Stunt Casting: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Barrowman is a hill I'm willing to die on (ooh er matron etc). Yes he does have the JOHN BARROWMAN!!!!! Side to him. But he's a grafter who has been in the business for what nearly 30 years now? more? He did a lot of musical theatre as a young man, and he has a lovely voice and can act as well as the next guy. He got some good breaks in TV- not least with Dr Who, and worked hard and chased after what he wants.

And he puts the hours in- both in terms of jobs (he doesn't NEED to do Panto anymore certainly for a start) and in attending fan conventions etc (again fans who like you put bums on seats).

TLDR: I love me some Barrowman.

John Partridge will always be the Rum Tum Tugger for me.

That's only really true since the chat show though. It pains me to say but he can be a wonderful actor, Mike Leigh's 'All or Nothing' always springs to mind.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on that. I try and separate the man from the actor most of the time with him, I genuinely feel that if a non-celebrity had given the same performances, people wouldn't have cared and possibly even lauded him. Though, I think now that he's such a household name stateside, he definitely qualifies as stunt casting when it comes to things like his role in Ocean's 8. Though maybe it's his past annoyances which shadow him, for instance Oprah Winfrey could be seen as comparable but her "stunt casting" doesn't bother me.

The entire Cats casting announcement is stunt casting to appeal in various directions, to various demographics.* Swifty I’m indifferent to as I have very little experience in her music and performance, however everything I’ve seen Corden in he has failed to make a positive impression on me. In every role he’s played he’s played it as James Corden, the bumbling try hard. I just find his performances especially hard to ‘remove the man from the character’ no matter what he’s playing. It is all down to personal opinion and preference though.

Edit: * what other reason would they have cast him in Cats if it wasn’t for stunt casting. The fact they’ve cast him, over any other actor/singer/dancer in Cats screams stunt casting. Theyve not cast him for dancing ability have they.

It’s going to be animated - no-one will be dancing!

Corden’s musical theatre bits from his TV show get millions of views on Youtube. 10 million people have watched the bit he did for The Greatest Showman and Beauty and the Beast. Even the segments he does without guest stars and movie tie-ins generally get a million or so viewers. And that’s just the Crosswalk the Musical bit - there are other semi-regular show bits that revolve around what is basically musical theatre (I worry about ‘Inappropriate musicals’ giving Broadway producers ideas!)

As weird as you may find it, there’s a whole lot of the YouTube generation who enjoy watching him perform musical theatre songs, and see him as a musical theatre performer. In fact, for people who don’t actually go to the theatre, he’s probably the person they most frequently see doing musical theatre!

I know it’s hard to get your head around when you loathe someone as much as lots of people evidently loathe Corden, but it makes perfect sense to cast someone who smuggled musical theatre onto his late night network TV show - a genre not generally known for its singing and dancing - and made a success of it. That is star casting.

Well, this discussion happens every time the subject of stunt casting comes up. To my mind it has a very specific definition that is distinct from star casting, and that is casting someone with no experience of the type of job it is because of their unrelated fame in a different field. Star casting is when someone gets a job because of their fame in similar roles. Others obviously disagree on the definition - that’s the purpose of a forum.

Corden doesn’t fall into the stunt casting category, for me, no matter what your opinion is of him in other roles. He has fame for his musical theatre work (and hey, that does include the occasional bit of dancing) among the audience this film wants to attract. The fact that you don’t like some of his other work is beside the point.

(Motion capture is a form of computer animation - I believe it will be much like the recent Jungle Book film, where the animals are photo real, so the performance of actors are captured but the physicality is created by the animators. Clearly they have cast singers not dancers so I am infering that the film is going to be built around singing rather than dancing, unlike the stage show.)

Taylor Swift - whose fame is for being a pop star - is much more stunt casting that Corden.

I also don’t think we can judge whether either of them are Good, Bad or Ugly without watching the actual film. I mean, stunt casting is stunt casting precisely because there’s no basis to think someone will be good in a role because they haven’t done anything like it before. Otherwise we’re just talking miscasting, aren’t we?

Katherine Ryan must be busy this week!

TBF Janette is very good on Morning Live so not too bothered that the BBC want to use her on a few of their shows. Kym Marsh who is meant to be the main female presenter has not been on that much for various reasons.

What can get quite irritating for me is when personalities are so over-exposed, that I actually can't stand to see them pop up on another bloody show...! It's worse of course when I actually like the "face" in question and grow to resent them suddenly appearing in absolutely everything.

Too much of a good thing, and all that.

Barrowman is of course the poster boy for saturation on TV. It got the the stage where he was on multiple channels simultaneously.

I'll add Rylan, Jamie Oliver and David Mitchell to that list. Their agents should be knighted by the Queen.

Well you're conflating two different things - acting is something that generally involves professional training, TV presenting is not.

You could view years of performance and appearing live on the biggest show on TV as experience to be a TV presenter. And surely a low key show like Morning Live alongside an experienced presenter like Gethin Jones is training/experience. The BBC would usually screen test as well, if Jeanette hadn't performed well I doubt she would have got the It Takes Two Job.

There's a long history of musicians crossing over, there is after all a very strong performance element of their work, some like Billie Piper became known as a pop star first but had wider training in the first place. They usually do a good job but often they are given roles that fit them. Very few can then turn their hand to Shakespeare or Ibsen. And you can say west end play but Allen is in a pretty minor thriller which would likely struggle for attention otherwise.

Ore's only been in supporting roles in touring productions hasn't he - the kind of thing where producers might sacrifice a stronger performance for a name that will fill seats.

I would class Allen and Ore as stunt casting for sure and obviously it does go wrong sometimes - search AJ & Curtis Hollyoaks on YouTube to see just how bad untrained actors can be!

I think good singers can become good actors. They are both forms of performance in front of an audience. The skillset may not be exactly the same, but similar enough that it's easy to see why it happens so often. A good singer is not just musically accomplished, but can also perform a song in such a way that they are able to express its emotions and story to the listener.