Alternative casting?

[A Cousin]

(17-04-2012 03:45 PM)jh1892 Wrote:  Just wondered if anyone had any ideas about actors or actress they would have rather seen cast as characters in Spooks?

Not really. Probably due to naive blind trust that the casting department was doing the best job possible; being particularly brilliant in the casting of the guest artists across the 10 series. I had a director friend who once told me that casting was 95% of his job. If you get that right, the rest is cake. Spooks' casting department consistently provided a lot of cake so it seemed moot to look for some pie! Besides, there are so many actors out there I know nothing about. For any one role, 100's of actors are perused, scores are auditioned and easily 3 or 4 are seriously considered for the role.

While I was initially drawn in by actors I knew (PF, RA, KH, Anna Chancellor, Robert Glenister, Hugh Laurie, Tim Piggott-Smith, to name a few), I stayed for the actors I didn't know prior to seeing them on Spooks. I liked that Spooks seemed to cast actors with enough professional experience to be recognizable but not too high a personal profile that they would dominate the programme. (RA being the exception for me but that is a different discussion.)

Might be a different story for someone in the UK, though. Some of the actors cast had a higher profile in the UK going into it. Case in point: as "A Cousin," I had no point of reference for Lisa Faulkner (Helen Flynn). Didn't ruin her story for me. I just didn't have that additional level of cultural understanding and assumptions about the actress and the role.