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When an actor dies, does their character live on?
April 17, 2006 2:43 PM Subscribe

How have different tv shows or movie franchises dealt with the death of actors between episodes/seasons/films?

I've been watching The Sopranos season by season (5-year-old spoiler ahead) and since I knew it was coming, I was anxious to find out how they dealt with the death of Nancy Marchand, who played Tony's mother. Her final appearance in the show, of course, was some CGI manipulation of past performances edited into a scene to tie up some loose ends, and I read that some of that season's plotlines had to be changed to reflect her death.

How have other shows or movies dealt with this, whether it involves writing the character out of the show, changing actors, etc...

posted by Robot Johnny to media & arts (53 comments total)

On the West Wing, they dealt with the death of John Spencer (Leo McGarry) by having his character do things offscreen until they got the plot where they needed it, then he died in the show's world (offscreen as well).
posted by smackfu at 2:49 PM on April 17, 2006

When they changed the actress who played the mom on Prince of Bell Air (I don't think she died, though), they just found another not-even-very-similar-looking actress and started using her on the next show.

The only "in-show" commentary on the switch was a remark made by Will Smith's character to the tune of "Hey, did you do something with your hair? You look different."
posted by odinsdream at 2:53 PM on April 17, 2006

When Phil Hartman died, they just stopped using his characters on The Simpsons, while they had a full episode mourning the sudden death of his character on NewsRadio.
posted by designbot at 2:57 PM on April 17, 2006

It didn't involve an actor's death, but I think my favorite instance of that situation was with the sitcom "Valerie", where between seasons, Valerie Harper (the show's star and title character) left due to a contract dispute or something. The next season opened (re-titled "Valerie's Family"), and unless I'm completely misremembering things, they dealt with the missing star by writing a scene where her character's kids said "I sure am sad mom got hit by that bus. Oh well, life goes on."

Ok, maybe it wasn't quite that abrupt. But I don't think they spent more than one or two scenes explaining Harper's absence by referring to her character having been killed in a car accident.
posted by hades at 3:00 PM on April 17, 2006

John Spencer passed away during the last season of The West Wing. Just before the episode immediately after his death, Martin Sheen said a few words in his honour. The absence of his character, Leo McGarry, was finally wrapped up only a week or two ago.

While looking up John Ritter's death just before the start of the second season of 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter, I came across a MSNBC article that has a boatload of other examples.
posted by chrominance at 3:00 PM on April 17, 2006

When Gloria Foster (The Oracle) died between The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, she was replaced with a new actress, Mary Alice. There's some kind of thrown-together explanation about needing a "new shell" in the third movie, and more so in the video game.
posted by designbot at 3:01 PM on April 17, 2006

Oh, and because the article doesn't actually cover what happened to 8 Simple Rules after Ritter's death, here's the Wikipedia entry on the show.
posted by chrominance at 3:06 PM on April 17, 2006

Heh, thanks chrominance, as I assigned and edited the MSNBC.com article you link above! I didn't even have to self-pimp!
posted by GaelFC at 3:14 PM on April 17, 2006

Designbot, the actual story was that the Merovingian managed to get an assassin to the Oracle and knocked off the body she was occupying. So like the Agents, she had to move to another one.

When Will Lee died of a heart attack in 1982, the producers of Sesame Street decided to have his character Mr. Hooper also die. They did an episode where the adults on Sesame Street tried to explain to Big Bird (who was at that pre-Elmo time the avatar for kids watching the show) that Mr. Hooper was gone and wasn't coming back again, and showed Big Bird going through a grieving process.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:20 PM on April 17, 2006

I just read James Stewart's DisneyWar, a book about Michael Eisner's career at Disney, and it included a story about the behind-the-scenes-network-exec-stupidity that took place when John Ritter died. Here's a chunk:

On Monday afternoon, after Ritter's emotional funeral, attended only by family and close friends, [ABC execs Susan] Lyne and [Llyod] Braun sat down to discuss the show's fate. [...] Obviously, ABC had to tread a fine line between empathy and exploitation. [...] Two days later, Eisner weighed in with an e-mail to Braun and Lyne. Not only did he want to continue the series, but he proposed that Cate, Ritter's wife in the show, played by Katey Segal, be pregnant (she'd had a pregnancy scare in an earlier episode). Then she could give birth for May sweeps week. Iger weighed in with an e-mail: "The is a great idea. Let's discuss."

"Oh my God," Braun told Lyne. They were both appalled. It had been hard enough to approach [Ritter's wife] Amy about continuing the show at all, but to suggest that Ritter's character was leaving a baby behind was going too far. [...] "Audiences will love it," Eisner insisted. "Who cares what the critics say?"

[Lyne voiced objections,] but the more she talked, the angrier Eisner became. "You just don't get it!" he yelled. He was scathing, attacking Braun and Lyne as elitists, saying both lacked the common touch. "You're not TV people," he said contemptuously. Braun shot back, saying pregnancy was a "terrible idea" and in "terrible taste."

Finally Eisner screamed at Braun, "You're a creative wimp."

Just to let you know what really goes on when an actor in a show dies.
posted by painquale at 3:39 PM on April 17, 2006

When Jack Soo died on Barney Miller, they had an "episode" breaking through the fourth wall, with the actors giving introductions to some of their favorite Jack Soo scenes, then shown. I'm not sure they made particular reference to his death in-story.

When the "Let's be careful out there" sergeant (I think?) died on Hill St. Blues, I vaguely recall them rushing a new episode into production, where it was declared that the character had had a fatal heart attack during sex.
posted by Aknaton at 3:46 PM on April 17, 2006

Isn't there a Bela Lugosi movie cobbled together after his death, by Ed Wood?

They recently changed Dumbledores in the Harry Potter movies without making a big deal of it.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 3:46 PM on April 17, 2006

Isn't there a Bela Lugosi movie cobbled together after his death, by Ed Wood?

The movie some call the worst ever made, though it wasn't a Bela Lugosi movie per se.
posted by dw at 3:55 PM on April 17, 2006

the above is not quite the question asked, but an interesting case

Regarding the actual question, in Dukes of Hazzard, the actors who played Bo and Luke Duke went on strike or something to get a better deal, and were replaced on screen by their cousins Bo and Luke - different actors - who had come to stay while Bo and Luke were off somewhere (I don't remember the details, if there were any). Very flimsy. A season or two later, the original actors returned.
posted by -harlequin- at 4:03 PM on April 17, 2006

Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne (the little blonde girl from Poltergeist I, II and III) died right before finishing the third movie. They had to change the ending, and ended up using a stunt double and shielded the stunt double's face.
posted by moonshine at 4:19 PM on April 17, 2006

The movie "The Crow" had the star die in a stunt gone wrong during filming, before it was complete. To finish the film, they took unused footage and used computer effects to cut him out of that background and paste him into the scenes they still needed. (Changing the plan to drop as many of those scenes as possible, obviously).

That star was Brandon Lee -- son of Bruce Lee, who *also* died in the middle of making a film ("Game of Death")*. The movie ended up being completed by using some of the original footage (apparently, there was only about 30 minutes or so that showed Lee) and a good amount of new footage shot with a stand-in. Apparently, at one point, a cardboard cut-out of Bruce Lee is used to complete a scene.

* more specifically, it sounds like he made some footage for the film, then took a break to make "Enter the Dragon" and died before he could revisit it.
posted by fishfucker at 4:27 PM on April 17, 2006

wikipedia link for Game Of Death.
posted by fishfucker at 4:27 PM on April 17, 2006

When Harry Goz, the amazing voice actor for Captain Murphy on Sealab 2021 passed away during the third season they put the following memorial on at the beginning of the next episode:

Harry Goz, the voice of Captain Murphy,
passed away on September 5, 2003.
In a career spaning five decades,
Harry starred on Broadway, in movies, and on television.
Everything from "Kojak" to "Fiddler on the Roof."
To us, he was a show-business legend.
And a good friend.
We miss him dearly.
Thank you, Harry.
Harry Goz: 1932-2003

To series going he was described as having left Sealab to fight in the "Great Spice Wars," probably a reference to Frank Herbert's Dune series. He made appearances after that, voiced by Guilherme Briggs. Bonus trivia: Harry Goz appeared as the apple in the original Fruit of the Loom ads.
posted by furtive at 4:52 PM on April 17, 2006

Mary Kay Bergman, who voiced all the female characters in South Park, shot herself in 1999. For a long while, no female characters had any dialogue.
posted by Serial Killer Slumber Party at 5:00 PM on April 17, 2006

Not unlike fishfucker's tale of "The Crow" is how Oliver Reed's death during the filming of "Gladiator" was handled. Reed died on location in Malta in 1999, reportedly the result of a heart attack brought on a busy night that included three bottles of rum and arm-wrestling victories over five sailors. As his bio in Answers.com puts it:

Reed's most familiar role for modern audiences was also his last: Proximo, the amoral merchant who trains the enslaved fighters to kill and be killed. When he died midway through production, Reed unwittingly became part of a groundbreaking three-million-dollar endeavor by director Ridley Scott to digitally re-create his likeness in order to film Proximo's death scene. A three-dimensional image of Reed's face was scanned into computers so it could smile and talk, then digitally grafted onto a body double.
posted by rob511 at 5:09 PM on April 17, 2006

They did an episode where the adults on Sesame Street tried to explain to Big Bird (who was at that pre-Elmo time the avatar for kids watching the show) that Mr. Hooper was gone and wasn't coming back again, and showed Big Bird going through a grieving process.

As someone who was in the target demographic for Sesame Street at the time, I remember this episode, and also recall that it affected me quite dramatically. This sounds ridiculous, but as a youngster who did not watch/understand the news at the time, this is the first current event that seemed destined to be a shared memory of "my generation" (i remember talking with someone years later about "yeah, remember when mister hooper died?").

The next wouldn't occur until the challenger disaster when I was in kindergarten or first grade.

I can still picture Gordon sitting on the steps trying to explain everything to Big Bird.
posted by fishfucker at 5:22 PM on April 17, 2006

When Jerry Orbach died, I believe they alluded to his character, Lennie Briscoe's, death on Law and Order, Trial by Jury, and dedicated an episode to him.
posted by clh at 5:33 PM on April 17, 2006

When Jerry Orbach died, I believe they alluded to his character, Lennie Briscoe's, death on Law and Order, Trial by Jury, and dedicated an episode to him.

Ah, you've just hit on a matter that irritates some L&O fans: there were a couple of title card/post-credits tributes to Orbach (on the original series & on TBJ), but no in-show mention of the character's fate. Wolf originally planned a brief memorial sequence, but apparently never filmed it. Since Chris Noth's arrival on CI, Briscoe's name has popped up a couple of times.
posted by thomas j wise at 6:33 PM on April 17, 2006

On Australian TV soaps, the traditional method of dealing with an actors death or retirement from the show is to have them "go to Perth" or "visit xxx in Brisbane" - i.e. go to the other end of the country for a while.

After 2 or 3 months the character returns, usually played by somebody with a totally different physical appearance - brunettes become blondes, tall people return much shorter, etc. As far as I know they have never had an aboriginal character leave and later return as an asian, but I suspect it's only a matter of time.

(Sometimes a character disappears, never to return. They too usually go to visit someone in Brisbane/Perth, then find an excuse to stay there. In turn, they themselves become a reason for other characters to visit those cities...)
posted by Pinback at 1:08 AM on April 18, 2006

The TV show "My Sister Sam", which starred Pam Dawber and Rebecca Schaeffer, simply went off the air when 21-year-old Schaeffer was shot by an obsessive fan on the steps of her home.
posted by orange swan at 6:09 AM on April 18, 2006

Pretty freaky admitting that I've, at times, watched daytime Indian television, but there was this one episode where they replaced an actor in some soap who's name (and channel and language) escapes me now. They had a mugshot of the old dude morph into that of the new dude, with a single line saying that this particular character will now be played by the new actor. Guess the screenwriters were also threatening a strike over pay.
posted by the cydonian at 6:34 AM on April 18, 2006

When Martin Sheen had his near fatal heart attack while filming Apocalypse Now his brother stood in for some of the shots and did some of the narration.
posted by purephase at 7:57 AM on April 18, 2006

I remember that Sesame Street episode too. At the end Big Bird says something to the effect of, "well, I'll sure miss you Mr. Looper." To which Maria exasperatedly said with big tears welling in her eyes, "Hooper, Big Bird, Hooper."

The running joke on the show when he was alive was that Big Bird could never say Hooper's name right and he'd always have to be corrected. A fine sendoff.
posted by DonnieSticks at 9:22 AM on April 18, 2006

The TV show "My Sister Sam", which starred Pam Dawber and Rebecca Schaeffer, simply went off the air when 21-year-old Schaeffer was shot by an obsessive fan on the steps of her home.

According to the IMDB, the show was cancelled a year before she was killed.
posted by drezdn at 9:46 AM on April 18, 2006

When Freddie Prinze committed suicide, Chico and the Man continued for a time with his character supposedly "in Mexico".

Bewitched covered for Dick York's prescription drug abuse by replacing him with the eerily similar Dick Sargent. Not a death, but I think that has influenced American TV to eschew the "in place" replacement of a key character.

One Day at a Time fired Mackenzie Phillips for drug abuse and wrote her out of the show, then temporarily back in again later on. This is another example where they eliminate a character and add other characters to shift the emphasis of the show (in that case, a stepdad played by Howard Hesseman).

I wouldn't have believed they could continue 8 Simple Rules in any form without Ritter as he was the narrative center of the show, its "point" if you will, and also far and away the most interesting actor. But if you bring in Garner and Spade I guess you can get away with it.

There have been numerous lower-profile shows that have been "retooled" by adding or dropping characters, sometimes infamously, just for creative reasons, so generally this is the way to go. But I think it really depends on how key the character is to the storylines and whether the rest of the cast is game and, yes, what the contract issues are.

The most amusing may have been Roseanne, where due to a contract dispute they replaced Lecy Goranson with Sarah Chalke (now of Scrubs), then brought Goranson back. In the finale show, they actually had the character leave the room as one actress and come back as the other.

Soaps, of course, infamously don't give a damn -- they'll bring in new actors, have actors completely replaced, kill them off, bring them back to life even if you watched them die, that sort of thing. Prime time is a little less likely to resort to the absolutely fantastic.
posted by dhartung at 10:06 AM on April 18, 2006

[NITPICK FILTER] The cousins on The Dukes of Hazzard were Coy and Vance.

The fact that I know this and not, say, calculus, makes me die a little bit inside.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 10:53 AM on April 18, 2006

When Alison Sweeney (Samantha Brady on "Days of Our Lives") went on maternity leave, her character "Sammy" stayed on the show, played by male actor Dan Wells (of "Boy Meets Boy"...he was the faux-mo). Supposedly, Dan was Sammy in elaborate makeup masquerading as "Stan", a newcomer to Salem.

I'm ashamed that I know this.
posted by ColdChef at 10:54 AM on April 18, 2006

While not a death, actor William Hartnell's poor health (arteriosclerosis) as well as poor relations with a new production team led him to leave the British sci-fi series Doctor Who in 1966. To deal with the actor's departure, the producers invented the idea of Regeneration where the character sheds one body and sort of "grows" another.

It's now one of the mainstays of the show's long-running mythology and allowed it to remain on the air for decades. It's revival in in 2005 has already seen the title character (the 9th one) leave the show and regenerated this year.

I always thought James Bond should have developed some secret MI-6 technology to bring Bond back from the dead like this as a way to explain the arrival of new actors.
posted by stevis at 1:54 PM on April 18, 2006

I always thought James Bond should have developed some secret MI-6 technology to bring Bond back from the dead like this as a way to explain the arrival of new actors.

Here's a theory Roger Ebert once published in his Answer Man column.

Q. In a recent Answer Man you were asked why James Bond never seems to remember that he has a past. My hypothesis: When a Bond is retired or killed, a new Bond is groomed to replace him. We have seen five different faces for Bond so far (not counting "Casino Royale") and it would be fair to assume that the legend of Bond is nurtured and exploited by MI6. After all, why else would five different secret agents introduce themselves as such? It even explains Lazenby's quip at the beginning of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," "This never happened to the other fella."

Ramsey Brown, Denver

I love this theory, and now can't help but think of the Bond franchise this way. Ebert's response:

A. You realize this means Moneypenny is a promiscuous slut?
posted by painquale at 4:11 PM on April 18, 2006

It's not a death, but when Robert Guillaume had a stroke during the first season of Sports Night, they wrote it (and his subsequent recovery) into the show. It was fantastic. (But then Sports Night was exemplary in a number of ways.)
posted by crickets at 7:04 PM on April 18, 2006

When Will Lee died of a heart attack in 1982, the producers of Sesame Street decided to have his character Mr. Hooper also die. They did an episode where the adults on Sesame Street tried to explain to Big Bird (who was at that pre-Elmo time the avatar for kids watching the show) that Mr. Hooper was gone and wasn't coming back again, and showed Big Bird going through a grieving process.

This is one of my earliest distinct memories. I cried myself sick over it. I had been watching the show by myself and my parents must really have had fun figuring out what had happened and calming me down.

I often thought of it later whenever I saw the drawing of Mr. Hooper in Big Bird's nest, because BB had been planning on giving the drawing to Mr. Looper when he found out that he had died.
posted by kayjay at 8:06 PM on April 18, 2006

The Waltons: Grandpa Walton (Will Geer) died during the run of the show and his death was written into the plot of the show. Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton) had a stroke during the run of the show (in 1976, actually) and the stroke was written in as well ... she left the show for a while (referenced as being "in the hospital" in show), but returned - diminished but undaunted - at the end of the show's run.
posted by anastasiav at 8:59 PM on April 18, 2006

I often thought of it later whenever I saw the drawing of Mr. Hooper in Big Bird's nest

Carroll Spinney, who performed Big Bird for over 30 years, drew that picture of Mr. Hooper himself. The original drawing has been hanging on the set of Big Bird's nest ever since. (From this great interview)
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:46 PM on April 18, 2006

Ah yes, the "James Bond is a code name" theory. Bondophiles don't like it much. The franchise actually has an interesting "sliding" time scale rather than any sort of retcon approach. It is the same actor, and usually the past movies are vaguely assumed to have happened (for instance the death of his wife Tracy in OHMSS, occasionally quietly referenced), but not necessarily decades in the past. The time of the movie is always the present day, and the 007 career all fits in the adult lifetime of the incumbent actor.

This is closer to what long-running comic book series do than most movie series.

The book Bond clearly had begun his career, like author Fleming, in World War II, but that really never came up in the movies, and as the Cold War recedes into history they've made a few tweaks to acknowledge the new world order. The latest even alluded obliquely to September 11th. The next film, though, will use the younger Daniel Craig as a new chance to "reboot" the series and fans are a little uneasy (some of them still haven't gotten over Goldeneye).

Here's another on-topic one -- Eight is Enough began with Dick van Patten and Diana Hyland (Travolta's older girlfriend at the time) as the parents, but she fell ill and was written out of the show after which she died in real life. The father then found a new wife and she took over as the mother figure, although few would agree that such transitions are remotely as easy.

We're forgetting one of the most notable recent examples, actually -- Phil Hartman, whose mentally ill wife took both their lives. NewsRadio limped on without him. Jon Lovitz could not fill his shoes.

The sitcom Night Court had two chain-smoking older-woman bailiff characters in a row die of cancer: Selma Diamond and Florence Halop. They then switched to a middle-aged black woman played by Marsha Warfield. She didn't smoke ...

And there was Coach from Cheers, who was replaced by the similarly dim-witted by otherwise entirely different Woody.

See Jump The Shark's Same Character, Different Actor for some other examples.
posted by dhartung at 10:00 PM on April 18, 2006

Bill Owen, who played Compo in the long-running British sitcom 'Last of the Summer Wine' :-

'Bill Owen died on 12 July 1999 after a long illness, but advance filming ensured that he still appeared in the January 2000 special episode, a broadcast that was immediately followed by Bill Owen: A Tribute. He was also seen in the first three episodes of series 21, long in the can, but then Roy Clarke had to rewrite the remaining seven. He faced the subject head on: the character of Compo died too, and the cast, in character, attended the funeral much as, in real life, they had attended Bill Owen's funeral a few months earlier. But life goes on and a new main character was introduced in his stead. This was Tom, Compo's long-lost son - played, naturally enough, by Bill Owen's real-life son Tom. (An actor of many years' experience, he had appeared as a different character in an earlier episode.) The transition was successful and the show continued into the new millennium much as it had the last quarter of the previous century.'
posted by plep at 8:10 AM on April 19, 2006

In the 1954 movie Elephant Walk, Vivien Leigh was cast as an Englishwoman who married a plantation owner (Peter Finch) and moved to Ceylon with him. Leigh and Finch, as well as several other principal actors, traveled to Ceylon for location shooting. Then Leigh became infatuated with Finch, which triggered a sort of nervous breakdown in the actress. Obviously she couldn't finish the film, so she was replaced by an actress under contract to MGM whose general physical appearance (petite, dark hair) would match the location shots of Leigh -- and who could also pass as British. That actress was Elizabeth Taylor. Of course Taylor was almost 20 years younger than Ms. Leigh, so it's interesting to see the film today and imagine how differently the same lines and situations would play with Taylor's character the same age as Finch's.

Off-topic, but this film includes a sequence that must have made the studio insurance people faint dead away: the notoriously accident-prone Elizabeth Taylor caught in the middle of an elephant stampede!
posted by La Cieca at 12:23 PM on April 19, 2006

Eight is Enough began with Dick van Patten and Diana Hyland (Travolta's older girlfriend at the time) as the parents

and (I am ashamed to admit I still remember this) Mark Hamill played David in the pilot
posted by matteo at 12:57 PM on April 19, 2006

oh, and the whole show was based on the life of Crossfire's original "liberal", Tom Braden, the Alan Colmes of the 80's
posted by matteo at 1:05 PM on April 19, 2006

Natalie Wood drowned in the middle of production of the movie Brainstorm, and though I don't think she played a crucial role, I remember the movie being pretty disappointingly disjointed.
posted by crunchland at 3:00 PM on April 19, 2006

It didn't involve an actor's death, but I think my favorite instance of that situation was with the sitcom "Valerie", where between seasons, Valerie Harper (the show's star and title character) left due to a contract dispute or something. The next season opened (re-titled "Valerie's Family"), and unless I'm completely misremembering things, they dealt with the missing star by writing a scene where her character's kids said "I sure am sad mom got hit by that bus. Oh well, life goes on."

It is so pathetic that I know this, but the show was actually renamed twice: "Valerie's Family" was a temporary title before the sitcom transitioned to the title "The Hogan Family" starring Sandy Duncan. imdb
posted by brina at 6:40 PM on April 19, 2006

The most amusing may have been Roseanne, where due to a contract dispute they replaced Lecy Goranson with Sarah Chalke (now of Scrubs), then brought Goranson back. In the finale show, they actually had the character leave the room as one actress and come back as the other.

Also amusing was how they introduced Chalke into the Becky role: the family is watching "Bewitched" and they are snarking about how the actor playing Darren, the husband, was switched between seasons. The Chalke Becky says something like "man, what'd they think that noone would notice?"
posted by sic at 5:04 AM on April 20, 2006

Night Court handled this very well, especially after the second bailiff died and Bull thought that he was cursed with some sort of dying-friend syndrome.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 7:46 AM on April 20, 2006

Kinda related and amusing: when the actor who played Holly, the computer system avatar in Red Dwarf became ill, he was replaced with a female actor between series 2 and 3. The explanation was given in text at the beginning of the first episode of series 3 that the Holly had performed a self head sex change operation.
posted by MetaMonkey at 4:50 PM on April 20, 2006

Here's a transcript of the Mr. Hooper scene. I cry a little reading it.

Careful, it's tripod site. It is fragile.
posted by piratebowling at 5:38 AM on April 21, 2006

This is pretty unrelated, but sort of relevant to popcassady's comment - I wasn't born when Mr. Hooper died on Sesame Street, but I remember asking my parents how people "grew down" before I understood the concept of death.
posted by borkingchikapa at 2:21 PM on April 21, 2006

Wait... James Bond as the Dread Pirate Roberts?

Suddenly my world makes sense again!
posted by ImJustRick at 3:33 PM on April 24, 2006

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When an actor dies, does their character live on? April 17, 2006 2:43 PM Subscribe

When an actor dies, does their character live on?
April 17, 2006 2:43 PM Subscribe