Aug 8 2014

Casting call

Rosemary

An anonymous commenter recently asked:

This is sort of a random question, because I had no idea where to ask it, but…if the Steerswoman series were ever made into a movie, who would you want playing the characters?

This is an interesting question.   Mainly because I am largely clueless on this.

There’s only one role and only one actor that immediately springs to mind: Emma Watson

Click here for an image of her that really makes me think “Rowan”.

(I’m not posting the image directly, because I’m not all that sure about the copyright issues. But when I see this photo, I just go: Wow.)

I know she can deliver a good performance of an intelligent woman… but Hermione was quite a different character than Rowan.   Could she project the degree of self-confidence and authority that Rowan has?  I don’t know, having only seen her in all the Harry Potters, and (of all things) the Bling Ring.   But I think this would be a great role for her, if she’s up to it!  A good, rich, deep role.  And she’d be the central character, the focus, and the hero of the tale.  And it’s right in line with her beliefs about promoting women’s rights.

Seems like a good fit to me…  But I’m sure you know of other actors who could carry the role… tell me in the comments, and I’ll turn all the pertinent info from the comment stream into its own post!

As for Bel, well…

One of my thoughts about casting Bel is that it would be great to use someone who really can do all the fighting, and won’t need a stunt double.   Ideally, I’d love someone who, perhaps, wanted to be an actor, but whose appearance didn’t fit the Hollywood narrowly-acceptable range, and turned to stunt work out of sheer love of film.  Someone who really has all the acting chops, but was never allowed a major role.   Because Bel can be short, muscular, and not perfect-pretty.

But the key thing would be that the actress have really good “buddy” chemistry with whoever ends up playing Rowan.  That trumps all of the above.   The two need to come across on the screen well together.

Casting Willam would be tricky indeed.   I’d love to have the same actor play Willam at 14 and at 20!   If we do a miniseries (please, please) instead of movies (oh, but perfectly happy with movies, thanks!), this might be more possible.   Given that Will at 14 was big for his age, we could use an actor somewhat older, and by the time we get back to him, he would be able to carry off 20.

I have very few ideas at all about the rest of the cast… because, really, there’s lots of leeway.  I’d rather have a really brilliant actor who perhaps doesn’t quite look the role, rather than one who looks perfect but can’t act his or her way out of a paper bag!

How about some suggestions?