Pop Culture Idiot Investigates: Actors Replaced After The Pilot

You know, I've always wondered why actors are recast after a pilot or during a show's run. Frankly I find it fascinating, here's a few examples...


It's never too late to get a new favorite. When the Class, or better yet How I Met Your Friends debuted, something was a little different from the initial promos. The character who played the ex-jock of one of the classmates was clearly played by Eric Kramer. The commercials that ran shortly before the debut featured David Keith in the role. Keith indeed appeared in the first episode. And look who else did for a millisecond, Eric Kramer, he's on the upper left of the pic. Hoo hah, hah. That's hilarious. Looks like someone did a bang up editing job. Cheers!

Review: The Class has about six too many characters...




The rumbles from this dismissal still reverberate although Joey is over and done with. Actress Ashley Scott first portrayed the character of Joey's hot and married neighbor. With a show plagued with problems, the test audience reportedly found Scott to be the biggest one. The reasons were petty and especially silly. She was replaced with Andrea Anders and they became one of TV's most boring couples ever.

Update: Scott's on Jericho and Joey continues to make new episodes for the Jason Fantasy Network...




There's the original Happy Family, until the cast was shuffled. Hamish Linklater was signed on to play the oldest son Todd. In fact, Linklater was a big part of the promos for this doomed sitcom. In fact, I do see a bit of familial resemblance in that pic. Oddly enough, I think that's important in a show. What happened? The First Todd wasn't seen beyond the early commercials and was replaced by Jeff Davis...

The Fallout: When Happy Family premiered, you could tell that Davis wasn't the best choice, the show was on last than a season. CBS's Out of Practice did all of this better anyway. That's off the air too despite a promising start.






Look, it's Chrissy! Well not really. Susan Lanier was one of the few women cast to play one of Jack Tripper's roomates on Three's Company. In fact, the details were so hasty, Jack was named David at one time. Not on this pilot which also features John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt. The credits and theme song for this particular lineup are particularly odd. It's like they didn't want the show to succeed. Lanier was of course replaced by Suzanne Somers.

The Chrissy Files: See the thing is Chrissy wasn't always a stone-cold idiot. And actually Lanier wasn't too far from Somers's early portrayal.




Wow, one of the only roles made for Ted McGinley didn't even initially cast Ted McGinley. Now this is potentially upsetting news for the Hope and Faith fans. Spoiler Alert: McGinley wasn't the first person to play Charlie Parker, Hope, Jones? I've forgotten already. Josh Stamberg was cast as "Dad" in this pilot. McGinley appeared when the pilot was reshot over a year later.

The Big Implosion: This show was never Taxi but it was good at one time. Hope and Faith did another cast shift, sexed up and replaced the oldest daughter and that was all she wrote.






Looks like Gramps was deleted too...