bookworm wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:53 pm
Bob wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 2:17 pmRecasting is not an option, of course.
Why not?
I suppose I took this for granted, so when you asked I didn't have a ready answer. I've read up on the discussion other people have had about it, though, to help inform my intuition, as well as mulled it over some more myself.
In a sense, I suppose you could say that Eugene is too important to recast,
and not important enough to recast.
Most people seem to agree that it is unlikely anyone is likely to 'do the character justice' in a recast. This is often true for recasted characters, which is why the AIO team doesn't do them often. Major or otherwise significant characters who have left and not been recasted include Tom Riley, Jack Allen, Bernard Walton, June Kendall, and Bill Kendall. Bart Rathbone was recast for all of one episode before they apparently gave up on the idea. They tried a recast for David Parker, a character who was only active since album 51, and the recast looks to have only lasted for four episodes. We can conclude their "success rate" with recasting major adult characters is not especially high.
You might say, "Whit was recasted and that seemed to work out fine". Well, there are several things I'd say in response to that. Firstly, Paul's voice was considered to be a very close match to Hal's, probably as close as anyone could hope to get. There's no known similar voice match for Will Ryan as Eugene; they apparently explored recasting Eugene a while back, when Will Ryan was unavailable, and failed.
Secondly, I think people were willing to overlook minor differences in the Whit recasting because Whit was traditionally considered to be the 'main character'. Eugene isn't. Similarly, while other characters have been recast because they were necessary for a more major character or family unit to function (like numerous individual Parkers, Mary Barclay, Rachel Straussberg, and actually, Katrina Meltsner), there's no reason it is 'necessary' to recast Eugene.
Thirdly, although Hal is and will always be the definitive Whit to me, he actually played Whit for less than a decade. Will Ryan has played Eugene for 30+ years. if it's difficult to get a new actor for Tom Riley, Bernard Walton, et al., we would expect it to be no less so for him. The longer you have someone in a role, the more difficult it seems to be, emotionally, to successfully substitute for them.
Fourthly, I've argued in the past that Whit's recasting was
not necessary, and in some respects, may have even made the show worse and prevented other characters from developing! If even Whit is not a strictly essential character, it's hard to imagine that Eugene could be either, and if he's not strictly essential, then why pull out all the stops to keep the character active? The show has existed without Eugene, both before, and during the Novacom/post-Novacom era. Moreover, the writers have planned for a Eugene-less show in the past, as of "End of an Era". I suspect it is easier to imagine and develop the show without Eugene than it is to imagine someone else playing his role.
Now, I spoke too hastily and decisively when I said earlier that 'recasting is not an option'. On further review, I've come to suspect that if you can recast Whit after Hal Smith, there's no
artistic reason why you shouldn't be able to recast anyone. The question shouldn't be just about recasting vs. not recasting, but whether the voice works for the role. It is possible that there is some marvelous actor somewhere who can swoop in and play the role brilliantly. If such a person exists, then certainly we can have a conversation about whether their taking over the part would be a good idea. But if there is no such person - and the AIO team, presumably including the actors and actresses themselves, who know most people in the VO industry, weren't aware of any as of 2007 - I am convinced there is no reason to try to
force it to work.