Popular Roles Recast Before Premiere: Thrones Queen, Lucifer's Maze, Full House Dad, Gilmore Girls Beau And More

Some of your favorite TV characters once looked very different — as in they were actually played, in an unseen pilot, by a completely different person!

Before Alyson Hannigan cast a spell as Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Willow and before Melissa McCarthy gave life to Sookie on Gilmore Girls, both roles were portrayed by someone else in their series' original (but unaired) pilots. Such is simply the nature of the business. An actor is sometimes cast in a part and even shoots a pilot episode, but then is replaced ahead of the actual premiere because of a lack of chemistry, scheduling or other reasons. (Pilot scenes featuring the original portrayer are typically reshot with the new actor, ahead of the show's launch.)

Below, TVLine has highlighted 20+ beloved small-screen characters who were first played by someone else in a filmed pilot, but then recast before the series actually saw the light of day. (If you dig around on YouTube, you might be able to find some clips, though.)

Among other popular roles featured in our roundup: One Tree Hill's Haley James, Full House's Danny Tanner and The Big Bang Theory's Penny. We also reveal which Titanic star was almost Tim Taylor's wife on Home Improvement, which future S.W.A.T. officer nearly landed in Hell, and who was set to board Firefly before Morena Baccarin.

Review our list of roles that were recast after an actual pilot was filmed, then hit the comments to tell us which pre-premiere castings surprised you most. (For TV roles that were recast after the show hit the airwaves, check out this gallery.)

Back when the cops-undercover-in-high school drama was titled Jump Street Chapel, Jeff Yagher — whose prior TV credit was motorbike racer and resistance agent Kyle Bates in ABC's V — was originally picked to play Officer Thomas Hanson. In the end, though, it was up-and-comer Johnny Depp — fresh off a role in Platoon and signing with the Fox drama only because he thought it'd never last — who filled the star-making role.

The NBC sitcom's original plan was to feature more of The Girlie Show's actual sketches. As such, SNL vet Rachel Dratch was tapped to play TGS vet (and Liz Lemon's BFF) Jenna. But when it was decided to instead focus the series on execs and stars, Jenna was rewritten and eventually recast with Jane Krakowski. Dratch in turn filled multiple, intermittent roles, including that of a cat wrangler. "Both Tina [Fey] and I obviously adore Rachel, and we wanted to find a way in which we could go to her strength," 30 Rock EP/SNL overlord Lorne Michaels explained at the time. "The way it's been rewritten, it's a much funnier part."

After appearing in 146 episodes, James Eckhouse became synonymous for playing Brandon and Brenda's stern but loving father on the Fox soap. But another iconic dad originally parented the twins: Lyman Ward, who is known as Ferris Bueller's father in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's unclear why Papa Walsh was recast.

In the CBS sitcom's original pilot, Sheldon and Leonard offered Katie, a "street-hardened" cosmetics counter clerk who had been rendered homeless by a breakup, a place to crash for the night. Though Kaley Cuoco went up for the role, Amanda Walsh wound up landing it. "Chuck Lorre said, 'We love you, but we think you're too young,'" Cuoco told TVGuide.com. "So they cast somebody else, did the pilot, and then wanted to ... change the whole outlook on this character." (As WBTV chief Peter Roth put it, Katie as conceived was "not as appealing as that proverbial girl next door.") When the series was reconfigured with Penny as the boys' female foil, "Chuck called me and was like, 'Kaley, come meet with me,'" Cuoco said. "Twenty minutes after [meeting with the network] Chuck called and said, 'You've got the job.'"

Alyson Hannigan made her mark as the lovable nerd-turned-witch Willow, but as is widely known among Buffy diehards, Riff Regan was first tapped to play the slayer's pal. However, after viewing the short pilot presentation, WB execs requested that the character be recast. "[Regan] just didn't work," the show's casting director Marcia Shulman said in a DVD special feature,  adding that "the qualities that Willow had to have are the exact opposite qualities of what actresses have to have: sort of insecure, shy, self-effacing."

It's hard to imagine a Power of Three without Alyssa Milano, but it happened. Actress Lori Rom embodied youngest sister Phoebe in the original Charmed pilot, but the fresh face reportedly gave up the role shortly after filming wrapped. "Her desire to leave was for personal reasons," series creator Constance M. Burge told In Touch Weekly. "It was horrid and sad for her to go, but we were fortunate that it all worked out with Alyssa." Still, we can't help but wonder: Since much of Shannen Doherty's eventual departure was due to her personal conflicts with Milano, would Prue have died if Rom stayed? Then again, would the show have even been a hit without Milano on board? Perhaps some supernatural questions are best left unanswered.

Rebecca Gayheart — who is perhaps best known to TV fans as Dylan McKay's ill-fated wife Toni on Beverly Hills, 90210 — was first cast to play the beautiful companion. However, after just one day of filming, Gayheart was fired because she reportedly did not have the right chemistry with the rest of the cast. Morena Baccarin was then tapped to take over the role in her first big TV series gig.

Before she shot to fame as the adorably kooky Phoebe Buffay on Friends, Lisa Kudrow actually landed a key role on another iconic NBC comedy: She was originally cast as Frasier Crane's sassy radio producer Roz Doyle before the Cheers spinoff debuted in 1993. At rehearsals, though, Kudrow's take on Roz was more quirky than sassy, so producers replaced her with runner-up Peri Gilpin, who went on to play Roz for 11 seasons. Oh, and Kudrow ended up doing OK, too.

Despite being the producers' original choice for Mr. T, Bob Saget was under contract as host of CBS' The Morning Program at the time, and was unable to film the pilot. (Paul Reiser, who was also sought after, went with NBC's My Two Dads instead.) So, the producers went with comedian John Posey. It wasn't until ABC picked the sitcom up to series, and the Atlanta-based Posey was halfway to Los Angeles, that he received the dreaded call: "It was my agent saying, 'I don't know what's going on, but for some reason they're testing Bob Saget,'" Posey told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2014. "And I said, 'What are you talking about? Why would they do that?' I didn't know at the time that he was the guy that they originally wanted, that he was just unavailable." (The unaired pilot featuring Posey — watch the bizarro opening title sequence here — was eventually made available as a bonus feature on the Season 1 DVD.)

As the Game of Thrones lore goes, the fantasy series' pilot was a mess — so much so that it was reshot. Jennifer Ehle (Pride and Prejudice) portrayed Stark family matriarch Catelyn in that first go-around, but real-life motherhood wound up keeping her from continuing with the role: Ehle had given birth to her second child, Talulah, in the interim and asked to be released from the project so she could spend more time with her family. Michelle Fairley replaced her and would go on to have one of the most iconic deaths in TV history, courtesy of Season 3's Red Wedding.

Turns out, the First of Her Name wasn't actually the first of her name. Tamzin Merchant (The Tudors) played the Targaryen heir in the HBO hit's never-aired pilot, but according to Michael Lombardo, the network's programming president at the time, her scenes opposite Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo "just didn't work." Merchant herself told EW.com that she tried to back out of the role during the contract process but was talked into proceeding, "Then I found myself naked and afraid in Morocco and riding a horse that was clearly much more excited to be there than I was." Emilia Clarke was swapped in before the show's debut, and the rest is Mad Queen history.

Remember the iconic scene where Rory meets her first love Dean in the school hallway after dropping her books? Well, when she originally looked up, it wasn't Jared Padalecki that she saw. Actor Nathan Wetherington (True Detective) "met cute" with Rory in the unaired pilot, having "shot that scene, like, 45 times so they could get the books to fall the right way," he told EW.com.

A showrunner on Family Guy's first two seasons, Gilmore Girls EP Daniel Palladino tapped Alex Borstein to play Lorelai's BFF Sookie in the original pilot. Unfortunately, the actress later had to drop out because she was still under contract with MADtv. Future superstar Melissa McCarthy was subsequently brought on to take over as the haphazard chef. But Borstein still managed to be a part of Gilmore Girls, later appearing as harpist Drella and stylist Miss Celine. She would also go on to reteam with GG bosses Daniel Palladino and Amy-Sherman Palladino for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, earning two Emmys in the process.

Kate Winslet's mom from Titanic as Tim Taylor's put-upon wife?! Yep, Frances Fisher was all set to co-star opposite Tim Allen in the ABC sitcom, "but in this role with Tim, she came off more as a victim to him than his equal," Richard Karn, who co-starred as Al Borland, told Australia's News.com. ABC execs then wooed Patricia Richardson, who supposed to star in another show for the network in nine month's time, having just given birth to twins. Ultimately, Richardson agreed to join Home Improvement based on the producers' credits (her favorite show: Roseanne), and the chemistry was immediately there with Allen. "Tim was so hilarious, and we just clicked right away," the actress said on HuffPost Live.

Coming off her run as Naevia in Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (where she herself was eventually replaced by Cynthia Addai-Robinson), South African actress Lesley-Ann Brandt auditioned for the role of Lucifer's right-hand demon, Mazikeen aka Maze. Future S.W.A.T. team member Lina Esco wound up landing the gig, but following the table read for the pilot, a change-up was deemed necessary. "For whatever reason, it didn't work out [for Esco]," Brandt recalled during Michael Rosenbaum's Inside of You podcast. "My understanding was there were just creative differences, in what the character was going to be." Brandt — who remembers wearing "full leather bra, leather pants" to her audition ("I went for it!") — in turn got tapped for the series regular role, which she filled for seven seasons.

For four seasons, Liza Snyder portrayed Matt LeBlanc's better half on the family sitcom — but the Yes, Dear vet's CBS homecoming almost never was. Jenna Fischer was initially cast as Andi, but test audiences couldn't see past Fischer and LeBlanc's star-making roles on The Office and Friends. "They said, 'I don't believe Pam would marry Joey. The chemistry doesn't work between these two,'" Fischer recalled on a July 2020 episode of the Office Ladies podcast. "It wasn't working for them that we got married and had a family." It wasn't until Fischer was all packed and ready to fly to New York for CBS' annual Upfront presentation that she found out she was being recast. "The first thing I said was, 'Is [Man with a Plan] not getting picked up?' And they said, 'It's worse than that, hun.' And I was like, 'What's worse than that?' They said, 'It's getting picked up, but without you.' And I was like, 'Wow, I guess I'll unpack my suitcase.'"

Before Pitch/Saved by the Bell alum Mark-Paul Gosselaar ever donned Paul's baggy, bohemian wardrobe, Workaholics' Anders Holm was set to play Bow's hippie dad. No reason was given for the switch, though it's possible that the cancellation of The Passage — the sci-fi Fox series in which Gosselaar starred — a month prior to the casting change had something to do with it.

Max Greenfield had been tapped to replace Josh Lawson (House of Lies) two days before CBS presented a trailer for The Neighborhood at their 2018 Upfront presentation, which featured Lawson and Dreama Walker (Don't Trust the B—- in Apartment 23) as Dave and Gemma (watch here). A month later, Beth Behrs (2 Broke Girls) was brought in to replace Walker. "As far as the recasting, we shot the initial pilot, which we were very proud of, but the network had been wanting to be in business with Max for a while," series creator Jim Reynolds said at the 2018 Television Critics Association summer press tour, per The Wrap. Added Cedric the Entertainer: "Everybody knows that when you do pilot season, it is a limited talent pool and everybody is, like, pulling and trying to find those people." Once Greenfield and Behrs were brought in, he said, "we became the Golden State Warriors. We were like, 'All right, gimme him and [her]. Let's go!"

Bethany Joy Lenz captured viewers' hearts, not to mention Nathan's, as the sweet Haley James, a role she portrayed for almost a decade. But Tutor Girl was once played by actress/singer Samantha Shelton (sister of Marley Shelton!) — and the character's name was originally Reagan! The part was recast "because they wanted Nathan and Haley to become a couple, and Sam just wasn't right for that," Hilarie Burton (who played Peyton) explained during an episode of the One Tree Hill rewatch podcast Drama Queens. "Those two didn't work, because Sam was older than I was." Added Lenz: "It's a different chemistry."

Before Lauren Graham joined the Braverman clan, ER vet Maura Tierney portrayed eldest sis Sarah in the NBC drama's original pilot. But sadly, the actress could not continue with the series because the production schedule interfered with her breast cancer treatments. "She is deeply disappointed that she will not be able to rejoin such a highly respected, talented, fun and funny group of actors and wishes to thank [showrunner] Jason Katims and NBC for their patience and support," Tierney's rep said in a statement at the time. Thankfully, Tierney got a clean bill of health and went on to appear in many other TV shows, most notably The Affair.

A year after he made his stand-up comedy debut on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, comedian Louie Anderson was cast opposite Bronson Pinchot in the pilot for ABC's Perfect Strangers. When the Miller-Boyett sitcom was picked up the series in the spring of 1985, Anderson was replaced by Mark Linn-Baker, and the role of Lou Appleton became Larry Appleton.

No, Passions fans, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Sookie Stackhouse's BFF-turned-vampire-turned-ghost was originally played by actress Brook Kerr (aka Whitney Russell) in True Blood's unaired pilot. Her take on the role of Tara was considerably more demure than the one Rutina Wesley eventually brought to the screen, so while there hasn't been any on-record reason given for the recast, we can only assume that HBO wanted to take the character in a slightly different direction.