‘Fan casting’ lets you pick the actor
It’s been a long winter already, so you’ll have to forgive me if it sounds like I’ve been spending way too much time at home watching movies and tooling around the internet (because I have).
A website I recently stumbled upon really caught my interest as someone who watches a lot of movies and TV shows while also reads everything from Marvel Comics to The New Yorker. My interest in wide-ranging topics led me to a “fan casting” (or “fantasy casting”) site called mycast.io, which allows anyone to propose actors or actresses for portraying specific historical or fictional characters.
What brought me to this site was my recent delve into Russian history, specifi cally around the start of the 20th century during the lead-up to the downfall of the czarist government and its replacement by Communist revolutionaries in 1917. One of the more interesting characters from this period, by far, is Grigori Rasputin, the so-called “mystic” who weaseled his way into the family circle of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. With his long, dark beard and piercing eyes, every picture of Rasputin is haunting. He seems like less like a real historical figure and more like a supervillian created by a fiction writer.
When reading about this ultimate creeper, I started to wonder why I had not seen him portrayed more often, either in movies or television. I found myself on a Wikipedia page called “Grigori Rasputin in popular culture,” and discovered that he has, in fact, been played by many actors in movies as far back as 1917 — just a few months after his actual death.
Scrolling down to the more modern portrayals, I was pleased to see that Alan Rickman won a Golden Globe award for playing him in an HBO movie back in 1996. If you remember Rickman — with his deep, ominous voice and elongated features — he seems like the perfect fit. Looking ahead, though, I was disappointed to find that Leonard DiCaprio is slated to play the “mad monk” in an upcoming movie called Rasputin. Nothing against DiCaprio’s acting, but he has none of the natural features needed to play such as recognizable figure. The casting director would be better off giving DiCaprio an upturned mustache and making him play Czar Nicholas.
For the record, my choice for Rasputin is Adam Driver, the tall, lanky actor who played one of the main antagonists in the most recent Star Wars trilogy. Others on the mycast website agree with me, which only motivated me to look up other matches on the website that are popular. How about Meryl Streep as Hilary Clinton and Robert Redford as Donald Trump in a movie about the 2016 election? Too soon? Probably. But, it’s kind of a fun way to kill some time when the temperature outside is 20 below.
OUT FOR A WALK
KEVIN O’BRIEN
EDITOR
