The Middle Was Originally Created As A Starring Vehicle For A Former Hit Talk Show Host
Before Patricia Heaton of "Everybody Loves Raymond" fame became the star of "The Middle," the ABC show was intended to revolve around talk show host Ricki Lake. Lake played struggling midwestern mother Frankie Heck in the unaired 2007 pilot; two years later in the aired pilot, Heaton played Frankie at a slightly later stage in her life.
"They went older," Lake told Deadline about the show in a 2012 interview. "It wasn't even a case of me being replaced, they revamped the show because it was during the [writers'] strike. We had done the pilot and the strike happened, they held on to my option for another six to eight months, then they revamped it a year later with her." A lot of TV shows were changed by the 2007-2008 TV writers' strike, but few of them saw a cast shake-up so extreme.
"The Middle" could've been the next step in Lake's career after she left her long-running daytime talk show in 2004. Lake never ended up leading her own successful sitcom, but in 2012 she returned to running her own talk show for another year. "I haven't seen ['The Middle'], but [not having to do it] was actually a relief because I'm just better doing this," Lake said about her rebooted talk show.
Of the unaired pilot's original main cast, only Brick's actor stuck around
The original unaired pilot for "The Middle" is available on YouTube, and it provides an uncanny experience for the official show's fans. The episode shares a ton of similarities to the official pilot for "The Middle", but Sue (played by Brenna O'Brien instead of Eden Sher) is a lot quieter, while Axl (played by Michael Mitchell instead of Charlie McDermott) is named Elvis and comes off more as an angsty loner.
The original pilot's biggest difference is how dark it is. In the aired show, Axl's friend Darrin (John Gammon) is a fan favorite who starts a relationship with Sue in Season 4. In the original pilot, Darrin is killed by a cement truck for a quick early gag. "That's just how people die in Indiana. They're roadkill," the original Frankie remarks through voiceover.
Among the Heck family, the unaired pilot's only familiar cast member is Atticus Shaffer as the youngest child Brick. This version of Brick is younger but essentially the same, characterized by his awkwardness and his obsessive love of reading. "It wasn't that there was anything wrong with those actors," Shaffer recalled about the original pilot in a 2022 interview with the MacPack podcast. "But everyone kept saying how, when we did that second pilot ... it just felt like it clicked. And there was this energy that it was like, 'Okay, see you next episode.'"