An actor might be replaced in a television series due to schedule conflicts,
lackluster chemistry, behind-the-scenes politics,
or even death. Forgotten or not, there’s drama behind the curtain!
It's New York City in the early '80s. Christine Cagney is a modern single
woman and a former fashion model, raised in a comfortable middle-class home. Mary
Beth Lacey is a no-nonsense working mom from the neighborhood. Together they are beat-stylin’ cops.
They patrol the mean streets of Midtown Manhattan while fighting against institutional sexism in
their own ranks. Cagney and Lacey had a passionate fan base that twice saved it from cancellation.
"These your women? Macy and–"
"Lacey, sir."
"Cagney, Inspector."
Stars Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless dominated the Lead Actress Emmy category for the entire
six-year run of the series. But Gless wasn't the first actress cast as Cagney,
or even the second. The series began with a TV movie starring Daly and M*A*S*H* star Loretta
Swit. When Swit was unavailable for the show, Meg Foster was cast in her place. But after
six episodes, Gless took over the part. In a wide-ranging 2008 interview, series producer
Barney Rosenzweig revealed the reason for Foster's departure was one of compatibility:
her performance was too similar to what Daly was creating as Lacey. He explained,
"It became Lacey and Lacey."
At the time of the recasting, however, Rosenzweig gave a much different rationale
when interviewed by TV Guide: that viewers found Foster not feminine enough, and that together she
and Daly read as lesbians — an apparently distasteful situation to viewers in 1982.
"If you have a problem, if no one else can help,
and if you can find them, maybe YOU can hire the A-Team!"
So goes the famous opening narration of The A-Team, super-producer Stephen J. Cannell's
1980s action series about a quartet of Vietnam vets who work as mercenaries in
the Los Angeles underground, taking the kinds of suicide missions that no one else is bold
or crazy enough to accept. The series stars '60s leading man George Peppard as "Hannibal" Smith,
the leader of the group, Dwight Schultz as pilot "Howlin' Mad" Murdock, Rocky III
breakout star Mr. T as all B.A. Baracus – the B.A. stands for "Bad Attitude" -- and
Battlestar Galactica star Dirk Benedict as master of disguise, "Faceman" Peck.
But the first time around, "Faceman" had a different face altogether. In the show's
pilot episode, Peck is played by Love Boat star Tim Dunigan. The issue with Dunigan,
appropriately enough, was his face. Though technically old enough to have served in Vietnam,
it was decided that, in Dunigan's own words, he was "too young and too tall" for the role.
Benedict, who apparently had been Cannell and co-creator Frank Lupo's first choice,
was cast and played the part for the rest of the series.
The Law & Order franchise is no stranger to inventive solutions for temporarily
unavailable cast members. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit premiered in 1999,
the first franchise spinoff. The series follows the dedicated detectives of the
sex crimes-focused Special Victims Unit and delves further into the personal lives of
its leads than the original show ever does. This is especially true for Mariska Hargitay
as Detective Olivia Benson and Christopher Meloni as her volatile partner, Elliot Stabler.
In 2006, it was announced that Hargitay was taking a short leave of absence from the show
to accommodate the final months of her pregnancy. In her place, the show brought in Connie Nielsen
as Detective Dani Beck, partnering her with Stabler for a six-episode run in the middle
of Season 8. Her character was clearly meant to be temporary. Still, some fans weren't pleased by
her presence. In a 2020 interview, Nielsen said she still gets Dani Beck hate mail.
Tony Shaloub's "defective detective" in the comedy series Monk was always socially awkward with a
touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Various flashbacks through the seasons and a visit from
his brother confirm that his conditions were always present within him. But the moment that
turned his life upside down to the point that he had to leave the San Francisco Police Department
and hire a nurse to assist him was his wife’s death. His wife, Trudy, was murdered by car bomb.
Monk begins after Trudy's death, but the mystery surrounding it is
the show's primary ongoing story, reaching from the first episode
all the way to the last. In the first two seasons, Trudy, played by Stellina Rusich,
is represented by a few silent flashbacks and photographs on Monk's mantle.
Starting with Season 3's flashback-heavy episode,
"Mr. Monk and the Game Show," however, Trudy is played in flashbacks by Melora Hardin,
an actress probably best known for playing Jan Levinson in The Office.
"I have to thank you for that other thing, too. You know. Marrying me. Oh look."
"You're welcome."
Hardin would appear a few more times, most notably in the two-part series finale where
her murder is finally solved. Oddly, as the series went on, the props department used photos of both
Rusich and Hardin interchangeably, and even sat them next to each other in Monk's house.
Generational trauma is at the heart of David Chase's landmark series The Sopranos,
the HBO mob drama that in many ways revolutionized television, opening the
medium up to a more mature, serialized mode of storytelling. Tony Soprano is a New Jersey mob
boss who is profoundly depressed and dissatisfied with his life in ways that he can't articulate.
Much of his trauma can be traced back to his mother Livia and Uncle Junior,
as well as the ghost of his father, Johnny Boy. Beginning with Season 2,
Tony's wayward sister Janice arrives on the scene. She's dealt with their tumultuous upbringing by
moving west and embracing new age philosophies, but can't help but get drawn back into their life.
Tony and Janice aren't the only Soprano siblings,
however. There's one more — a little sister who got out and stayed out, Barbara,
played in a handful of episodes in Season 2 by Nicole Burdette.
Barbara lives out of town and is rarely involved with the Soprano family business. The character
is absent from Season 4, then returns for ten episodes in the show's last two seasons,
this time played by Danielle Di Vecchio. Even with her increased presence in the series' final run,
Barbara was never a major character, and her role was by far the smallest in the family.
NBC's Hannibal, based on the bestselling novels by Thomas Harris,
was unlike any show on network television. Baroque, gorgeous,
and gruesome, series creator Bryan Fuller crafted a bloody thriller for three seasons
that was beautiful to watch, even if you were watching through your fingers.
"This is the nightmare that followed him out of his dreams."
Centered around haunted FBI profiler Will Graham and his psychiatrist,
the erudite gourmet Hannibal Lecter, the series follows Graham's attempts to catch various serial
killers and protect his own fragile sanity, while Lecter works to keep Graham and his FBI
boss Jack Crawford from discovering that he is a brutal, cannibalistic killer himself.
Season 2 works in elements from Harris's sequel, Hannibal,
introducing meatpacking heiress Margot Verger and her sadistic, incestuous brother Mason,
played by Michael Pitt. Hannibal punishes Mason for his abuse of Margot and for his
general impoliteness by drugging him and forcing him to mutilate and eat his own face. In Season 3,
Mason returns for revenge, paralyzed from the neck down and horribly disfigured.
"I would like you to begin arrangements for Dr. Hannibal Lecter to be eaten alive."
But the actor underneath the prosthetics is not Pitt, but actor Joe Anderson,
as Pitt declined to return to the role after Season 2.
Premiering on NBC the same year as Hannibal with a somewhat similar premise was The Blacklist.
James Spader stars as Raymond "Red" Reddington, a master criminal who's evaded capture for decades.
Reddington turns himself in to the FBI in exchange for immunity, promising to
help the Bureau track down the world's most dangerous criminals: his "blacklist." But,
of course, there's a catch. Reddington will only work with rookie profiler Elizabeth Keen.
While the series has a "case of the week" structure with Red and Keen bringing down
one illegal operation or another, the central mystery of Reddington's true
identity and his connection to Liz power the show through ten high-intrigue seasons.
A major clue to the mystery of both Red and Liz's backgrounds
dropped with the introduction of Brian Dennehy's character, Dominic Wilkerson,
in Season 3. As a former KGB agent posing as a retired "systems analyst," Dom has a long,
messy history with Red, one that somehow intersects with Liz's own background.
After a handful of appearances through the years, Dom becomes integral to the show's
ongoing storyline in Season 7. But producers were thrown a tragic curveball when Dennehy passed away
in April 2020. Rather than rework the upcoming season's scripts, the powers that be decided to
recast the role with actor Ron Raines, who played Dom for three episodes in Season 8.
Sometimes a show recasts a role due to the death of an actor,
but, other times, it's due to the death of the show itself. That was the case with All Rise,
the CBS courtroom drama that premiered in 2019, in which Simone Missick starred as Lola Carmichael,
a former prosecutor turned Los Angeles County's newest judge.
"I've been in court before. I know how this works."
"You think you know, but you don't. Not yet."
The series followed the ins and outs of her daily caseload,
as well as the lives of the men and women who worked at the courthouse: her fellow judges,
her old prosecutor colleagues, clerks, bailiffs, reporters, and more. Lola's husband,
FBI agent Robin Taylor, was played for the first two seasons by Todd Williams.
The show was canceled by CBS in May 2021. Several months later, however, it was saved
from oblivion by the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a third and final season aired on OWN in 2022.
"Instead of asking the cop why I was being ziptied, you asked me what I did wrong."
Season 3 took place a year after the events of Season 2, which saw Lola have a baby and lose
her judgeship after defending an innocent woman from arrest. Most of the original cast returned
for the final season, with the exception of Williams, who had booked the Amazon YA
series Panic. As result, actor Christian Keyes took over as Robin for Season 3.
Each season of the Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul, begins with an enigmatic
black-and-white sequence following the gray, paranoid life of Jimmy McGill,
formerly known as New Mexico criminal lawyer Saul Goodman, now living as Cinnabon manager
Gene Takovic after the explosive events of the final season of Breaking Bad.
Starting in Season 3, however, those opening scenes coalesce into an ongoing story as a panic
attack puts Gene in the hospital. Season 4 begins with Gene's cab ride back from the hospital,
where his driver has an Albuquerque Isotopes decal on his mirror and keeps shooting glances
at his passenger. Season 5 reveals that the driver, Jeff, played by Don Harvey,
does indeed recognize Gene as Saul, but his motivations remain unclear.
The sixth and final season forgoes the black-and-white scenes until the final
three episodes, where Gene decides not to run again, but to confront Jeff and neutralize
him via an old-fashioned Slippin' Jimmy con game. For these final episodes, however, Harvey was not
available due to his commitment to the HBO series We Own This City. Pat Healy stepped into the role.
"Jeffie, this is Mr. Takovic."
"Call me Gene."
Harvey's original take had a hint of menace, while Healy's was more of a sad sack divorceé,
living with his mother and desperate for a taste of the Saul Goodman lifestyle.
Law & Order and its spinoffs have had no shortage of cast turnover over the
decades since its 1990 premiere. Part of that is baked into the premise of
the show. Detectives and attorneys come in and out on a regular basis,
and the departures are explained by transfer, retirement, arrest, or even death.
The eras of the show come to be defined by who's running the two separate but equally
important groups in the criminal justice system. Seasons 4 through 6 encompass
Jill Hennessy's turn as Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid.
"A search warrant? With this? You can't be serious."
Toward the end of Hennessy's run on the show, she appeared in character as Kincaid on a
1996 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. While it's not exactly a Law & Order spinoff,
it existed in the same television universe and occasionally shared
characters, most memorably Richard Belzer's Detective John Munch.
Filming Homicide on location in Baltimore,
however, meant that Hennessy missed a few days of filming the Season 6 Law & Order
episode "Corpus Delicti". Luckily, she had a novel solution to this problem:
her identical twin sister Jacqueline could step in as Kincaid for a few background courtroom shots.