Speaking of Al Swearengen on Deadwood, creator/writer/producer David Milch’s first choice for the role was Ed O’Neill. I don’t know how far they got in negotiations or if O’Neill ever auditioned.
My understanding from various articles I read and the commentary is that they went with McShane for two reasons:
1- O’Neill wasn’t that interested since he didn’t need the money, wanted to spend time with his teenaged daughters before they left the house, didn’t want to live in (wherever it was filmed) several months a year, and was kind of tired of TV after having spent 11 years as Al Bundy, and consequently his salary and time demands were huge (I don’t think prima-donna so much as “I’m only interested if it’s an absurdly good offer”)
2- HBO and backers were afraid Married With Children had typecast him (especially since his Deadwood character is a misogynistic selfish drolly funny bastard named Al)
so it never came to be. However, O’Neill is an excellent actor- just seeing him in Wayne’s World which was on TV yesterday when he’s playing a very dark character [as comic relief] you don’t think of Al Bundy. It would have been really interesting to see if he could have shaken off the Bundy curse with the Swearengen cussing.
Mariska Hargitay did a number of episodes on **ER ** as the dumb-but-sweet-rebound-girlfriend of Mark Green after his divorce. The next season she was Olivia Benson.
Sometime during his gigs on The Daily Show and SNL, but before The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert guest starred as the bad guy in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
There was nothing comical about it at all, and he nailed it.
That was about the first time I saw him actually; I wasn’t a religious TDS watcher then, and it was memorable because it was clearly a retelling of the Mark Hoffman/Mormon/Salamander case only with a NYC/Catholic setting (since it would be hard to have a Joseph Smith forgery-murder case in modern NCY).
I saw Paul Reiser on a talk show once, and he described going to see Aliens with his mom. In the scene where Reiser gets eaten by one of the monsters, he heard his mom say, “Yes!”
Harry Morgan, in a relatively few years, played a deadpan cop on Dragnet, a nutty general on MASH*, and then returned as ornery, tough-as-nails Col. Sherman Potter on the same show.
What is the point of simply listing actors who have had multiple mundane roles over the years.
Yes, Harry Morgan played a generic cop and later created the memorable Col. Potter. Yes, Tony Danza has played multiple characters named Tony. So what? Lots of actors have had more than one succesful part.
The question is, who has created multiple memorable characters.
I love Michael Chiklis but I don’t think even he qualifies for this because The Commish wasn’t memorable.
I think Michael Hall does meet the criteria because both David and Dexter are so original and vivid. YMMV.
Bea Arthur may have done it. Maude was certainly memorable and I suppose whatsername from Golden Girls was, too.
Lucille Ball never did it. She just played the same character over and over.
I’m surprised John Candy left that character without incident, and went on as the beloved character actor that he became. Evil black bespectacled souless, Burton Mercer.
He then went to Ox in stripes, a hated yet sympathetic transformed character. Then there was Uncle Buck.
Another thread got me to thinking about Due South. I present Callum Keith Rennie. His role as Detective Stanley Raymond Kowalski ended in 1999, so let’s include that show & look at his TV roles through this year.
Newbie in the cracked Canadian comedy Twitch City.
Cylon Leoben Conoy in Battlestar Galactica.
A Haunted/Haunting baseball player on Kingdom Hospital.
Lew Ashby in Californication.
Evil minion Zero in Tin Man.
Plus roles in Smallville, Harper’s Island, & FlashForward. Among others. (I haven’t caught everything.)
I know he does a great villain, but he’s also got a wacky humor that sometimes gets to shine. Sometimes I’ll see him & think “boy, he’s gotten a lot more weathered since Ray Kowalski.” Then he’ll smile…
Ed Asner in a comic role as Lou Grant on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, and a dramatic role as Lou Grant on “Lou Grant”.
Patricia Routledge as a flighty, dimwitted housewife on “Keeping Up Appearances”, and a stolid, shrewd Miss Marple type on “Hetty Wainthropp”.
Alan Alda as a shallow, self-centered, womanizing Hawkeye in the early seasons of MASH, to a thoughtful, serious, pacifist Hawkeye in the later seasons of MASH.