The Casting Question

[Barb Jacobs]

I'm really having fun reading these, because it's given me an interesting insight on how readers are perceiving the characters. What is surprising to me is how Claude seems to be coming across as a rather classy austere Brit from some of the choices to play him. This was never really my intention for him, at least this early in the story.

Okay, So what do I see? (Not that it really matters that much!)
First the easy ones.

Tychia was always Pink to me.

Attitude, hair, clothes, etc. They aren't identical, but I could still see Pink playing Tychia in a movie.

Ambrosia? Uh....

Like I've always said... the similarity is all coincidence. ^_^

Now the more difficult ones...

Originally I used -of all people- Avril Lavigne as my inspiration for Xylia.

(You always start with an inspiration...and it usually changes!) In the very first storyline Xylia was going to be a college student, and much sassier and spunkier than the etheral, timeless being she has become. She's changed a lot in my mind.

Today, I can see Anne Hathaway as Xylia, although her physical proportions are a bit off. (Anne is quite curvy) But she has the big eyes, and mouth, and even nose.

I have heard "Angela Lansbury" as the voice of Livy more than once, too. To me, Angela's voice is too sweet, and perhaps not upper class enough to pull of Livy. I love Julie Andrews' voice and her pronunciation, but her voice is too pretty. I think it would need to be Dame Judy Dench, or perhaps Helen Mirren doing her Queen E II voice. A commanding woman's voice. Fear this Corgi.

Claude. This was the hardest character for me to design originally. I had the name, I knew he would be skinny (after three years of ridiculously ripped Ollie, Tim, Colin and Reggie I wanted a change of physique... I actually asthetically prefer slim men) but designing him was a real challenge. When I look at the early drawings of him, I'm always surprised at how much shorter his face was. In my mind from the very beginning, 'Claude' was to have a very long face and nose, and a tall, angular gangly body. As he becomes more aware of who he is, he would become more confident and perhaps more elegant, but at first, he's gawkish and clumsy.

Jake Weber (a British character actor who currently appears in the TV show, The Medium) was one actor that sort of looked like what I saw for Claude at first. At least his face.

Then very recently I saw Adrien Brody in King Kong. Even my kid called it. "That guy is Claude." He's not British. He's got that ethnic Jewish look that's not quite right either, but it's all about the nose, people. ^_^

He has the right kind of lanky body, and there's something sort of haunted in his eyes, too. Like, "Didn't I do this life thing already? Like TEN TIMES?"

Thank goodness Im not a casting director! This is hard!

[Scott Maitland]

I noticed an actress in a recent episode of Flashpoint, and got around to looking her up tonight. Her name is Tannis Burnett, and it seems she's had roles in a fair number of things, but generally small enough that there's little information about her around, and only one picture I could find at all. I ended up grabbing this myself from the episode in question:

Doesn't she look like a relative of Claude? If she were male and five to ten years younger, that's his face there.

[Strange Ian]

She could be an older Katharos... You're right, she does look a lot like Claud!