The Rico Act(or)

Via TV, Eh?, a German publication recently had an interview with Enrico Colantoni to promote Flashpoint‘s German TV premiere. He also says he hasn’t heard anything about the long-rumoured, ever-elusive possibility of a Veronica Mars movie.

As the introduction to the interview makes clear, Colantoni will always be best known (or should be, anyway) as Keith Mars, but I think I appreciated him even more on Just Shoot Me, for one reason: he managed to do well in that part despite being totally miscast. He was the right age, but I remember watching the pilot and wondering why this bald, intense guy was cast as the show’s resident ladies’ man. The part was written like the character was handsome, cocky (cue hilarious double-entendre) extremely successful with women, and displaying hints of romantic tension with the heroine. And Enrico Colantoni was a good actor who looked about 10 years older than he was, and seemed unlikely to be more of a hit with women than even David Spade.

But he was cast because he was a good actor, and available (his last show, Hope and Gloria, had just failed), and the writers worked around his appearance and, if they couldn’t make him a sex symbol, at least didn’t try too hard to convince us that he was one. Which kind of taught me, as a viewer, that casting the right actor is often better than casting the right physical type: the writers can deal with womanizing photographer who looks like a more personable George Costanza, as long as he can act the part. (Veronica Mars is one of many other shows where this lesson played out, because Kristen Bell is a completely different physical type than the one Rob Thomas specified in his original script.)