The Typecasting Society

The price of notoriety: the more notable you are at something, the less you’ll be trusted to do anything else

Every Harry Potter fan knows about the Killing, Babbling, and Conjunctivitis Curses.   However, they may not be aware of a more insidious curse, one that really exists, called the Typecasting Curse.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard actors discuss being struck by this spell.   An actor appears in a role in a successful series.  When the show is finally canceled, the actor either finds

*  he can’t get further work because the public can only see him or her in that one role or

*  the only work s/he can get is playing an almost identical role in a usually inferior vehicle

It’s almost a joke to recite examples, there’re so many of them.   Jason Alexander wows audiences as the neurotic and self-loathing George Costanza in Seinfeld for 9 years.   Afterwards, the Costanza character is recycled in other forms for Alexander in two extremely mediocre shows, Bob Patterson and Listen Up. Neither made it beyond a single season.   Alexander’s cast mate, Michael Richards, goes from playing Kramer in a winner to playing Vic Nardozza in a loser, The Michael Richards Show.   Ken Osmond, Eddie Haskell on Leave It To Beaver from 1957 to 1963, is forced to become a Los Angeles motorcycle cop after the show is cancelled.  Few casting directors could see him play anyone but Eddie.   Paul Petersen plays clean-cut Jeff Stone on The Donna Reed Show up until 1966 and becomes stereotyped for this all-American teen role when the era of drugs, love-ins, and protests takes root in the late Sixties.  The result is the end of his acting career.

Any actor or actress so closely associated with a particular role will find it difficult, maybe impossible, to escape from it unless years have passed and a new generation of viewers don’t remember the actor in his hallmark role.   From a producer’s perspective, it makes perfect sense to cast actors in modified versions of their previous successful roles.   New television series are designed around them, shows which have to play to their known strengths.  Producers would consider those strengths in light of what each person brought to their prior series.

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