ALL: Characters obviously developed to “replace” popular departed characters

[applcin]

GL - Lucy. With Harley riding off into the marital sunset with Mallet and having made amends with Buzz, he apparently needed another daughter he'd wronged. She literally even arrived at the diner during Harley's wedding sendoff.

 

[Soaplovers]

Going old school:

 

DS:

 

Victoria Winters (after 2 brief recasts) was replaced by Maggie, and later Daphne H (who had potential had the show not ended).

 

[carolineg]

Wasn't there a psychiatrist that RoJohn briefly liked on Days that was very similar to Marlena?  I want to say her name was Whitney Baker?  And Isabella was all weird about it?  I want to say it was when talks with Deidre fell through or shortly before she returned and they mentioned the similarities a lot for a hot minute.

[amybrickwallace]

 

Yes. Joel Crothers was very ill and passed not too long after that. Kirk was Jack's foster son and carried on his duties as the Capwell lawyer - and of course took a shine to Eden.

[StevieM]

Eileen Davidson's incarnation of Kelly Capwell on Santa Barbara.  She was dramatically changed and turned into the new Eden.

 

Laura Templeton on GH, after Laura Spencer "died," is something I have heard before, although I never fully understood the story.  

 

I don't think Reese on GH was a Brenda replacement, she was the real Carly Roberts, and her story was all about Carly Benson's backstory.  I wish they had done a better job with it, since it did show a lot of potential at times.  She should not have been killed off IMO.  I think it would have gone better if they had not also introduced John Durant, Carly's father.  Actually, Carly really shouldn't have had a father.  They should have kept true to history, and let her father be one of Bobby's johns.  Ironically, a few years later the introduction of DNA companies like Ancestry, 23andme, etc. would have made it much more interesting to do a story involving Carly's search for her paternal family.  

[DramatistDreamer]

Kirk Anderson (ATWT) was obviously meant to replace Craig Montgomery (Tom Wiggin came on in Scott Bryce's absence). Kirk Anderson, a charismatic businessman with a devious streak became the right hand man to business mogul Lucinda Walsh. Kirk had even had a brief dalliance with his former boss, Adelaide Fitzgibbon, that sort of mirrored Craig and Lucinda, although it was implied that Kirk and Adelaide's romantic relationship had been deeper and longer-lasting and certainly lacked the combativeness of Craig and Lucinda. 

I had no problem with this as I liked Wiggin in the role, and I certainly thought Kirk was a better fit for Iva than Craig and Iva. One thing I wished is that Kirk and Ellie had been stopped short of getting to the altar, just as Craig and Ellie had been stopped short.

 

I do think that Jessica Griffin was meant as a pseudo-replacement for Heather Dalton on ATWT, as it's a bit odd how Heather became a law student about a year before she left Oakdale and Jessica enters the canvas as a lawyer. Of course, Heather was once engaged to Detective Roy Franklin, who would have to settle for co-habitation with Jessica who wants to delay marriage indefinitely. Roy himself, I believe was a pseudo-replacement for Tucker Foster, who had been romantically involved with Heather.

[Vee]

The unwatchably bad Tobias Truvillion was intended to replace R.J. on OLTL, playing mobster Vincent Jones. Sean Ringgold came on as his muscle, creatively named "Shaun". There was even a tacky handoff scene in which R.J. met Vincent and approved of him. But as Tim Stickney (R.J.) noted in the OLTL oral history when discussing Vincent replacing R.J., "not all actors work hard" and Vincent vanished quickly, leaving Shaun behind.

[StevieM]

Oh shoot, I forgot a couple.  

 

On Beverly Hills 90210 Noah was seen as a rip off of Dylan.

 

And on Days of our Lives Mimi Lockhart was immediately identified as a carbon copy of Sami's best friend Jamie Caldwell. 

[titan1978]

I don’t remember Jamie having a personality at all.  Except to tell Sami something she was doing was wrong.  Mimi had a personality right away.

[Vizion]

 

I was waiting for someone to mention Tricia Quick. What a dumb disaster that was. 

 

GH and its merry go round of tiny brunettes they tried to use as Brenda replacements. 

 

Wasn't Genevieve around the time that MTS had actually cleaned out her dressing room? I remember an interview with Logan or Fairman where MTS basically says Genie was brought on as her replacement but it wasn't MAB's fault. The issue was above her. 

https://ew.com/article/2011/06/10/melody-thomas-scott-young-and-restless/

 

[DaytimeFan]

 

Anyone who thinks Genie Francis is fit to shine Jess Walton's shoes as an actress should think again. It was a preposterous casting/writing decision and totally vindictive on the part of MAB against Jess Walton.

 

 

Totally agree that Judith Chapman's Gloria was placed in so many of the Abbott storylines that should have involved Jill. I often thought it would have been very good writing to have Jill help Jack and Ashley against Gloria. She had proven herself to be an incredibly loyal Jabot board member and it would have also harmonized Billy's involvement with the company. 

 

 

Tricia Quick has to be the most blatant knock-off character used to recast a long established role without actually recasting.

 

The actress was like a younger, but blander, Hunter Tylo, 

 

 

That was classic JFP. I always remember Linda Dano saying JFP "loves to work with good actors"...and magically Jess Walton returned. 

[Taoboi]

Jill never should have left. Like her fellow diva Lauren Koslow, you can put Jess Walton anywhere on that canvas even now and watch magic happen, spinning even the lamest of stories into classics. 

 

 

[Franko]

Two from '80s DAYS:

Megan Hathaway -- Stefano's second long-lost daughter, a spoiler for the Bo and Hope romance. I've been mulling over whether or not they should even have had Megan in the first place and just kept Renee around for another year and a half. There's pluses to having Renee in Megan's place (Renee having yet another rival among the Horton/Williams family), but also minuses (Renee and Bo were on canvas for months prior, where did their past relationship come from?) and sorta-minuses (Both she *and* Tony were kept captive all those months?; Nearly a decade later, that's what happened with Marlena and Roman. Which brings me to ...)

 

Richard Cates -- Marlena's post-Roman, pre-RoJohn boyfriend (and actually, she was briefly involved with Chris K. before John). Anyway, Richard also had a young child (a son, Kevin), but he turned out to be part of the whole big drugs mess that also introduced Patch and Victor. Still, in the beginning, you could be fooled into thinking Richard was Marlena's next big romance (especially since Rod Arrants was playing him).

 

[applcin]

Laura T (Janine Turner) was also a missing person at the same time Laura S first went missing. That's how she and her sister, Jackie (Demi Moore) were introduced, as Jackie came to town looking for her sister. Of course, there was this whole mystery of how/why 2 Lauras who resembled each other were missing and Jackie clashed with Luke (in a prelude to an intended pairing) but then she was with Robert before he married Holly. For me as a viewer at the time, and I suspect for many others then, that whole storyline of the lookalike Lauras and David Gray hypnotizing them reeked rotten eggs. We knew Genie had left the show and wasn't coming back for the foreseeable future (if ever, for all we knew then) and she was too popular to recast so dragging out a missing person mystery and muddling it up with a lookalike with shady connections was like, enough already, move on. I was happy when Holly was introduced for Luke and she not only was a totally unconnected character but so different. Finally put an end to the mess.

Side note: I was amused to later see Janine Turner with short, brunette hair, not looking anything like she did during her GH days.

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by applcin