Sunday, March 29, 2009

Give These Actors a Take Two

The following actors are all alumni of some of my favorite shows, and I want them back on television. Post haste!

  • Merrin Dungey Dungey is one of my beloved Alias actors and probably one of the most underappreciated. She spent two seasons playing Francie Calfo and then made a couple of repeat performances later in the series. She spent two seasons on the sudsy, frothy mess known as Summerland. And then good news! She was cast as Addison Montgomery's best friend Naomi Bennett in the backdoor pilot for Private Practice. And then bad news! She was replaced by Audra McDonald for the actual series. Even though McDonald seems perfect for the part of Naomi, Dungey needs a role elsewhere.
  • Gillian Anderson I don't care if she's playing Dana Scully or not, Anderson should return to American television. (Actually, that's a lie: I'd love to see a Scully comeback.) The X-Files alum has had a fair share of success with the miniseries Bleak House and with The X-Files: I Want to Believe, but it's not like she's crazy busy. And she did vow to come live in America again if Obama won, so she is in the country...
  • The Senior Staff of the West Wing And by that, I mean Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, and Josh Molina. I'm even going to throw in Janel Maloney and Stockard Channing. The whole cast of The West Wing is enormously talented, and the actors deserves more rolespreferably on the same show, preferably on one created by Aaron Sorkin. (I'm not including DulĂ© Hill and Rob Lowe because they have regular jobs, and I'm not including Martin Sheen because he's had a long career and deserves a break.)
  • Sam Jones III Why has he not returned to Smallville? People should know when they can jumpstart a big-screen career and when they can't. (I call it the David Caruso Question.) If Sam Jones III can't make the transfer, he should return to the burg of Smallville to have more dangerously awesome, awesomely dangerous adventures with his old high-school chums.
  • Almost the entire cast of Roswell But not Katherine Heigl, that diva! No, this one goes out to Shiri Appleby, Jason Behr, Brendan Fehr, and all the rest who need jobs. I miss them. Unless they've abducted by real aliens, they're around, and probably looking for work.
  • Lee Pace & Anna Friel I'm sad that Pushing Daisies was cancelled, and I'm remiss for not having seen all of the available episodes! But I loved what I saw, and these two were masters of innocent, cutie-patootie love. I'd love to see them portray the same types of characters. Then again... it could be cool seeing them as serial killers...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved Pushing Daisies too! Anna Friel is adorable.

I didn't know Katherine Heigl was on Roswell.

And I had nooo idea that someone else was originally cast as Naomi on PP - why was she replaced? Just b/c they found someone better or did something come up for her?

Lots of interesting things in this post. :)

Dan said...

Thanks for the comment, Carmen! You make posting worth it. :)

Yes, I actually started watching Grey's because I knew Katherine Heigl from Roswell. Her character on Roswell was named Isabel, funnily enough!

I'm not sure why they replaced Merrin Dungey. I think they wanted an actress with a little more star power or something. I felt bad for Dungey, though -- how depressing would that be for an actress? But she got married and had a child not long after, so I guess she's living the good life after all. And Audra McDonald is a good Naomi, too.

Thanks for reading!