Should The Count be recast?

[JLG]

A Count without Jerry will be hard enough to take, but the one I'm really dreading is the day when someone takes over Oscar. Think about it. It's not easy to take a character who's nasty, grouchy and mean, and yet still make him loveable. It takes a special kind of talent to pull that off. Caroll O'Connor did it with Archie Bunker. If you had given another actor that role, Archie probably would have just come across as a savage brute. But O'Connor managed to convey that underneath the bad temper, the prejudice and the bullheaded ignorance, Archie was basically a decent man with a heart.
Caroll Spinney does the same thing with Oscar. And he's been with the character so long that his performances have a lot of nuance and subtlety that really give it depth. (within the realm of puppets, anyway) It's going to very hard for whoever takes Oscar over to capture that same quality.

 

[wiley207]

Yeah, recasting Oscar's gonna be difficult!

But I think it'd be totally easy to recast Harvey Kneeslapper... they could just use Eric Jacobson!

 

[TeacherLady]

At first I struggled with the concept of replacing characters but now that I have a daughter of my own I would hate for her to NOT have a Count at all just because I selfishly said that no one other than Jerry would do. Of course I adore the old clips far more than any of the new stuff (they were a lot more cheeky in the old days!) but I would hazard to guess that the Muppeteers themselves would rather have their characters live on for generations to enjoy rather than end them when their careers or lives end. What better legacy could a performer leave behind?

 

[anytimepally]

Yeah, recasting Oscar's gonna be difficult!

But I think it'd be totally easy to recast Harvey Kneeslapper... they could just use Eric Jacobson!

I could do Harvey Kneeslapper

Well, if that happened, I think they should at least play classic clips with Jerry's Count so he won't be forgotten. After all, when Jim Henson died, they still played old clips with Ernie and Kermit before Steve took over.

of course they should that!


on a side note, I was thinking about the recasting issue, and you know, although I still stand behind the hiatus that I mentioned earlier for the Count, I'm not as sure with Oscar.. sure, those are big shoes to fill, but there's always the chance that the new muppeteer would do as much with Oscar as David Rudman has been able to do with Cookie Monster (in my opinion, by far the best of the recasts) .. the thing about a hiatus with Oscar is that it's much harder to do, because he lives right out there in the middle of the Sesame Street, and not in a castle like The Count does