rose (she had just played the airhead Vivian on Maude) and Betty White for Blanche (she had just played the man-hungry Sue Ellen on Mary Tyler Moore). When Rue was waiting to audition after Betty, she thought “I would be perfect as Rose” and tried to think up a way for the producers to let her audition for the role. The producers came out and told her not to bother auditioning because “Betty has been cast as Rose.”