joie lenz

 cast in stone

 bergen record (feb. 14, 1999)

Soaps do it. Plays do it. Even blockbuster films with big-time heroes like Batman and Bond do it.

But freewheeling, licentious prime-time television is one big prude when it comes to "it"—having an actor take over a character created by someone else.

ER wouldn't dare have another dark-eyed heartthrob assume the identity of Dr. Doug Ross when George Clooney takes off this Thursday.

Even if it's a lower-profile character and actor—like NYPD Blue's Sylvia Costas, whom actress Sharon Lawrence virtually abandoned last month—producers don't seem to consider the straight-replacement route.

"This, to me, is one of the great mysteries of network prime-time television," says Robert Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "In soaps, or in live theater, people have no problems if someone else steps into a role.

"In prime time, we had the two Darrins [on Bewitched], and we are still talking about it 30 years later."

Through the years, only a handful of such casting stunts have ever been attempted in prime time.

A variety of reasons is cited for this reluctance—including that spottiness of history, the pace and story structure of nighttime television, and the greater attraction of other options.

While such successions wouldn't work in the case of big stars or central characters—who could have stepped into the shoes that Jimmy Smits' Bobby Simone wore so well on NYPD Blue?—what about someone like that show's Lawrence?

The actress, who has been terrific in the role, returned to the drama in the fall, following the spring cancellation of her NBC sitcom, Fired Up. But in January, she announced that she had left Blue, because the "juicy" story lines promised for her Costas character had not materialized.

While executive producer Steven Bochco has declined to comment—and Lawrence does have the option to return—the last word on this was that Costas' reappearance was unlikely, and her absence will simply not be explained in the story line.

Hello?

Costas, the assistant district attorney, could easily disappear from the precinct. But what about her role as the wife of Detective Andy Sipowicz and the mother of their son, Theo?

Will Sipowicz simply make occasional references, or one-way phone calls, to his family? Endure a painful divorce? Or will Sylvia—during a sweeps period, naturally—suffer a hideous off-camera accident that leaves Sipowicz a widower and little Theo motherless?

Why tear up a family over this? Why not recast the role?

On soaps, that is done fairly often, not to mention with an abruptness that's almost comical.

For example, on Guiding Light one day in November, Rebecca Budig's character, Michelle Bauer, was seen struggling with a mobster named Mick. The next day, Joie Lenz materialized as Michelle, resuming the struggle right where Budig had left off.

"The audience took to Joie in the snap of a finger. I've never seen anything like that before," says Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin, executive in charge of production at Procter & Gamble Productions (Another World, As the World Turns, Guiding Light). She notes that Rachel Miner had successfully played Michelle Bauer before Budig.

So, why is this technique used so sparingly after dark?

Dwyer-Dobbin believes it's not needed as much in prime time as in daytime. On soaps, she says, viewers are drawn by the "continuity and history" of the stories, which establish characters that have "involved, intertwining relationships with a number of other characters." Unlike prime-time series, daytime dramas often run for decades. (Guiding Light has been around, on radio and television, for 62 years.)

Not that these changes don't generate grousing sometimes. The instant acceptance of Lenz—who had appeared as another character in a nine-episode Guiding Light story arc last spring—is apparently more exception than rule.

As just one example of the flip side: Linda Susman, deputy editor of Soap Opera Weekly, says there was "quite a hullabaloo" when Peter Reckell, the original Bo Brady on Days of Our Lives, returned to that role for the third time in August 1995, replacing the beloved Robert Kelker-Kelly, whose contract was not renewed.

Dwyer-Dobbin says it generally takes three to six months for daytime audiences to accept a completely new character.

"If we start a new actor [in an existing role], it might not take quite that long, but it takes some getting used to," she says. "It also depends on the actor who played the role previously. There are some actors, and characters, who could never be replaced."

It would be difficult to devise a timetable for viewer acceptance in prime time, because the track record there is so scant and conflicting.

Despite the lingering debate over those darn Darrins—winsome witch Samantha Stephens' mortal husband was played by Dick York from 1964 to 1969, then Dick Sargent from 1969 to 1972—Bewitched ran for a healthy eight seasons.

More recently, on Roseanne, Lecy Goranson and Sarah Chalke took turns in the role of the eldest daughter, Becky.

Dynasty—a nighttime soap, after all—had two sets of role-sharers. Pamela Sue Martin (1981-84) and Emma Samms (1984-89) both played Fallon Carrington, and Al Corley (1981-82) and Jack Coleman (1983-89) split the role of Steven Carrington.

While those recastings were pretty uneventful, another prime-time soap—Dallas— had a disastrously different experience.

In 1984, Donna Reed took over the role of Miss Ellie from an ailing Barbara Bel Geddes, who had asked to leave the show. Producers, feeling the substitution never really worked, then persuaded Bel Geddes to return in the fall of 1985. Reed sued for breach of contract and reportedly won a seven-figure settlement.

"If you look at daytime, where over the course of a year you have 250 episodes or more, and 30 to 40 actors, just by the nature of the volume, replacements probably don't stand out the same way they do in prime time," says Peter Golden, CBS vice president for talent and casting.

"For prime time, where series deliver 22 episodes, or 23 or 24 maximum, it becomes much more pronounced, more of a shock to the system to suddenly see someone else in a role."

Another factor, Thompson believes, is the day and night difference in production values.

"Soaps are much more theatrical. They leave in some mistakes that happen. They don't have reruns. They seem less produced," Thompson says. "And, as in theater, we accept that [replacement] convention because it's been going on for so long."

In prime time, where shows are so slickly produced, Thompson believes that straight substitutions would prove "terribly jarring, because they break that incredible sense of realism."

But the biggest consideration in approaching prime-time replacements may be a creative one.

Rene Balcer, head writer and executive producer for Law & Order—the NBC drama that has the highest on-screen turnover rate in prime time—says it's far more stimulating to come up with a fresh character than to shoehorn a new actor into an old role.

"For the writers, it gives us the opportunity of creating a whole new character, and adjusting the dynamics, especially if it's an ensemble show, where it's easier [for viewers] to accept the idea of a new character," Balcer says.

"On Cheers, when they replaced Shelley Long's character, essentially, they put someone in the same position, but they were able to change the whole dynamic," Balcer says of the addition of Kirstie Alley's Rebecca Howe to that classic comedy.

Instead of continuing that attraction of opposites thing that had cemented Long's Diane Chambers and Ted Danson's Sam Malone, with Rebecca Howe, "they introduced something completely different, and kept that show going another four or five years," Balcer says.

In prime time, things get especially tricky when death, rather than pink slips or big-screen offers, is the cause of the void—a problem faced by many series, including Eight Is Enough (Diana Hyland), Cheers (Nicholas Colasanto), and NewsRadio (Phil Hartman).

In these instances, simply reassigning the role could come across as crass, even sacrilegious.

Says Golden: "Could Jon Lovitz just miraculously have become Phil Hartman? I don't think so."

— Virginia Rohan