Characters who's personalty/screen time changes when re-casted

[Saving ATWT]

ATWT: Lilly Walsh--The writing for Noelle Beck is radically different from that done for Martha Byrne. Martha was wimpy but still a character worthy of respect. Beck's Lilly is a blind idiot and comes off as pathetic. It seemed to start with her affair with Mike: Beck has a great body and they tried to play Lilly off as a sex machine. Martha is a lot of things but sex machine doesn't exactly come to mind.

I would have rather seen Lilly killed off than any of this silly [!@#$%^&*].

I've only seen one good recast and that was of Jack Abbot on Y&R. It bummed me out but was almost flawless.

[RomeAt50]

AMC-I was never a Babe fan but I did notice that the character and her relationship with JR changed after the recast. The newer Babe was blander although in some ways less annoying.

Another World- I've been watching old AW clips lately and I saw clips of both RC's Lorna and AC's Lorna and they seem quite different from each other.

[Paul Raven]

How about Katie and Donna Logan on B&B?Both are completely different from the original characters.

Some would argue that Liz Matthews on AW changed from bitch to dithering busy body when Harding Lemay brought the character back and Irene Dailey played the role.

[SFK]

Paul, that's interesting because from what I've seen of Irene Dailey, it's always been hard for me to imagine Liz as the hard edged upper middle class bitch I've read that she was. I do have ONE episode of AW with Audra Lindley, Lenore and Walter's wedding, and she's great in her little scene. She does seem slicker and more sophisticated, not a basket case like ID's Liz could be. As a matter of fact, I was just watching Audra Lindley last night in Desert Heart, talk about your HOT sex scenes (but not with Audra! ).

BTW, did Liz lose or run through her money at some point? From what I understand, she ended up sharing an apartment with another middle-aged lady, I forget the character's name. I don't know, maybe it was a Golden Girls deal for expenses and companionship, but I assumed Liz would have been a well off widow who kept her house. If this is too thread jacky, feel free to respond in the AW thread.

[DRW50]

The Matthews were written as middle class, right? I can't remember. I guess over time she could have gone through her money. Liz loved Mac so much she probably refused to take a salary at Cory. I sometimes imagined that after Mac died, Rachel had all of Liz's Cory items mailed to her, gave her a decent severance, and a big ceramic nose as a retirement gift.

Did you know that Audra helped the director of Desert Hearts finance the movie? I loved that movie.

[SFK]

I love that, hilarious!

From what I've seen, yes, the Matthewses appear to be middle class. But from what I've read at least, Aunt Liz was more upper middle. Maybe a fan from back then can give us a better understanding. I also think she and Iris had a bit of a relationship, but I don't know if that was social or merely born out of Iris' desire to keep tabs on Mac.

I didn't know that about Audra helping to fund the film. I wish her character had a more upbeat ending. I thought Patricia Charbonneau was just so hot, and Helen Shaver would have been RIGHT at home on soaps, particularly in the '70s and '80s. She struck me as a Lemay type.

[Mr. Vixen]

Well, though her screen time didn't change at all (she always got a TON), when Tamara Braun was recast as Carly's GH with Jennifer Bransford, the whole character changed.

She went from being mischevious and loveable, to annoying and overpowering, to mentally insane, to off the canvas for a few months.

Her whole run on the show was a hot mess.

Also, when Edward Quartmermaine was changed to Jed Allan. That was a mess, he went from crochety, loveable old man, to this hip, ten years younger man, who was just unlikeable, that had affairs with mental lunes. It was a horrible recast. And Jed Allan was actually YOUNGER than Stuart Damon (his onscreen son), I believe. Not only did his personality change, but after that whole mess with Heather, he got even LESS screen time than John Ingle (hard to believe, isn't it?!

[applcin]

ITA. Don't get me wrong. I liked JvD on GL and was actually happy he got the role, esp after he was so wasted on GL. I mean...I adored CR on OLTL, he was my favorite actor there but he had retired and the show wanted to bring the character back and I didn't begrudge them that. In fact, I had stopped watching OLTL during Mitch (and Victor's) horrible previous reincarnation and the arrival of JvD was what got me to start watching again. But I did feel like I was watching Ross Marler Buchanan.

Thing is, Clint Buchanan was named and modelled after Clint Ritchie. They were so melded together that nobody was going to be able to duplicate that. So, between that, and my like and respect of JvD, I accept that the character of Clint has changed and if anybody is to play this Clint, then I'm glad it's JvD. But I have and will always miss Clint Ritchie's presence on the show.

[DRW50]

I skipped most of that thankfully.

I guess we should also include John Ingle as Mickey Horton. Nothing against John Ingle, but really. Mickey and Bonnie??

[applcin]

Oh, here are a few more:

Duke Lavery on GH...from Ian Buchanan to Greg Beecroft. Duke lost his Scottish accent and all his charm.

DOOL - Jack Devereaux. The first two actors were both rather bland and non-descript acting-wise. And one was blond, the other dark-haired. Nice guy Jack #2 married Kayla. Then came Matt Ashford's Jack, who raped Kayla and had Steve beaten up.

In a couple night vs. day examples on GL:

Philip Spaulding - GA/John Bolger/GA

Cassie Layne - Laura Wright/Nicole Forester

AMC - Jake Martin

Seems to me RPG has a tendency to adapt roles to himself and not vice versa. His Jake seems more like Gus Aitoro to me than Jake Martin.

AW - Grant Harrison. Dack Rambo's version was ruggedly handsome, ambitious but not too bad of a guy. When Mark Pinter took over, he morphed into a dangerous, neurotic, obsessive metrosexual.

[Mr. Vixen]

Yeah, the Jed Allen as Edward storyline was HORRID.

The whole storyline of Heather stalking Skye started out really intrguing, as we thought it was Laura, but when Heather turned around in the park and said "Hello Skye...I'm Heather Webber", it was like WHOAH! and it started as a great storyline, but turned into GH changing history, and marrying her off to Edward (BIZARRE).

I wasn't a faithful DAYs viewer during John Ingle's run as Mickey...But I did see some of it, and saw some on YouTube as well...He seemed fine in the role, his storylines were bizarre tho.

[DRW50]

The only part of that story I saw was when Heather was possessed by the spirit of Lila. Yet one more kick to poor Anna Lee.

[Mr. Vixen]

Oh Lord, that was when it all went down hill...

There was this party with Georgie, Dillon, Brook Lynne, Sage (that Alcazar girl), and some black dude (who was friends with her..)

They did a Ouji board or something, and then Sage was hitting on Dillon, so Georgie got pissed off and Locked her in the basement. She turned up dead later. And then her black friend turned up dead too (shocker, huh? GH always kills the black peopoe...Poor, sweet justus..)

Then everyone though Mac was dead. But he wasn't. And Heather pretended to be possessed by Lila, and shoved her wheelchair down some stairs to scare people...Then it was revealed that the killer was Mary Bishop, who was married to Connor..WHo looked just like Nikolas. When Nik lost his memory in a car crash, Mary tricked him into thinking he was Connor. Then it all came out that he wasnt...And he went back to Emily. And this Mary person got all jealous and started killing people, cause she was after Emily.

After that was over, Edward realized Heather was a lune, and sent her to a mental ward.

The killings were kind of suspenseful, but it was a bust in the end.

[SFK]

Oh man, the only redeeming thing about that was Tracy's hilarious reaction. " What the HELL did you just say!? "

[DRW50]

I remember a bit of Mary. She gets revenge by killing people she didn't know and Nikolas and Emily didn't care about. Like Diego getting revenge on Jason by killing Georgie and Coop...we know how close they were to Jason.

Luza sucks.

I hated so much of GH at that time I could not watch. These days it still makes me annoyed but the big hates I had then (Courtney, the virulent hatred towards AJ which disgusted me even though I wasn't even an AJ fan, Emily and the awful homance with Nik, Stefan's assassination, Alexis as Dobson and the show's loathing of her) were much worse than anything I feel about current GH.

I think that was when Pratt was there too. Blech.