TV Roles Almost Played by Someone Else on Big Bang Theory, Lost, Arrow, One Tree Hill, The O.C., Buffy and More
The Big Bang almost started with Home Alone‘s Kevin? YOU‘s Penn Badgley nearly broke bad a decade sooner? Pedro Pascal as The Originals vamp Marcel Gerard?!
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Those are just some of the alternate casting scenarios that could have been, had the TV stars aligned slightly differently.
Below, TVLine has gathered more than 40 stories about actors and actresses who auditioned for characters on popular shows like The Flash, True Blood, Gilmore Girls and Friday Night Lights. Some came so very close to nabbing the part, but ultimately lost out to the competition. Others didn’t land the gig they originally tried out for, but still appeared on the show as a different character. Such was the case for Smallville‘s Jensen Ackles, Arrow‘s Anna Hopkins and The Affair‘s Colin Donnell, to name a few. Then there’s those who famously turned down roles on Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Wife.
As you peruse the following list, you’ll also discover which Lost actress almost scrubbed in for Grey’s, and which How I Met Your Mother star almost got Lost. Meanwhile, the names in contention for The Vampire Diaries‘ Elena Gilbert just may surprise you, as might the other contenders who were in the mix to sport Ryan Atwood’s white tank/black leather jacket combo. (Chris Pine wasn’t the only one trying to score a spot in the O.C. pool house!)
Note: We of course haven’t included every case of an actor missing out on a certain role, but simply a selection that struck us as particularly fun or curious. If you’ve heard of others, share ’em in Comments!
Scroll through the stories below, then hit the comments to let us know which of the almost-castings intrigue you most!
8 SIMPLE RULES FOR DATING MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER
Five years after Roseanne‘s original run wrapped, John Goodman was on the short list to play family patriarch Paul Hennessy — until Three’s Company funnyman John Ritter, coming off a series of films/TV-movies, sought a sitcom comeback. “You take John Ritter any time you can get John Ritter,” EP Flody Suarez said at the time. (Goodman would eventually have 8 Simple Rules star Katey Sagal as a TV wife on The Conners.)
THE AFFAIR
Though Colin Donnell ultimately played Scotty Lockhart in The Affair‘s first two seasons, he initially got close to playing Cole, a role that later went to Joshua Jackson. “Colin actually had come in and auditioned for Cole a bunch of times. But he wasn’t quite right,” series co-creator Sarah Treem revealed in an Instagram story ahead of the series finale. “But I loved him so much as an actor that I actually wrote Scotty for him…. I thought he was so good, and I didn’t want to lose him.”
ARROW
As Anna Hopkins told TVLine in our Memories From the Set feature, she first auditioned to play Arrow‘s Sara Lance. The part went to Caity Lotz, but Hopkins was later brought in to read for the part of a “journalist”… which she eventually learned was code for Samantha Clayton, the mother of Oliver’s secret son William!
THE BIG BANG THEORY
Before Johnny Galecki was cast as Sheldon’s extremely patient roommate, the producers pursued former Home Alone star Maculay Culkin. “There’s a special ethereal quality to that actor that I thought might be great,” Big Bang co-creator Chuck Lorre shared in The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series (order it here). Added fellow co-creator Bill Prady: “We had a terrific meeting with Macaulay… and then we heard that he had decided he wasn’t interested.”
Other Almost-Leonards: Kevin Sussman, who would go on to play comic book store owner Stuart, was also up for the role of Leonard in the original 2006 pilot, as was John Ross Bowie (aka Barry Kripke), who came in to read not once, but twice.
THE BIG BANG THEORY
Prior to playing The Big Bang Theory‘s Lucy in Season 6, Kate Micucci auditioned for Amy Farrah Fowler. “[She] auditioned before Mayim, and we thought she was terrific and really funny,” executive producer Steve Molaro said in The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series. “And then Mayim [Bialik] came in, and aside from being awesome as well, [co-creator] Chuck [Lorre] loved that she actually had a PhD in neuroscience. It could have gone either way… but because Mayim could bring the authenticity to the science and to the intelligence of the character, Chuck was like, ‘I think that’s so cool. Let’s go with her.’” (Read more Big Bang casting tales here.)
BREAKING BAD
Instead of “XOXO,” Penn Badgley nearly dabbled in C10H15N, having auditioned for the role of Breaking Bad‘s Jesse Pinkman. “It was between me and Aaron Paul, we tested,” Badgley shared in the rapid-fire BuzzFeed Q&A (watch above). “And actually, that was the best television script I’d read at that point. That was the one that got away.” Badgley instead continued his run as Gossip Girl‘s Dan.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
Lynskey confirmed (in an interview with Shut Up Evan: The Newsletter) that she had met with Buffy creator Joss Whedon about potentially playing Willow in the series, a character ultimately portrayed by Alyson Hannigan. Initially, Lynskey was “not sure about doing television at that time” and “wasn’t super into it,” but she and Whedon stayed in touch after she first passed on the opportunity. Later, when original Willow portrayer Riff Regan had to be recast after Buffy‘s pilot, Lynskey did audition, but the role went to Hannigan instead.
CHUCK
Before he ended up in Pawnee, Indiana, Parks and Recreation‘s Chris Pratt could have played the title role on NBC’s Chuck — but it wasn’t meant to be. “He was the first guy I wanted to play Chuck,” series co-creator Josh Schwartz told the now-defunct HitFix in 2014. “But as fate would have it, he was destined to guard the galaxy, not the Buy More. And might I add, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
DAWSON’S CREEK
The Dawson’s Creek ensemble almost looked very different — and one of the main cast members nearly filled another role. In 2018, series creator Kevin Williamson revealed to Entertainment Weekly that Katherine Heigl almost played Jen Lindley instead of Michelle Williams. “Even though [Heigl] was younger, I just think she was more mature,” Williamson shared.”“She gave a great audition, I remember we were all sort of like, ‘Wow, she’s good.’”
Ultimately, Williams’ strong screen test landed her the role of Jen instead — and Katie Holmes’ impressive audition, which she recorded at home and submitted to the casting team, won her the role of Joey Potter over Williamson’s original first choice, Selma Blair. Joshua Jackson, meanwhile, was nearly cast as Dawson Leery, but he ended up playing Pacey Witter when The WB didn’t think Jackson was the right fit for the lead.
DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW
As writer Tyron B. Carter shared on Twitter, the singer Ashanti — whose previous acting credits include Army Wives — auditioned for the role of Amaya aka Vixen, which eventually went to Maisie Richardson-Sellers.
ER
John Stamos could have scrubbed in at County General six years prior to Tony Gates’ debut — that was if he hadn’t botched the audition. As revealed during a 2008 Paley Center panel commemorating the medical drama’s 300th episode, Stamos initially tried out for the role of Dave Malucci ahead of Season 6. “It was right after Full House and [executive producer] John [Wells] had been talking to me about coming on the show,” the actor recalled. “They made me come in and audition, and I was so awful… They said, ‘thank you,’ and that was it.” The part went to Erik Palladino, and Stamos came aboard as a different character in Season 12.
FAMILY GUY
Long before he lorded over the Shameless Gallagher clan (where he would amass five Emmy nominations to go with his Fargo Oscar nod), William H. Macy was eyed to play the Griffins’ family pet — but Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane opted to lend his own voice to the pooch instead. “I look back and I’m like, ‘How cocky and arrogant must I have been at 24 to have Bill Macy audition for Brian and go, ‘You know what? I don’t think it’s working and I’m going to do it myself’?” recalled MacFarlane. “The hubris is not to be believed!”
FAMILY TIES
At the Artios Awards in 2013, Family Ties star Michael J. Fox revealed that Matthew Broderick was almost cast as Alex P. Keaton — and the two actors often found themselves competing for other roles, as well. “He’d usually go in first for auditions, and you’d hear hands shaking,” Fox said. “I was always losing jobs to Matthew Broderick.” But Broderick was unavailable for Family Ties, and Fox went on to score the role (and three Emmys!).
THE FLASH
Although The Flash‘s casting team immediately liked Candice Patton for Iris, “we were too early on in the process to cast her,” casting director David Rapaport told BuzzFeed in 2015. Keke Palmer (Scream Queens) was among the actresses who tested for the role in the meantime, but she “felt a little too young next to Grant [Gustin],” Rapaport said. Later, Patton was brought back in for another chemistry read with Gustin, and “it just made total sense” to cast her as Iris.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Former Walker and The 100 star Lindsey Morgan worked as an extra on the critically acclaimed drama before landing an audition for Epyck Sanders, a troubled student at East Dillon High in the final season. “I did really well, and then it was down to me and the girl who got it [Emily Rios],” Morgan told TVLine. “I met Peter Berg and the producers, and I had nothing on my résumé, but just that auditioning experience gave me enough confidence to be like, ‘OK, maybe I can go to LA. Maybe I can really pursue acting.’”
FRIENDS
Ross Geller almost had a very different lobster: Saved by the Bell alum Tiffani Thiessen! On an episode of You Up With Nikki Glaser in 2018, Thiessen shared that she tested for Friends‘ Rachel Green, but “I was just a little too young” in comparison to the rest of the cast.
GAME OF THRONES
Iwan Rheon’s eventual Game of Thrones role was that of Ramsay Bolton, one of the series’ most despicable villains. But that was very nearly not the case: In a 2016 chat with Interview, Rheon revealed that he was up for the role of Jon Snow originally, and “it was between me and Kit [Harington], which is quite crazy.” Though Rheon could have portrayed one of Thrones‘ most beloved characters (instead of a deeply hated one), the actor said “they made the right choice; it would’ve been a very different Jon Snow if I’d played him.”
GENERAL HOSPITAL
A hot commodity after his 1987-89 run as Nico Kelly on All My Children, Maurice Benard was given his pick of two mobsters to play on the Port Charles-set soap back in ’93: the short-term role of Sonny Corinthos and the contract part of Damian Smith. Since the future Emmy winner didn’t intend to stick around long, he chose the former, leaving the latter to Santa Barbara alum Leigh J. McCloskey. Ironically, Damian was killed off only three years later; almost three decades on, Sonny isn’t just still on the show, he practically is the show.
GILMORE GIRLS
Gilmore fans know M?dchen Amick as Sherry Tinsdale, the polarizing love interest of David Sutcliffe’s Christopher. But, as Amick divulged to TVLine, “I actually got really far in the testing process and almost got the part of Lorelai.” Amick lost out to Lauren Graham because “the network said I didn’t seem old enough to be a mother,” but she found it “really cool that Amy [Sherman-Palladino] brought me back in for [Sherry].”
THE GOOD WIFE
Not one but two well-known actresses passed on playing The Good Wife‘s Alicia Florrick before Julianna Margulies got the part. During a Hollywood Reporter roundtable, Margulies joked that she was the casting team’s “sloppy thirds” after both Helen Hunt and Ashley Judd turned down the role. “I wanted to hate it, because you know, ‘F—k you! You didn’t want me to begin with,’” Margulies confessed. “But my agent said a great thing: ‘No one will know when they watch this show that Helen Hunt was offered it before you.’”
GOSSIP GIRL
XOXO… Alden Ehrenreich? The Solo star was actually casting director David Rapaport’s first choice to play Dan on Gossip Girl, rather than Penn Badgley. “Before Penn was involved, I desperately wanted Alden Ehrenreich to play Dan,” Rapaport told Entertainment Weekly, though producers ultimately thought Ehrenreich (at 5-foot-9) wasn’t tall enough to play a love interest for Blake Lively (who is 5-foot-10).
GREY’S ANATOMY
Rob Lowe could have been scrubbing in as Grey’s Anatomy‘s Derek Shepherd, aka McDreamy. But during a podcast interview with Marc Maron, Lowe confessed that he turned the role down — and “that’s probably cost me $70 million,” he joked. After watching the Grey’s pilot, though, Lowe believed he’d made the right decision: “When they started calling the handsome doctor ‘McDreamy,’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s not for me.’”
And another series could have starred Lowe if things had shaken out differently: FX’s Nip/Tuck. At the Television Critics Association press tour, Lowe said that Ryan Murphy had written Nip/Tuck specifically with him in mind — but Lowe’s agents “didn’t give it to me,” and Julian McMahon went on to play Dr. Christian Troy instead.
GREY’S ANATOMY
Shortly before she auditioned for Lost (for the role of Kate, actually), Yunjin Kim looked to scrub in at ABC’s new medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy. “I did not audition for [Cristina Yang], it was for Izzie,” Kim told EW.com. “And I got a callback.”
Kim wound up wowing Lost boss J.J. Abrams enough to not play Kate but have the role of Sun created for her. And while she didn’t at first cancel her Grey’s callback, she ended up skipping it. (And the role of Izzy of course eventually went to Katherine Heigl.)
JANE THE VIRGIN
As Nicholas Gonzalez shared with TVLine, he was in the running to play Jane the Virgin‘s Rafael Solano, a role ultimately filled by Justin Baldoni. But despite losing out on that part, Gonzalez appeared in three Season 1 episodes as Marco, a love interest for Andrea Navedo’s Xo. “There just wasn’t a lot to the character because he was the perfect guy,” Gonzalez said. “There wasn’t the fire with them like there was [between Xo and Rogelio], but that’s what he was there for.”
KILLING EVE
The SNL vet told The Hollywood Reporter in June 2022 that she had been approached to star in Killing Eve, filling the title role for which Grey’s Anatomy alum Sandra Oh would eventually win a Golden Globe and amass four Emmy nods. Rudolph was a superfan of Killing Eve creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, but as a mom of four (the youngest of which was age 4 at the time), “there was no way I was about to move to Europe for months,” she explained. “Like, how?”
THE LAST OF US
Before Pedro Pascal was ultimately cast as Joel in HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation, previous Emmy nominee Matthew McConaughey was briefly in contention for the role, according to showrunner Craig Mazin.
“I did talk to Matthew. I can’t say that it was a series [of conversations]. It was more of a, ‘Hey, here’s something to talk about,’” Mazin said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2023. “Pedro was on our list from the start. We were told he was unavailable, and then as we were floundering about a little bit, I got a call from his agent who said, ‘You know, he actually might be available.’”
LOST
You probably know Cobie Smulders best as How I Met Your Mother‘s Robin Scherbatsky… but you could have known her as Lost‘s Kate Austen, as Smulders herself revealed to E! News in 2014. “[Evangeline Lilly and I] were both testing for Lost,” the actress shared, joking that Lilly “owes a lot to me because I went in and I bombed the audition.”
MY SO-CALLED LIFE
As revealed in a 2013 New Yorker profile of Claire Danes, she and Alicia Silverstone had both been up for the role of My So-Called Life‘s Angela Chase, and executive producer Edward Zwick wanted to cast Silverstone after her initial audition. EP Marshall Herskovitz, however, thought Silverstone was too pretty to believably play the adolescent angst that Angela would experience.
“Alicia is so beautiful that that would have affected her experience of the world,” Herskovitz said. “People would have been telling her she was beautiful since she was 6 years old. You can’t put that face in what’s been written for this girl.” Danes, meanwhile, was “sexy and not sexy, free and bound up, open and closed, funny and frighteningly serious,” series creator Winnie Holzman recalled — and Danes’ impressive audition ultimately sealed the deal.
NCIS
Though NCIS fans watched Pauley Perrette play Abby Sciuto for years, the forensic scientist was almost portrayed by Katee Sackhoff instead. TVLine has learned that Sackhoff auditioned for Abby when casting for the role had just begun — but she had already tested for Battlestar Galactica, too. Sackhoff was ultimately cast on BSG as Kara Thrace, and Perrette landed the NCIS gig instead.
THE O.C.
Some other future stars almost took up residence in Ryan Atwood’s pool house. On the rewatch podcast Welcome to the O.C., Bitches!, casting director Patrick Rush told hosts Rachel Bilson and Melinda Clarke about the hopefuls who auditioned for Ben McKenzie’s role. “We saw Garrett Hedlund for that part and we wanted to test him, but he got Troy, the Brad Pitt movie, at the same time that we wanted to test him,” Rush shared. In addition to This Is Us‘ Justin Hartley, Chris Pine also read for the character, and “he was really, really, really good, but — this is painful — at the time, Chris Pine’s skin was really, really bad and that broke my heart because I was a kid with acne. I remember thinking he was so good.”
THE O.C.
Wilson Bethel only appeared in one O.C. episode as a character named Brad, but “I had originally tested for the Ryan role, which obviously I didn’t get,” he told TVLine. What’s more, Brad was intended to appear in multiple episodes, but Bethel slept through multiple alarm clocks during one day of filming and arrived on set hours late, prompting producers to dismiss him from the show. “They kind of kicked me this other role as a scraps-on-the-table kind of thing,” Bethel said of losing the Ryan character to Ben McKenzie, adding with a laugh that “it was supposed to be a recurring role, and then I proved to them I was not up to the task.”
ONE TREE HILL
Husband and wife Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton Morgan could have been One Tree Hill costars! On the rewatch podcast Drama Queens, the actress revealed that “my husband, Jeffrey, auditioned for [Keith Scott].” Had the role not ultimately gone to Craig Sheffer and “had [Jeff] shown up in those tight jeans that Sheff was wearing, I would’ve definitely had kids earlier,” Burton Morgan added with a laugh.
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK
It was almost Katie Holmes, and not Taylor Schilling, who served time at Litchfield Penitentiary in Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black. “I’m a big fan of [Holmes’]…. I met with her [about playing Piper],” OITNB creator Jenji Kohan told E! News in 2014. But Holmes “had other things to do” at the time, per Kohan, who admitted that “in the beginning, no one knew what this [show] was.”
THE ORIGINALS
When casting the role of vamp Marcel Gerard in the backdoor pilot for the Vampire Diaries spinoff, a future Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian star captured executive producer Julie Plec’s attention. “One of the other people who read opposite Charles [Michael Davis] for that part was Pedro Pascal, who I loved,” Plec told EW.com. Although the EP was “obsessed” with the actor, Pascal “was just on the older side,” she explained.
SEX AND THE CITY
We couldn’t help but wonder: What would Sex and the City have been like if Lisa Edelstein played Carrie Bradshaw? As Edelstein told Access Hollywood in 2016, she got so close to landing the role that a contract had been drawn up — but her casting was dependent on whether Sarah Jessica Parker wanted to sign on to the show. Of course, Parker did say yes, and Edelstein revealed that she found it “too painful” to ever watch Sex and the City after she missed out on starring in it.
SMALLVILLE
Before he became a CW staple as Supernatural‘s Dean Winchester, Jensen Ackles nearly scored another iconic role at the network: Smallville‘s Clark Kent. “It got pretty close, and actually came down to Tom [Welling] and me,” Ackles revealed in 2004. “We had to go back a couple of times to the network and they ultimately went with Tom, which I thought made sense because he looks more the part than I do… I’d say they made the right choice.” But Smallville later found a part for Ackles, casting him as villain Jason Teague in Season 4.
SMALLVILLE
Speaking of Smallville, Clark wasn’t the only character who was almost portrayed by someone else. During a podcast interview with Michael Rosenbaum, who played Lex Luthor during the drama’s run, Zachary Levi shared that he also tested for Lex and “really thought I was going to get that job.” But he went on to say that Rosenbaum was “fantastic” in the role, adding: “It wasn’t my path” to play the villainous character — though it was his path to play Chuck‘s Chuck Bartowski, a role he held while Smallville was still on the air.
STRANGER THINGS
Before he thought about embarking for the Outer Banks, Chase Stokes took a stab at exploring the Upside Down. “I actually read for [Stranger Things‘] Steve Harrington and forgot all the lines and absolutely effed up the audition,” Stokes shared with Access Hollywood at a Poguelandia fan event (watch video below). “I drove eight hours from Atlanta back to Orlando regretting every moment of my life on that.” The role of supremely coiffed Steve wound up going to Joe Keery, who Stokes hailed as “an absolute legend.”
#ChaseStokes reveals how he "effed up" his #StrangerThings audition. #OBX pic.twitter.com/M5BBxob8SX
— Access Hollywood (@accesshollywood) February 22, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
TEEN WOLF
“I remember auditioning for Teen Wolf all the time and getting really close and never getting selected,” Centineo told MTV in January 2023. “I auditioned for the pilot, maybe for Tyler’s role or maybe Dylan’s role, at some point. There were times when the casting director was like, ‘You’re my choice! I want you to get it!’ And then for some reason, they just didn’t want me on the show. But shout out [to] them, because they just did a movie. And my boy Dylan Sprayberry is in it, and he’s the man and I love him. Everybody on that show is way too sexy.”
(Honestly, we could see Centineo as either Scott or Stiles. Or anyone in the Teen Wolf universe for that matter. How did this not happen?!)
TRUE BLOOD
Jennifer Lawrence, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jessica Chastain all have something in common (aside from their many collective Oscar nominations): They all came close to starring in HBO’s True Blood. Series creator Alan Ball told The Hollywood Reporter that he wanted Lawrence to play werepanther Crystal Norris, but at 17 years old, the actress was a bit too young to play the girlfriend of Ryan Kwanten’s Jason. Cumberbatch and Chastain, meanwhile, respectively read for the roles of Bill and Sookie, which went to Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin in the end.
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES
We can’t imagine anyone other than Nina Dobrev playing Elena (and Katherine… and Amara) on The Vampire Diaries, so it absolutely blows our mind to think that both Ashlee Simpson and Ashley Tisdale nearly nabbed the role themselves. The show was reportedly conceived as a vehicle for Simpson from the jump, a plan which obviously did not come to fruition, while Tisdale allegedly turned it down for another CW series — Hellcats.
THE WHITE LOTUS
Evan Peters almost landed himself a free trip to Italy, to play husband Ethan to Aubrey Plaza’s Harper in Season 2 of the HBO mystery dramedy. “That was the last part we cast in the season,” executive producer David Bernad told Deadline, “and originally it was supposed to be Evan Peters, but for whatever reason – scheduling or timing – it didn’t work out.” Determined to avoid “familiar casting,” Bernad said that he was “Googling at 4 am and I came across Will Sharpe in Giri/Haji, which is a brilliant show in the UK. I’d never seen him before and he was just incredibly talented… kind of a chameleon.”
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