Most miscast soap roles

[DRW50]

I think what interests me most with Amanda under Kathleen Cullen was her fragility and mental problems - she tried to be perfect but would often start to snap.

Toby Poser didn't get the chance to play any of this. She was good at camp but that was all they gave her for most of her run. The scenes where she learned she was Alan's sister were her best chance and she more than lived up to the material. I really wish they'd done more with her.

I enjoyed the Amanda/Alex sparring too. The only part I didn't really like was chasing Ross (embarrassing - yes they had history but it wasn't exactly a great love of Amanda's life), and the Malibu Madam stuff where she kept reminding viewers Matt loved the middle-aged ladies.

I would have had it where Amanda went to LA to try to save Morgan, who became a coke whore, and then, in the middle of all this, started to get involved in prostitution herself.

[Cheap21]

PC: David Gail and Alex Mendoza as Joe Scanlon. Michael Dietz was perfect as Joe and I have no idea why he was recastedl David Gail lacked any charisma that MD had and he came across very stiff, unlikeable and not too appealing. Being Irish really defined the Scanlon clan so casting hispanic Mendoza in the role was so jarring

[Mitch]

Carl, you are thinking WAY too deep for McTavish! I too wish they let Poser show more of Amanda's soft side, they did this quickly when she was about to be exposed, but in typical McTavish fashion is was played as a joke ..in one scene at Ed's going away party, Amanda goes to Josh to get help to stop the news coming up, and Reva overhear and she and Josh laugh in her face...(this is when I really started to dislike "NuReva," as with her past she had no reason to laugh at Amanda, and "RealReva," was never a hypocrite.) Poser plays it straight, like a woman who is having everyone turn on her. I wish they would have shown that this persona Amanda came back to town with was her way to covering up her feelings, as if it was a persona she created to protect herself. The deaging was nothing on Amanda going from a basket case who was (as Marland never got tired of reminding us) sexually frigid who spent most of her life locked in an attic!

Poser, like Marj had a way with a one liner and I think McTavish took too much advantage of that gift and making them both cartoons. ( I love the scene setting up the clone story in the Spaulding lab, Josh starts to strangle Alan, Amanda walks in, Alan huffs and puffs, "Amanda, Josh just tried to kill me," and Amanda casually strolling around the lab checking it out,not the least bit concerned says, "Who hasn't")

[Khan]

Actually, Amanda, as played by Kathleen Cullen, was created by Bridget and Jerome Dobson. Marland, though, was the one who tied her to the Spauldings by making her Alan's daughter. (I'm not even acknowledging the hideous retcon of that masterpiece. You can undo a lot in daytime, but you can't undo Marland's stuff. His stories were too meticulously crafted, IMO, to be messed with.)

I'm not saying Toby Poser was terrible, but she just wasn't Amanda. They could've easily said she was Brandon's long-lost, illegitimate daughter from some illicit affair, and she would've served the same purpose on the show without messing up established history.

[DRW50]

I didn't see that with Josh and Reva. I was on a GL hiatus then. Glad I missed it.

McTavish's GL run was very frustrating because she'd been at GL in the early 80's and shouldn't have made some of the mistakes she made. She just wrote so many characters in a nasty way almost as default. I remember how Josh was such a dick to Reva when she came back, even throwing up in her face that she had sold herself as a young girl to pay for food. Who does that??

It's like...why did you even bring Amanda back? Is it pulling a name out of a hat? Was it down to the wire between Amanda and Katie Parker?

I liked Toby's work and I'm sorry it didn't work out, especially since that was her only major daytime role.

[StevieM]

In order to be labeled "most miscast" I think it has to be a total casting disaster and it has to be a major role.

I think that Steve Wilder as Jack on DAYS clearly comes to mind. I also think that Jennifer B as Carly on GH was a bad fit. Another World had a terrible Sam when RKK left, but that had to be done on the spur of the moment. Eileen Davidson (along with Kelly #2) were both disasters as Kelley on Santa Barbara.

I wish Abigail Deveraux on DAYS had remained a devious schemer, like Megan Coletto played her, but as a child character I can't quite call the changes a miscast. And I almost feel like Starr Manning was recast with the same actress. I think Starr should have stayed a deviant.

[DRW50]

I liked Danny Markel, he was just a bit too wimpy to play Sam.

For me a big AW miscast was Laurence Lau as Jamie Frame. I know he'd been popular on AMC a year or two before, but he looked bad throughout his AW tenure (puffy and no energy - it must have been something in the water as Charles Grant looked the same way), and he gave weak performances. He was also very bland. It went against most of what Jamie was supposed to be - tormented, complex, driven, intelligent. He was such a weak recast that after AW let him go, Soap Opera Digest said they should just kill Jamie off.

[StevieM]

Russell Todd very quickly erased all memory of LL as Jamie.

[Quent]

ATWT:

Jon Prescott...an OK actor, but WAY too young for the role of Mike Kasnoff.

Lynn Milgrim...took a great nuanced portrayal by Claire Bloom and turned it into a Friday the 13th film.

Roger Howarth...another great nuanced portrayal by Scott Holroyd trashed by the King of Ham.

Randy Mantooth...although Ben Hendrickson owned the role of Hal Munson, two other actors (James Kiberd and the other guy whose name I can't remember) did credible temporary work. Mantooth was just boring beyond belief.

Who was the girl who played Maddie Coleman for a very short time? Totally miscast!

But this category BELONGS to Susan Batten, a good actress on OLTL who absolutely destroyed the role of Connor Walsh.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Joan Crawford's taking her daughters role on Secret Storm....

[John]

John Hilner was the other Hal in 94-95. Hilner also played the Dean when Luke got exspelled for stuffing the ballot box

Kelli Barrett was Maddie #2. Alex Chando was scheduled to return but ran into scheduling issues wityh the web show she was doing at the time

[Lust4Life76]

Her timing was horribly off, and she had no presence. And when she played Aunt Corrinne on OLTL it appeared she hadn't evolved in her craft.

[wingwalker]

She was awful. Totally polar opposite of Alex Chando's Maddie. I'm glad they didn't have her stick around long.

[Khan]

I guess the anguish over that one is still too raw around here.

[DeeeDee]

Yep!

To me it was never Vasi's beauty that made her wrong for the part.

It was that she couldn't & stilll can't (though she's marginally improved) act.

[Lust4Life76]

That Kardashian twit as Kassandra Kavanaugh...I am sorry but there are educated actors that would enjoy to get a decent break on a soap if not just for the experience and she crabbed about having to learn like all of 30 lines, that were each minimal lines at best, the longest two sentences tops! Granted it was stunt casting...and from what I saw given scenes of the rehearsal Frank Valenti was going to suffer the little fool...