Mat has been recast

[DojoToad]

23 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Madeleine is quite beautiful

All a matter of opinion just as with swollymammoth's comment.

[CaddySedai]

#TruthBurns

[DojoToad]

5 minutes ago, CaddySedai said:

#TruthBurns

Indeed!

[DaddyFinn]

14 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

All a matter of opinion just as with swollymammoth's comment.

Of course

[thehumantrashcan]

12 hours ago, Rhettles said:

My first thought when I heard this news was  "GREAT!  Maybe they'll recast Moiraine next!" 

*cough* Claire Foy as Moiraine *cough* 

Never!  When I first heard Rosamund Pike was cast I was ecstatic.  I think she's one of the best actresses out there too!  I really think she's the best person to introduce the EF5 to this world and set them on their paths.  And besides, she's a Bond girl!

[Rhettles]

4 hours ago, thehumantrashcan said:

Never!  When I first heard Rosamund Pike was cast I was ecstatic.  I think she's one of the best actresses out there too!  I really think she's the best person to introduce the EF5 to this world and set them on their paths.  And besides, she's a Bond girl!

I understand your enthusiasm... but which of these two looks more like Moiraine?    

I can only speak for myself of course, but Claire Foy, at 5ft 3inches with a trilling musical voice, a beautiful, mature yet youngish face and naturally brown hair  wins hands down for me.   Also her experience with the Crown shows us that Claire has a cold hard stare that speaks volumes without twitching a muscle.    

[thehumantrashcan]

6 hours ago, Rhettles said:

I can only speak for myself of course, but Claire Foy, at 5ft 3inches with a trilling musical voice, a beautiful, mature yet youngish face and naturally brown hair  wins hands down for me.   Also her experience with the Crown shows us that Claire has a cold hard stare that speaks volumes without twitching a muscle.

I get it but with how casting works, I didn't care what the actors look like, as long as they got talented people and Rosumond is very talented.  But yes, Claire was great in The Crown.

[dssharp]

It is a pretty big blow to the show to have a main character have to be recast. What a bummer. A fairly big obstacle to overcome and usually does take a little away from it even if it’s a great product. It can be overcome, it’s just difficult. I guess earlier is better than later, it just makes me hope no other roles have to be recast. ?

[mogi68]

Hopefully Donal Finn is in season 2 from the start and they don't swap out the character in the middle of the season, like they did in Rome with Octavian

Edited September 24, 2021 by mogi68

[Elder_Haman]

This is likely. Barney's absence was already a subject of speculation among folks who pay attention to the cast's social media and whatnot.

[WhiteVeils]

Saw this article re: the recasting today.

https://deadline.com/2021/11/the-wheel-of-time-mat-cauthon-role-donal-finn-rafe-jenkins-plans-amazon-series-1234870995/

[redarm]

16 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

Saw this article re: the recasting today.

https://deadline.com/2021/11/the-wheel-of-time-mat-cauthon-role-donal-finn-rafe-jenkins-plans-amazon-series-1234870995/

 

Good stuff, though no more detail about the reasons for the change.  The confirmation of who the Dragn is is there which is good.  The hopefulness of 8 seasons is great but they gotta knock it out of the park with these first two seasons.

[Pandemonium]

From the clips I have seen so far and the 1st 3 episodes review on Tor, Matt doesn't seem that funny yet.  hopefully the new Matt actor conveys lots of Matt's humor as that is the key to his charm

[Ralph]

6 hours ago, redarm said:

 

Good stuff, though no more detail about the reasons for the change.  The confirmation of who the Dragn is is there which is good.  The hopefulness of 8 seasons is great but they gotta knock it out of the park with these first two seasons.

Three ?

[Deadsy]

4 minutes ago, Pandemonium said:

From the clips I have seen so far and the 1st 3 episodes review on Tor, Matt doesn't seem that funny yet.  hopefully the new Matt actor conveys lots of Matt's humor as that is the key to his charm

 

 

Ya, basically everything I've seen makes me a bit concerned about his portrayal, and I am guessing he was doing what he was directed to do, since I doubt he chose that his parents in the show would be bad apples. Mat should be happy and wanting to make people laugh up until he takes the dagger, so you can see he's changed. At least they have a good in-book excuse to change his character a lot with the new actor.

[2RiversFan]

 

2 hours ago, Deadsy said:

Ya, basically everything I've seen makes me a bit concerned about his portrayal, and I am guessing he was doing what he was directed to do, since I doubt he chose that his parents in the show would be bad apples. Mat should be happy and wanting to make people laugh up until he takes the dagger, so you can see he's changed. At least they have a good in-book excuse to change his character a lot with the new actor.

I didn't find Mat to be funny in EotW.  He annoyed me especially on 1st read and subsequent rereads of EotW also, tbh.  It wasn't until he awoke after the healing in the Tower that I really started to like him.  In FoH, he became my favorite.

[redarm]

15 hours ago, 2RiversFan said:

 

I didn't find Mat to be funny in EotW.  He annoyed me especially on 1st read and subsequent rereads of EotW also, tbh.  It wasn't until he awoke after the healing in the Tower that I really started to like him.  In FoH, he became my favorite.

 

I am rereading now and am just past the party's separation after Shadar Logoth, and really there was little humor from Mat himself.  A bit of mischief but not really anything humorous.  I agree he becomes more lighthearted later on.  He is probably my favorite character but not for anything he does in the first couple of books.

Edited November 12, 2021 by redarm

[MasterAblar]

Mat pre and post the Dragon Reborn is a very different character to be honest. I think part of it is that his luck becomes such an essential part of his character.

[Agitel]

You really have to be in Mat's head to get the funny. The best part about him is the dissonance in how he sees himself versus how he acts.

[redarm]

2 minutes ago, Agitel said:

You really have to be in Mat's head to get the funny. The best part about him is the dissonance in how he sees himself versus how he acts.

 

Agreed, but there is no part of the early adventure that we see from inside Mats head.  He has no POV chapters there.  While yes, those of us who have read the series get it and see the humor because we know the character, first time readers, or watchers of the show, won't.  Mostly because its just not there.  The whole, let's release a badger into the green bit is humorous but every other interaction with Mat in the first 30 or so chapters is fraught with stress, fear and uncertainty.  Really the whole first book and maybe The Great Hunt as well, because, well, reasons.    The party is moving along too fast and the story to new to have Mats humor established, especially as he isn't a focus of the narrative.  Our early impression of Mat is that he is a bit of trouble maker and is happy to drag his buddies into the fire with him.  That's weak sauce compared to what he becomes later.

[WhiteVeils]

Just finished my latest reread.  I love Mat, he's always been my favorite, but there are a few issues with him in the books.  Those saying he's not funny in the first two books are absolutely right, but he /wants/ to be funny.  It's just circumstances get very overwhelming, and of course the dagger infects him pretty badly. 

He is /wonderful/ in the middle books.  He hits this right balance between wry and funny and stressed and concerned all of them in the middle books, where he's taking care of everybody the best he can and cursing himself for it the whole time.  This is the best Mat, IMO.  The thing he knows he /should/ do...run away and look after Mat Cauthon...is at war with the thing that he actually does, "against" his conscience....which is going to save even random strangers getting themselves killed because they are idiots and looking after lost children and so on.  In these middle books, he has a kind of 'reverse conscience'....where the things his mind is telling him are the right thing to do goes against a deeper nature which is very heroic.  There is humor in that conflict, and he is not at all above the wry comment, but he's not 100% funny.
In Sanderson's books, to me, I feel like he got Mat a little "wrong".  He made Mat much more funny, but he lost a little of that conflict...specifically, the caring side of Mat.  Mat does do heroic things, but right at this point I'm having a hard time forgiving him for not helping Perrin search for Faile or saying goodbye/mourning Rand after the end of the Last Battle.  It just feels wrong...not like him at all. 

How's this relevant?

Well, the biggest obstacle to the shows is how do you get this internal dialogue that we love so much 'out'.  We can't see in Mat's head, so we don't know he always thinks doing the heroic thing is the wrong thing to do, at least later on when we get to Dragon Reborn Mat.  We just see what he does.  That conflict is the Mat we want to see.  So how do we bring that "out" to the audience?
One way is to make his family the 'voice' of that reverse conscience, early on.  If an Abel Cauthon, for example, is exactly that sort of man...the man who instructs his son that he should look out for himself,  avoid trouble, don't do the heroic thing...then you have a voiced 'reverse conscience' if you will that Mat can refer back to and voice comments about later on, making the same statements aloud that he's saying inside his head in the books "My da would say..." And the audience will know from the start that's the background he's coming from, and so they can imagine what he's thinking later when he's just doing the facial expressions, and so on, that hints at what he's thinking.
Later on, if we do meet Abel again, we could find out, much to our amusement, that he's really /just like Mat/.  He's been telling his son...and himself...to look out for number 1 for years, but when push comes to shove and Emond's Field and his family is in danger, he steps up just as well as any man.

[themann1086]

20 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Later on, if we do meet Abel again, we could find out, much to our amusement, that he's really /just like Mat/.  He's been telling his son...and himself...to look out for number 1 for years, but when push comes to shove and Emond's Field and his family is in danger, he steps up just as well as any man.

This is basically my hope for the rumored storyline for Mat's family, or give Abel a character arc where he comes the man we see in the middle/later books.

[Elder_Haman]

52 minutes ago, themann1086 said:

This is basically my hope for the rumored storyline for Mat's family, or give Abel a character arc where he comes the man we see in the middle/later books.

This, or the Cauthons are generally good people who get a little overexuberant during the Winternight festivities. If they make some dishonorable choices during the fighting, that could be a good way to kick off Mat's character.

[Borderlander]

Another downstream ripple effect of aging up the E5... If you are a lighthearted, mischievous 17-or-18 year old, you can still get away with that class-clown persona, but  even two or three years later, when you're in your early 20's and you keep up the same tired shtick, people roll their eyes and say 'grow up.' 

And either you grow up and cut out the childish pranks, or you lean into the class-clown stereotype even more, except you're not in class anymore and it just comes off as kind of sad and pathetic.

 

I loved the Barney Harris casting initially (still do), and I know a lot of us loved his short zinger at that table read over a year ago, but I can't help but look at all the production stills and teasers, with Mat looking haggard, scraggly-bearded, with his sleeves extra-long to make him look like some kind of roving beggar, the way he slumps when he sits, and I find it kind of sad, like they took our beloved class-clown, teenage Mat, made him two or three years older, but decided that in those off-screen years his character chose not to grow up, but leaned into the 'class-clown without a class' role... which in a small village like Emond's Field would essentially amount to a young man rejecting the traditional roles expected of him and following a trajectory to become, at best, a recluse or outsider, and at worst a dirtbag and a thief. I know young men today live with their parents until they're 46 years old, but back then if you weren't pulling your weight and living up to your responsibilities, I'm not sure how long you would remain welcome in a small, close-knit village like Emond's Field.

 

I know some of this has to do with the dagger, but even shot in (the) Two Rivers, he just looks so scummy and bummy. 

[TheDreadReader]

52 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

This, or the Cauthons are generally good people who get a little overexuberant during the Winternight festivities. If they make some dishonorable choices during the fighting, that could be a good way to kick off Mat's character.

 

You could read some of the Coplin/Congar stuff in TWEOTW as alluding to some southern society tropes so they have a little Hatfield/McCoy in them.   Riffing on that idea, if you look at the Cauthons as being a little work hard/play hard, honorable, but with a reputation for being on the wrong side of the "law" at times then it might work too.  

 

In TV trope terms, Southern-Fried Private or Southern-Fried-Genius might be good examples of what I'm trying to describe.