"I'm a fan of Barry's, I'm a big admirer of his."
It is no big secret that actors occasionally get replaced in roles in movies that they have already been hired to work on.
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Sometimes it comes down to scheduling, or injuries, or creative differences, or any number of reasons.
Michelle Pfeiffer replaced Annette Bening in Batman Returns (Bening became pregnant right before filming), Michiel Huisman replaced Ed Skrein in Game of Thrones (Skrein left to make The Transporter: Reloaded), Maggie Gyllenhaal replaced Katie Holmes in The Dark Knight (Holmes decided to make Mad Money instead), Don Cheadle replaced Terrence Howard in the MCU (failed contract negotiations), Christopher Plummer replaced Kevin Spacey in All The Money In The World, and on and on we could go.
And so it was with Ben Schnetzer, the star of Disney+'s new thrilling series Y: The Last Man.
You can check out our full review here, but essentially Schnetzer plays the titular Y - short for Yorick - who finds himself the last human male alive on the planet following a mysterious outbreak.
Schnetzer actually replaced Ireland's own Barry Keoghan in the lead role, who himself sort of replaced Shia LaBeouf, who was originally intended to play the role as far back as 2007.
In the run-up to the debut on Disney+, JOE had the opportunity to chat with Schnetzer about the show and his role, as well as talking about the obvious legend that is Diane Lane (who plays his mother/the President of America) and the difficulties of making a massive-scale show about a pandemic... in the middle of an actual pandemic.
Check out our full interview with Ben Schnetzer right here:
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During the chat, we ask Schnetzer about the recasting situation and whether or not he had any conversations with Keoghan about the role before taking it on.
Schnetzer told us the following:
"For me, it is always easier just to have a clean break. I'm a fan of Barry's, I'm a big admirer of his, I think he's great. I don't know what transpired, nor do I particularly... as an actor, this business is so crazy and a lot of this stuff happens more often than we're aware of.
"And I kind of just got the phone call going 'Oh hey...'. The showrunners had kind of changed hands, and some pieces had been moved around there. And so far me, I was just going to keep my head down and do my job. That is kinda how it played out for me.
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"It has happened a few times, where you just get a call, 'Oh, something happened with scheduling or this or that and this role is back open, do you want to come in for it?' and you're just like 'Dude, totally'.
"I remember I had done a pilot for FX [the network for the show in the States] a year before, which was the same time that Y: The Last Man had been commissioned, and so I remember being aware of it and it being on my radar, like 'Oh, great, I can't wait to see this show when it gets made'. So it just crazy how this all kind of plays out."
Y: The Last Man will kick off on Disney+ on Wednesday, 22 September, with episodes airing each subsequent Wednesday after that.
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Clip via Rotten Tomatoes
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