Recasts on shows: good, bad, in between

[pdm1974]

Oh, wow! I wonder how it would have went if he had been able to do the role.

[amybrickwallace]

Interesting, huh?

[Planet Soap]

the good:

y&r: Brenda Epperson as Ashley, Sandra Nelson as Phyliss, Jess Walton as Jill (Brenda Dickson was the best though), Peter Bergman as Jack (debatable), Sharon Case as Sharon, Melody Thomas Scott as Nikki

 

oltl: Kassie Depavia as Blair, Bree Williamson as Jessica (debatable)

 

gh: Tamera Braun & Laura Wright as Carly (Sarah Brown was the best though), Sean Keenan as AJ, Leslie Charleson as Monica

 

b&b: Ashley Jones as Bridget

 

the bad: 

y&r: Burgess Jenkins as Billy, Gina Tognoni as Phyliss (debatable), Darius McCary as Malcolm, Amelia Heinle as Victoria (Heather Tom had way more spark in the role)

 

gh: Jennifer Bransford as Carly, Billy Miller as Jason, Roger Howarth as Franco

 

80s Dynasty: Emma Samms as Fallon.

 

Edited May 7, 2019 by ironlion

[danfling]

I agree that the replacement of  Bree Williamson as Jessica was good.

 

I do not agree that Kassie Depaiva was a good replacement as Blair.

 

(both on One Life to Live)

[juppiter]

But really, you never know what you have. Even Anne Heche was super green when she first started. Looking at her in 1991, you have a 21 year old tour de force who is really carrying this show. There was no indication that she would turn into that when she first started. Not that she was bad when she started, but by the time she left she was really something special.

Edited May 7, 2019 by juppiter

[P.J.]

 

Those dates for Seyfried are wrong. She had a handful of episodes around Christmas 2000 before she was fired. List debuted in December, 2001, IIRC, because it was Lucy's appearance that ended any chance of Craig going with Carly to Paris (when MW's maternity leave kicked off the Spa Storyline). Glendening's tenure is technically correct, but only because she made a handful of appearances late in '10. Otherwise, Lucy had left sometime in '09.

 

Not that i guess it matters----but ATWT didn't really have a direction for Lucy, which is sad, given that she was a legacy child. The casting is all over the place. 

 

While a lot of ATWT's recasting the last decade were a menagerie of WTF----two long term recasts have always stumped me. KMH as Emily and Scott Holmes as Tom. I don't care that both were by far the longest tenured actors to play the characters, I still don't get it. KMH lacked any genuine warmth that Melanie Smith had in the role. And after back to back good recasts of Tom in the '80's, Holmes was a return to the sort of old-before-his-time fuddy duddy Tom of the '70's. At times he seemed older than his father Bob.

[juppiter]

I don't think Seyfried was "fired" from ATWT. It was always intended to be a short term visit. Then they decided to bring the character on full time and brought on Peyton List.

 

Holy wow, I don't remember the last Lucy at all. The last five years are such a freaking blur.

 

People on this board keep saying things about the last five years of ATWT that I know I saw, and I don't remember it at all. It shows *how bad* those last five years were, and how much they threw at the wall, and how ridiculous the pace was, that I don't remember any of it. I at least remember the bad storylines/recasts from before that.

Edited May 7, 2019 by juppiter

[P.J.]

I didn't believe it either. I thought she was fine in the scenes I saw her in. The reason I remember her is because she had a scene with Maura. But she calls it a firing. https://michaelfairmantv.com/dear-johns-amanda-seyfried-talks-about-her-firing-from-atwt/2010/02/03/

[Khan]

I've heard it said that ATWT deliberately went in another direction when re-casting Emily (with KMH), because they felt Melanie Smith came across as "too slutty."  Which, if you ask me, is a direct insult to Smith.

[amybrickwallace]

Ouch.

[danfling]

I'd like to talk about all of the different actors who played Donald Hughes on As the World Turns.

 

I am a big fan of James Noble (Donald #3), but I think that Peter Brandon (Donald #4) was the best actor in the role.  Mr. Brandon even resembled Santos Ortega, who played Pa Hughes.

 

Martin West (Donald #5) was a good replacement, and I am sorry that he was not on the show longer.

 

And, I loved Conard Fowkes when he was paired with Alberta Grant (Liz) on The Edge of Night (Mr. Fowkes played Steve Prentiss.), but I did not like him as Donald.

[Bill Bauer]

 

 

That doesn’t even make sense. The character WAS slutty. Melanie Smith was just doing her job. KMH played her slutty too. Just histrionic and slutty. MS played her more chill and slutty. I personally never took to KMH in the role even though she played the part for many, many more years than MS. MS was just more relatable and sympathetic. Emily had daddy issues which made her promiscuous. There was a depth to the character when MS played her and I think she personified the character better than any actress in the part. KMH made the character too superficial and loony. 

[j swift]

Melanie Smith (Emily) gave an excellent exit interview to SOD in the 12/27/90 issue.  She mentioned her reason for leaving was to go to LA, but she didn't like working with Greg Beecroft (who left to play the failed recast of Duke on GH) and called him unpleasant and uncooperative.  She also told a great story about Bette Davis asking for her autograph.

 

I would infer from her exit that there was very little story for Emily at the time after she had just broken another affair with Tonio and Brock.  Whether later writers wanted to take Emily in a new direction is yet to be proven.   But, the throughline of the character was that she was always impulsively sexual and that is what got her into trouble.

 

https://classicsodnews.tumblr.com/post/181458634097/late-breaking-news-ratings-race-vcr-alert-soap

Edited May 22, 2019 by j swift

[Wendy]

 

Melanie Smith, that is. 

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Never knew that about Bette Davis! How cool! Don't know if anyone knows this, but Smith was in an episode of Silk Stalkings not long after she left, playing a dirty cop. (Yeah, the show was cheesy, but it was fun!) She did a pretty good job in the role. Then she kind of faded away, or so it seemed.

[j swift]

She was the most frequently recurring girlfriend on Seinfeld and was in the iconic Hamptons/shrinkage episode.

 

Assumingly Kassie Wesley (DePaiva) is in the same issue worried about leaving GL.  Meanwhile, 30 years later she's had a pretty steady gig as an employed actress.