Bianca Lawson (Kendra) was originally cast in the role of Cordelia but turned it down. She said:
“Well, there’s a period in a season where you audition for all the pilots, and you never know…so you kind of audition for everything. At the time I had done a lot for Sister, Sister and the writers of that told me they were going to write a new show and put me in it. A couple of years later they did, they wrote a part for me in this new show and named the character Bianca. I just felt a kind of loyalty to those writers. And who knew that Buffy was going to become the phenomenon that it did?” (1)
The show Bianca went to instead of doing Buffy was called Goode Behaviour which filmed for only one series in 1996.
Sarah Michelle Gellar originally auditioned for the role of Cordelia, feeling that her past credit playing bitchy character Kendall Hart in soap All My Children would help her along. She instead was offered the part of Buffy.
Charisma Carpenter originally auditioned for the role of Buffy but was cast as Cordelia after Bianca turned the role down. At her audition, she was given only 15 minutes to prepare for Cordelia after she had prepared for Cordelia. Charisma was offered a screen test and was so late due to working on Malibu Shores that she almst missed the audition. (2)
Charisma says of the experience:
“I was auditioning for the role of Cordelia. It was the screen test with the whole network and I was running late for the audition because I was at work at [the show] Malibu Shores in Long Beach and I had to get to Burbank. It was raining and it was rush hour, so I borrowed clothes from Costume, and I’m high tailing it on the freeway, trying to be safe, trying not to get in an accident.
I got these [cell phone] pages from my manager, and I was really broke at the time so I didn’t have a cell phone or anything. I’m just like, “I know this is my agent, please hang in there, please hang in there, I can’t get off [the freeway] yet, I can’t get off yet”.
Finally I get off and I go to the Seven Eleven and my agent has paged me six times. I know what she’s telling me, “You’re late, they’re going to leave,” and it would just make me panic.
So I get to the Seven Eleven [call her and ask] “Why are you calling me so many times, like 13 pages in half an hour?” She goes, “You’ve got to get there, they’re going to leave,” and I go, “You tell them not to leave, you tell them to order a pizza, you tell them something but tell them to wait”. So they waited, and I got the part. That was my most exciting real personal audition.” (3)
December 27th, 2005 at 2:03 am
It would have been so strange if those actresses kept got the parts they auditioned for, i Mean imagine Kendra being Cordilia, OHH its too much lol