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Always The First Actor To Get Fired

Does it seem to you that Sydney Tamlia Poitier (his daughter) has become one of the unluckiest actors in TV? She’s been dumped from the revamped Knight Rider in its quest to re-revamp itself. Her last regular role was on Veronica Mars, where she was added to the cast after the pilot and then removed from the cast almost immediately. Before that, she had a recurring role on Joan of Arcadia in the first season, but did not appear in the second and final season. (Before that, she had her own sitcom on UPN, which was canceled after only 10 episodes, too soon for them to fire her and replace her with Sandy Duncan or something.)

This says nothing bad about Poitier, except that she has bad luck; when you’re given a superfluous character to play, there’s nothing you can do to make them useful. (Veronica Mars didn’t need a regular teacher character — Keith Mars was the only sympathetic adult figure it needed on a regular basis — and Knight Rider‘s only shot at survival is to get rid of the counterterrorism stuff and get back to having KITT help out random schmucks like in the ’80s.) But getting signed up as a regular and being dropped after a few episodes must be one of the most painful experiences for a TV actor, second only to playing a part in the pilot that gets re-cast when the series is picked up.

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