What other instances have there been of an actor taking over a popular role (or even a new role) and tanking so badly that they were ushered off the show quickly (as in, 3 months or less)? My choices would be:

Y&R: Scott Seymour as Billy

B&B: Emily Harrison as Bridget

Edited March 23, 201312 yr by y&r_fan

Few come close to Charity Rahmer, whose reputation is only slightly overblown. Jessica Morris in her first two years on OLTL as Jen Rappaport did so for me, though. She only marginally improved later. Also horrible: the "I Want To Be A Soap Star" reality show winner, Mikey Jerome(?), supposedly crowned the winner and handpicked for his contract role on OLTL by a panel of industry judges that I believe included Frank Valentini himself. Mikey lasted about five minutes onscreen as one of Vincent Jones's goons before they mercifully killed him off. Vincent and the actor playing him were also horrible, BTW, a Dena Higley creation who all but replaced R.J. on the show for a couple years. Here's Mikey now, in one of his slightly more animate moments.

This reminded me of the horrendous Carlos on AMC who won his role from the America's Sexiest Man contest. Actually, I may have that wrong and that actor disappeared but Carlos was around the same time. A badly defined character played by a horrible actor.

Oh, God! Carlos! He was so awful he was barely alive. Definitely top 3 for me.

Oh, God! Carlos! He was so awful he was barely alive. Definitely top 3 for me.

My mom tends to be way too tolerant of bad acting on soaps--or at least it takes a lot for her to comment on someone being bad, but I remember her turning to me one of the times Carlos was on and saying "Is it just me or is he one of the worst actors to ever be on TV? Maybe it's on purpose?"

So true. I never thought of that before, now I see that shower scene in a whole new light. I wonder what was happening at Days in the 90's that competent/good actors were being replaced by model looking but atrocious wooden actors. Patrick Muldoon replaced by Austin Peck, Melissa Reeves replaced by Stephanie Cameron, Lisa Rinna by Krista Allen and Mark Valley by Jack Wilder.

I would say only Deborah Adair got replaced by someone just as good or better in Lauren Koslow (though I always liked Deborah as Kate as well)

Krista Allen was not wooden. She was (literally) the porn Billie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBbYk3uYtO8

My mom tends to be way too tolerant of bad acting on soaps--or at least it takes a lot for her to comment on someone being bad, but I remember her turning to me one of the times Carlos was on and saying "Is it just me or is he one of the worst actors to ever be on TV? Maybe it's on purpose?"

My mother did the EXACT same thing with Farah Fath. We hardly ever talked about the acting on soaps, just the ridiculous plots but she made a point to comment on FF's acting, "She's really not very good.".

Another from AMC: Dylan Fergus as the older, "hunkier" Tim Hunter Dillon recast, who was brought on to donate an organ or something and... quickly disappeared within literally a couple of months.

Another from AMC: Dylan Fergus as the older, "hunkier" Tim Hunter Dillon recast, who was brought on to donate an organ or something and... quickly disappeared within literally a couple of months.

It felt like weeks--lol I literally remember like one scene with him (in the hospital) and then poof. But yes, he was bad.

With Carlos they seemed to try to make him work for ages. Those secret letters to Greenlee that led to some woman's apartment and made nop sense, then McTavish came on and I assume Frons was a big Carlos fan because she tried to save him by giving him a family and more of a past--with Juan Pablo.

Juan was far from great, and borderline incomprehensible when he talked but next to Carlos he looked like Monty Clift.

Juan Pablo was basically Take 2. They heavily promoted the [!@#$%^&*] out of him too just like Carlos before him - "he's a big star on telenovelas!" Or something. But I could not understand a [!@#$%^&*] word Juan Pablo said.

I thought it was kind of bizarrely hilarious that they spent the last six months of that storyline, or so it seemed, with Carlos literally comatose as opposed to simply figuratively so until he finally died.

The Juan Pablo "work of fart" clip.....

http://youtu.be/dTzjJ1D28b8

Another from AMC: Dylan Fergus as the older, "hunkier" Tim Hunter Dillon recast, who was brought on to donate an organ or something and... quickly disappeared within literally a couple of months.

And Passions later scooped up his horrible acting self.

Juan Pablo was basically Take 2. They heavily promoted the [!@#$%^&*] out of him too just like Carlos before him - "he's a big star on telenovelas!" Or something. But I could not understand a [!@#$%^&*] word Juan Pablo said.

I thought it was kind of bizarrely hilarious that they spent the last six months of that storyline, or so it seemed, with Carlos literally comatose as opposed to simply figuratively so until he finally died.

Carlos and Juan Pablo were both characters that had absolutely no backstory prior to their arrival on AMC, and were deemed by ABC as trial and errors to test which female that had the best chemistry with, per Frons.

The Juan Pablo "work of fart" clip.....

http://youtu.be/dTzjJ1D28b8

That never gets old.

Everytime someone posts that Charity Rahmer video about how bad she is I find myself more distracted by the bad acting from the Jan Spear's actress. There were alot of sucky young people then.

Thank you! I don't get why people were so wet for Heather Lindell. She wasn't good at all. I will say though that I think the direction she was given is partially to blame in some of her performances. Keep in mind, this was during Reilly's disastrous second round as DAYS' headwriter and campy soap opera cliches were running rampant. Anytime Jan would have a flashback to something (usually the previous day's episode... or something that happened 15 minutes earlier in the same episode), the actress would literally do a 90-degree turn, facing the camera, while looking ominously into the distance. If this were real life, the person she's speaking to would wave their arm and say, "Jan? What the f-ck are you doing? I'm standing over here!" That whole era and that whole Jan/Shawn/Belle/Phillip story was just a disaster and all the actors involved were either terrible or had given up (Jason Cook).

Edited March 26, 201312 yr by Gray Bunny

I like the dive right in approach myself, complete with "The role of ___ is now being played by __" -- or even more descriptively, "Returning to the role of ____ is ____" as they did on AW with Sandra Ferguson (Amanda) and possibly Matt Crane (Matt) when they came back in 1998.

I'm sad they don't do that intro voiceover for recasts anymore. I don't mind, it doesn't take me out of believing in what I'm watching. For some reason that narration allows me to reset and accept a recast as "official."

I can't think of any recast that has bombed so bad for the producers that they yanked them right away on any of the shows I watched while I was watching.

I found the lengthy voiceover explanations funny. When Katherine Kelly Lang returned from maternity leave in 1997 after Sandra Ferguson subbed, the announcer literally said something along the lines of, "We are pleased to annouce that Katherine Kelly Lang has returned from maternity leave and will now resume the role of Brooke Logan Chambers".

And when GL recast Michelle from Rebecca Budig to Joie Lenz, it was the same time that Amy Carlson was subbing for a pregnant Beth Ehlers, so the announcer got to do double-duty in one day.

Randomness that I remember.

Through the years, DAYS doesn't seem to be big on announcing recasts. They just establish right off the bat through dialogue that Charity is Belle; Lisa Linde is Nurse Ali; etc. The only time I remember seeing an actual acknowledgement of a recast was when they abruptly had to recast Jennifer from Melissa Reeves to Stephanie Cameron, and they had it written at the bottom of the screen in DAYS' usual yellow letters that the role was recast.

Edited March 26, 201312 yr by Gray Bunny

For a while, I thought AMC's Sabine Singh was a tragic Greenlee recast (regardless of the disgusting way she was treated by ABC at the end). Then along came Brianne MonGrief as the Colby recast and I took it all back.