What if...Cast of Safehold

Randomiser wrote:Why do people keep suggesting actresses 10+ years older than Sharleyan is, at least at the start of the series, to play her?

Good question. If I have to limit myself to people who would fit the role right now, I have far fewer options I like for numerous characters. If I can pick an actor or actress in his or her prime, I have far more options.

For example - Irys. There's steel in her, and a lot of character and intelligence. Current actresses around the age of 20-25 (ok, maybe 30, even if they're playing a 17 year old) who I think can portray those traits? Very, very few.

quote="Keith_w"]Maisey Williams for Irys
Justin Beiber as a dead sailor, floating face down in the aftermath of the battle of Darcos Sound.[/quote]


Beiber dying is just perfect. can we add Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen, Chris Brown, and a whole bunch of other annoying actors and singers to the list.

Ooh, not that I want her dead but Dolly Parton as a Sister in the SSK. Some one who looks sweet but has a secret to keep.

mhicks wrote:quote="Keith_w"]Maisey Williams for Irys
Justin Beiber as a dead sailor, floating face down in the aftermath of the battle of Darcos Sound.

Beiber dying is just perfect. can we add Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen, Chris Brown, and a whole bunch of other annoying actors and singers to the list.

Ooh, not that I want her dead but Dolly Parton as a Sister in the SSK. Some one who looks sweet but has a secret to keep.[/quote]

I generally dislike country music and it's performers, but Dolly is an exception to that. Love that woman, she has such a sense of humour about herself and she has aged very well. Dolly for Nynian anyone? Plus she has experience running a house of ill-repute.

Not sure about the specific textev. I recall that Charisians are generally shorter than mainlanders with black hair. Not sure but I seem to recall they had a bit of the epicanthic fold. That had me thinking of the Bugis of southern Sulawesi. These piratical people were thought to be the source of the Bogeyman myth. Seemed appropriate both to the story and to RFC's sense of humor that Charis actually was populated with bogeymen.

Sharley's description suggests darker than traditionally Caucasian features. Irys suggests slightly fairer without being blonde.

Siddermark's Old Province has cities from the American South. That suggests that the founder was and American. the population may not be, but that sort of limited license is just fine.

My hope for the movie is that the writers play around with the accents and perhaps even exaggerate those accents slightly. Mix and match the complexions of the different nations with accents that do not quite match in real life. The disjunction would approximate what RFC tried to do with the spelling of the names. I am open to just to mix and match to best move the story forward.

EdThomas wrote:

PeterZ wrote:SNIP
For some reason I think that the story describes Charisians as Pacific islanders. The image I have is for Cayleb to be an Maylay Eurasian. Charis and Emerald are Eurasian/full Maylay. Chisholmians are darker complected with African and semitic features. Siddermarkians are American Anglo. Corisandians are Celtic with fairer features but still not really blonde or red headed. All the nations will have a smattering of human phenotypes but in general their characteristics corespondent to the above.



SNIP

I like it. Any chance you could point to a description of these? Anglo-American would in clude Western European? Eurasian would cover slavic, midddle east and the northern himalayas? Malay is epicanthic fold, brown-yellow skin, china/japan/vietnamese?

So then, Lynda Carter, one of the earliest Wonder Women for Nynian.

So..., Stan Lee gets to be in all those Marvel movies...
How about RFC as Edward Howsmyn?

Think of the info dump soliloquys

tootall wrote:So..., Stan Lee gets to be in all those Marvel movies...
How about RFC as Edward Howsmyn?

Think of the info dump soliloquys

NOoo! because if he is acting he is not writing and finishing all his work that is out there. Now if he has all his work finished then he can go out and play a part like that. But if RFC (Mr. Weber) is on the set playing a role the time between books would be even longer.

mhicks wrote:

tootall wrote:So..., Stan Lee gets to be in all those Marvel movies...
How about RFC as Edward Howsmyn?

Think of the info dump soliloquys

NOoo! because if he is acting he is not writing and finishing all his work that is out there. Now if he has all his work finished then he can go out and play a part like that. But if RFC (Mr. Weber) is on the set playing a role the time between books would be even longer.

FYI Stan Lee only does cameos in the Marvel movies. In Iron Man he was Hugh Hefner in Fantastic Four he was a mailman in Captain America WS a security guard. At most he has maybe a dozen words of dialog.

Irys is 17 (that's 15 Terran) when we're first introduced to her. Sharleyan I believe was 24 (i.e. around 21 Terran). You'd want the actress playing Irys to be 15 or 16 if possible, but since she's described as being unusually mature for her age you may have to go higher. With Sharleyan you could cast someone ten years older than the character if you absolutely had to, but late teens to mid-twenties would be preferable. Bear in mind that a series based on these books would probably have a run of six or seven seasons. Maybe a bit longer, depending. You don't want your actors aging out from under their characters in that time.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, when women start having children around 19 or 20 they're about 40 when their own children turn 20, and about 60 when their grandchildren do the same. So grandparents aren't that old. Great grandparents are about the age grandparents tend to be in our society, where people usually wait longer to start families. And somewhere between 60 or 70 Safehold years should be the point where a full decade's discrepancy has accumulated between Safehold and Earth ages. So a character like Karyl Rydmakyr, the Countess of Cheshyr, would be somewhere in her fifties by Terran reckoning. Hardly a decrepit old lady. Sharleyan's mother would be even younger than that, late thirties to mid forties. So to the guy who nominated Jennifer Love Hewitt for many different roles (including Sharleyan) the Queen Mother Alahnah would be a better fit.

If memory serves, Chisholmians are fairly light skinned while Charisians resemble people from Mediterranean cultures; say, Greeks or Italians. Given enough time people living in equatorial regions would develop darker skin and people living at higher latitudes would become paler. This happens much more quickly than most genetic changes, but still takes a few thousand years minimum. It hasn't been nearly long enough since the Federation colonists arrived. So for the most part I'd expect a diverse racial mix everywhere on Safehold. It did say something in OAR about the province of China still having enough clout to get one or two ships entirely devoted to its own residents, who were settled in the area which became Harchong. Also that the relatively high number of Asian colonists meant people with Asian features were more prevalent than in the Federation.

I'm sure there are things I don't remember off the top of my head, but producers of a hypothetical Safehold TV series would have a fair amount of wiggle room in designing the look and feel of each realm. In addition the books refer to dialects - Chisholmian or Desnairian or Temple Lands accents - without Merlin ever mentally comparing any of them with accents from Earth. So the writers would also have the freedom to decide how people from different places talk. Which would, in turn, have some bearing on who was cast in the various roles.