ACTORS WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED FROM THEIR ROLES

Try as show business might, not every role gets cast correctly. Many characters, who might otherwise have turned out fine, get ruined because the person playing them wasn’t even close to the right fit. These actors and actresses should’ve gotten the boot quick as can be, so a more qualified thespian could breathe better life into these poor, unfortunate, fictional souls.

HULK HOGAN, THUNDER IN PARADISE

The basic premise of Thunder In Paradise—two ex-Navy SEALs work as high-sea mercenaries, patrolling the world’s waters for whatever nogoodnik they’re paid to extinguish—is fine, if you hire an actual actor. Instead, the show’s producers cast one of the single worst actors of all-time, Hulk Hogan, as one of the mercenaries. Nothing Hogan does is believable: his line delivery is abysmal, he mugs for the camera way too much (a by-product of decades of mugging for the pro wrestling camera), and he doesn’t even change his look one iota. It’s just Hogan playing Hogan, only now he has a gun. His co-star, Chris Lemmon, was an accomplished actor who might’ve made this show succeed with another co-star, or simply working solo. Sadly, nobody thought to try that.

KIRK CAMERON, GROWING PAINS

Growing Pains was a super-successful sitcom, at least until its star, Kirk Cameron, became a born-again Christian, alienating many of his co-stars by judging them for their non-saved status. He even allegedly got Julie McCullough, his character’s girlfriend, fired because she dared to pose for Playboy. The producers were initially fine with her decision but, since Cameron was the show’s star and most popular character, they had to cut her to appease him and his sanctimoniousness. Thing is, Cameron wouldn’t have been the first (or last) sitcom actor to have his role played by somebody else. Doing so might have saved the show, which otherwise sputtered to a stop within two seasons of McCullough’s canning.

True, the source material for 50 Shades Of Grey was so bad, you could only have made a great movie out of it if you instead made an entirely different movie. But the guy cast to play Christian Grey, Jamie Dornan, was not right at all. Grey’s supposed to be hypersexual and psychotic, and Dornan interpreted that as “be as bland and generic as humanly possible.” He didn’t look, nor sound, like anything interesting, much less a guy with rage issues and his own domination room. If the movie had stuck with the book’s depiction of Grey as a redhead, its casters at least would have been able to hire somebody with a unique look, and preferably somebody with a visible edge to their personality. Because the whole “plain, boring psychopath” thing can work, but only if it’s American Psycho and punctuated with axe murder.

MICHAEL JORDAN, SPACE JAM

Space Jam’s entire premise—a basketball player teams with cartoons to play basketball against other, scarier cartoons—is plenty odd. Why the casting crew hired a humorless, too-cool-for-the-room superstar like Michael Jordan is beyond us. Jordan’s performance, aside from slight bewilderment and acknowledging the failure of his brief baseball career, boiled down to “whatever, I’m Michael Jordan and I’m better than everyone here.” Obviously, whoever played his role would inevitably be the straight man to Bugs, Daffy and the other Looney Toons. But Shaquille O’Neal was also a huge star, with a great sense of humor to boot, and could have killed it as an actual funny straight man. Jordan should’ve either gotten the boot mid-shoot, or simply been recast as one of the athletes who lost his abilities to the aliens. But sadly, Jordan was way too cool and full of himself to allow either to happen.

SIBEL KEKILLI, GAME OF THRONES

Yes, even an amazing show like Game Of Thrones can go awry when casting—case in point, Sibel Kekilli, who played Tyrion’s prostitute/girlfriend/fiance/betrayer, Shae. That character was always meant to antagonize Tyrion and challenge his loyalties to her, but the actress HBO brought onboard couldn’t have been more annoying. Her condescending, hateful tone, that oftentimes bordered on baby talk, made every one of her scenes cringe-inducing, which was clearly not the point of the character. Perhaps HBO kept her around knowing the fate that awaits virtually every character on that show, but it still would have been nice to watch an actress we liked to hear talk. Instead, we got one who got our attention not due to her beauty or subtle nuances, but because we kept screaming “SHUT UP ALREADY!” and missing out on actual dialogue.