8 Actors Who Knew The TV Show Was Doomed On Day 1
This bunch of actors knew straight away that their TV show wasn't destined to be a hit.
Transcript
00:00 From a set of Disney Channel sensations quickly figuring out that a titular show was a bad move
00:05 altogether, to one of the galaxy's most adored bounty hunters also not being a fan of the
00:09 direction his character was written to head down, each of these TV actors could sense a bumpy road
00:14 ahead from the get-go. The always doomed Gareth here from WhatCulture.com, and here are 8 actors
00:20 who knew their TV show was doomed on day one. 8. Colin Baker helped produce a Doctor Who
00:26 charity single pleading for its comeback While the BBC's iconic Doctor Who series may
00:31 currently stand as one of the most cherished and respected small screen franchises ever to
00:35 warp into our lives, the show was definitely on the ropes towards the end of its first run in the
00:39 late 80s. In fact, things got so bad when it came to the overall quality of the sci-fi time-travelling
00:45 property with Colin Baker at the wheel of the Doctor that the show was put on ice for 18 months
00:49 in 1985, on the back of BBC One controller Michael Grade feeling it had just become too violent and
00:55 a very clunky studio show. Then, in a move that still needs to be heard to be believed,
01:00 the decision was made by British songwriter and Who superfan Ian Levine to assemble a collection
01:05 of artists together to record a universally panned charity song by the name of Doctor in Distress,
01:10 to drum up support for the series edging towards cancellation. Clearly sensing he needed to do
01:16 something in a bid to keep his failing Doctor dreams afloat, Baker himself also agreed to appear
01:21 in the ill-fated tune, with Hans Zimmer of all people playing the song on a synthesizer. All of
01:26 the jarring beats in the world couldn't save Baker from eventually getting the regeneration treatment
01:31 after just three years including said lengthy hiatus in the Time Lord saddle though.
01:35 Clayne Crawford's Lethal Weapon Honesty
01:39 Being handed the chance to lead a TV adaptation of one of the most cherished action movie series
01:43 of all time isn't something most actors would be in too much of a rush to turn down. And sure
01:48 enough, when presented with this exact opportunity a couple of years back, Clayne Crawford was happy
01:53 enough to sign on the dotted line and commit himself to the role made famous by Mel Gibson
01:57 of Martin Riggs in Fox's incoming Lethal Weapon action series alongside Damon Wayans' Roger Murtagh.
02:04 However, in the time after the dust settled on his eventual firing from the production,
02:08 a few years into its run due to alleged misconduct on set, Crawford was quick to note how he sensed
02:13 he wasn't in an environment suited to him out of the gates. As he'd tell UPI in 2020,
02:17 "I was surrounded by people that didn't care that much about the artistry of it,
02:21 and I should have known that going in." Classing the entire project,
02:24 one that would come to an end following its subsequent Clayne-less season,
02:28 as nothing more than a "cookie cutter" and feeling wholly unfulfilled by the experience
02:32 on the back of appearing in the critically acclaimed Rectify show, Crawford seemingly
02:36 knew from the get-go that chasing the money may not have been the wisest call on this occasion.
02:40 Chris Harris Knew That A Top Gear Reboot Was Doomed From The Start
02:45 News of the trio who helped turn the petrolhead delight that was the BBC's Top Gear into their
02:50 household name and eventually became, not returning to the show on the back of Jeremy
02:54 Clarkson decking a producer over some steak, left the series' future in doubt in 2015.
03:00 Hellbent on keeping the Top Gear legacy alive despite Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond
03:04 opting to take their brand of calamity to Amazon Prime, though, the BBC ultimately decided to
03:08 relaunch the show with a completely new lineup of hosts. But from day one, one of said new faces
03:14 in the form of Chris Harris could sense this particular attempt to keep the Top Gear brand
03:18 going was doomed from minute one. As Harris would admit to Metro when talking about how the show
03:23 managed to eventually strike the right balance with later attempts at recapturing some genuine
03:28 chemistry between the hosts, "The first time I did this in 2015/2016, I thought, 'Oh God,
03:33 what have I done?'" Noting how former Radio 1 host Chris Evans - no, not that one in particular - was
03:38 doomed because people were always going to hate it because it wasn't Jeremy, Harris was understandably
03:43 relieved to find that the BBC had got their chemistry right upon his eventual first day
03:48 alongside current co-hosts Andrew Flintoff and Paddy McGinnis.
03:51 Tamiura Morrison Knew He Talked Too Much In The Book Of Boba Fett
03:56 After finally making his live-action return and ultimately getting his mitts back on his iconic
04:00 Beskar armor over the course of Disney+'s The Mandalorian, news of Tamiura Morrison getting yet
04:06 another opportunity to strut his stuff as the immortal Boba Fett in his own damn book was
04:10 enough to leave most Star Wars diehards needing a long soak in a Bacta tank. Unfortunately,
04:16 said long-awaited Booker Boba Fett didn't exactly deliver on the promise of the badass bounty
04:20 hunter, getting a chance to really remind fans why they had clamoured for so long to see him
04:25 given the spin-off treatment he so richly deserved. And this is a sentiment seemingly
04:29 shared by the leading man himself from early on in the show's production, with Morrison eventually
04:34 going on record to note to ET how he wants the character to get back to his badass ways if he
04:38 returns later down the road. In another conversation, this time with NME, Morrison
04:43 would also express his desire to have Boba remain as an often silent assassin instead of having him
04:48 talk too much throughout shooting, admitting to trying to pass off some of his dialogue to
04:53 co-star Ming-Na Wen at one point. As he put it, "This scene tomorrow, I'm talking too much. This
04:58 Boba doesn't talk this much. I've got all these paragraphs here. I think we should get rid of it."
05:02 And John's gone to Atlanta, so don't tell him. "Next morning on the set, I got a call from
05:06 Atlanta. Uh, John wants you to say all that dialogue. And what Favreau says goes, I guess."
05:11 Charlie Barnett wasn't fully on board with Ordinary Joe
05:16 Cut down after just one season in March of this year, NBC's Ordinary Joe getting cancelled not
05:22 long after its first 13 episodes trickled onto the network didn't actually come as too much of
05:27 a surprise to one of the show's stars as it goes. According to Charlie Barnett, who plays Joe's
05:32 best friend Eric Payne as the former embarks on three parallel journeys on the back of opting for
05:38 three entirely different routes when faced with a life-altering choice post-graduation,
05:42 the actor himself admitted to Digital Spy that he fought against it at first going into it,
05:48 due to not being sure that it was obtainable. Confessing that the story itself gets really,
05:53 really, really confusing, the Eric thespian's fears of his program being a little too difficult
05:58 to execute, to the point of roping in a sizeable network audience, ultimately came true later down
06:03 the road, with the actor eventually declaring that it was always going to be a challenge to
06:08 compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu with a show this complicated, and he was not necessarily
06:13 surprised to see it dead. 3. John Rhys-Davis thought
06:17 Slider's scripts were gibberish Quite clearly cherishing the world he was
06:21 occupying at the time, and sensing the limitless potential housed within the late 90s sci-fi
06:26 fantasy show by the name of Sliders on Fox, it was this love of the concept that left John Rhys-Davis
06:31 positively seething for much of his time bringing Professor Maximilian Arturo to life. As the
06:37 Gimli icon would explain to Digital Spy in 2016, the entire scenario wound up being the single
06:42 biggest missed opportunity of his life, due to the constant battles he found himself in with
06:46 the series' writers during his time as part of the first three seasons of the show. Branding
06:51 the scripts often handed to him as incomprehensible gibberish, Rhys-Davis would go further inventing
06:56 his frustrations at the writers on set, stating, "I would go to the writers and complain. But they
07:01 would say, 'John, why don't you just say the words as written?' And I'd say, 'I'll tell you what,
07:05 I will actually say the words as written when you can actually write intelligent sentences.'"
07:10 In the end, after Rhys-Davis departed during season three, Fox would ultimately opt to cancel
07:14 the flailing show before it was picked up by the sci-fi channel for its final two seasons.
07:19 2. The Jonas Brothers Just Went Along With It Despite Disney's Writing Being Terrible
07:24 They may form one of the most unstoppable pop trios on the planet, and have even made some
07:28 headway in Hollywood in more recent times. But the Jonas Brothers didn't exactly get off to
07:32 the best of starts when it came to their detour into the world of acting. Nick, Joe, and Kevin
07:37 have each all gone on record at various points to admit to sensing how much of a bad idea their
07:41 first real standalone project, whilst working under the Disney Channel banner, was from the
07:45 second they started to get to grips with the writing being handed over to them. With the
07:49 late naughty show by the name of Jonas, and later Jonas LA, focusing on the fictionalised version of
07:55 this heartthrob boy band, Joe would tell Vulture that some of the weird slapstick humour writing
07:59 was terrible before noting, "We went along with it at the time, because we thought Disney was
08:04 our only real shot, and we were terrified that it could all be taken away from us at any moment."
08:09 Again reiterating their regret over agreeing to the whole Disney debacle, Nick in particular would
08:14 confess when talking about the show's second season during their 2019 Chasing Happiness
08:18 documentary, "We shouldn't have done that. It really stunted our growth, you know? I feel like
08:22 it was just a bad move." Fair to say the lads have done alright since this early House of Mouse
08:26 mishap though, eh? 1. Matt LeBlanc knew Joey was doomed from the start
08:31 Trying to follow up arguably the biggest sitcom ever to grace the world's TV screens is a tall
08:36 order, whatever way you slice it. Trying to do so just a few months on from its highly emotional
08:41 finale being taken in by over 50 million passionate fans around the globe was downright insane.
08:47 And sure enough, the ill-advised Friends spin-off that was Joey didn't exactly manage to recapture
08:52 lightning in a bottle despite boasting one of the most lovable elements of that NBC game changer
08:56 front and centre. But clearly feeling as though the burden of having to carry an entire episode
09:01 on his back was a lot of responsibility, and the pressure was so much, Matt LeBlanc himself has
09:06 since confessed to Radio Times, "It was doomed from the start. In Friends, I was sharing a 22-minute
09:12 episode with six other characters. In Joey, the script was all me." Going further, LeBlanc would
09:18 also allude to the showrunner, who had also just finished up on Friends, and himself likely
09:22 benefited from taking a year off instead of diving straight into the spin-off. In the end though,
09:27 Joey was savaged by the critics, and didn't live past its second season before being canned.
09:32 LeBlanc would also take a much-needed five-year break from the acting world not long after Joey's
09:37 cancellation, before rocking up in BBC2 and Showtime's episodes and eventually winning
09:42 a Golden Globe in 2011 for playing a fictionalised version of himself. How's he doing? He's doing
09:48 alright. And that's our list! Know of any other actors who knew their TV show was doomed on day
09:52 one? Then let us know all about them in the comments section right down below, and do not
09:56 forget to like, share and click on that subscribe button while you're at it. Also, if this kind of
10:00 thing is your bag, then head over to WhatCulture.com and find some more awesome articles just like the
10:05 one this video you're watching right this second is based on. I have been Gareth from WhatCulture.com,
10:10 thank you very much for watching this video today, I hope to see your faces very,
10:14 very soon but in the meantime, be very good to yourselves. Bye!