Back in November, I noted that former The Americans co-stars and current partners Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys had Netflix seasons debuting within a few weeks of each other, and that Rhys' new co-star Claire Danes had a career that overlapped a fair amount with Russell's. What, I wondered, would happen if the two of them had played each other's parts on Americans and Homeland? And, from there, I wondered what would have happened if other actors like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, or Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin, had tried playing each other's signature roles?
Alan Sepinwall
That discussion inevitably led to more suggestions from you wonderful readers, which in turn inspired me to think up even more pairings. So let's do this again, with another half-dozen combinations that are only some of the many ones mentioned after the original post. (Spoiler: this may become a periodic feature here at What Else Is Alan Watching?)
This time around, I started drafting matchups and realized I had picked three in a row involving characters from ER. So I decided to lean into that, with five different swaps that all feature actors from ER — plus several that also involve actors from Grey's Anatomy — though not every swap specifically involves a character who worked at County General.
What if Maura Tierney was Lorelai on Gilmore Girls, and Lauren Graham was Abby on ER?
These two have more overlap than most. Graham had a recurring role on NewsRadio where she played scenes opposite Tierney. And when Tierney had to drop out of Parenthood to go through cancer treatment after filming the pilot, Graham was hired to replace her(*). Though their onscreen energy isn't identical, I wouldn't be surprised if they often found themselves in a lot of the same audition rooms in the Nineties before their respective careers took off. Since they crossed paths in their other big TV roles, let's look at how each of them might have done with other parts of one another's careers. Tierney's time on ER largely overlapped with the original run of Gilmore Girls.