Vorkosigan casting

[psocoptera]

Vorkosigan casting! Unlike fanfic, this is something I can actually think about while my parents have the Olympics on.

Miles Vorkosigan: How about this guy?


I know it's a little weird to say I want to cast a visibly disabled actor and then turn around and cast a presently-able-bodied athlete, but sadly I don't *know* of any visably disabled actors (I guess Peter Dinklage might count, but he just doesn't look anywhere near fragile enough, to me), and, I don't know, Weir just looks right, to me, and I think he's got the flamboyance to pull off Miles' grandiosity. I was sort of hoping when he occurred to me that he was a really little guy like Scott Hamilton, and he's not, he's 5'9", but, enh, I guess everyone else wears lifts, or stands on boxes, or they do forced perspective tricks or whatever.

Cordelia Naismith: My first thought was Cameron Diaz, but even wanting Cordelia-the-Betan to look young for her age, she's a little too young. Helen Mirren is too old. So: Cate Blanchett.

A brief digression regarding race in the movie Vorkosiverse: so I think all of the Vor characters should be white, ideally Nordic or Slavic except for the Greekies who are obviously Greek, and the rest of the galaxy should be really aggressively multiracial, to try to visually underscore how much of the rest of the galaxy is this cosmopolitan community and then Barrayar is sort of this isolated racist backwater in comparison. (The Cetas aren't exactly in community with everyone else, but we know they take genetic material from everyone and engineer besides, so I think they should if anything have even greater than real-world variation, like, slightly unreal skin and hair colors.) So, given this, should Cordelia, a galactic, be played by a white actress? I sort of think there's something in canon about how she can pass for Barryaran as long as she doesn't talk, so, white actress, but I'd be curious if anyone disagrees.

Aral Vorkosigan: Mitch Pileggi, cleanshaven?

Ivan Vorpatril: Justin Timberlake, also cleanshaven. Tall, athletic, and it wouldn't be a huge stretch for him to play someone following the lead of his shorter, darker-haired, more manic comrade ::grin::.

Bothari: We need creepy. We need Crispin Glover.

Elena: I want to say Ellen Page, except she's way too short. Who's a taller Ellen Page lookalike?

Quinn: So, Miles bought her the prettiest face he could, right? Aishwarya Rai?

Gregor: Matt Bomer? I can picture him on that balcony...

Laisa: I would love for Laisa to be a fat actress, an actress of color, a fat actress of color if we could have that which I suppose in a fantasy casting we can, although I don't actually have one in mind. Nikki Blonsky or America Ferrera.

Bel Thorne: I'm sort of thinking that casting someone already known for androgyny might be fun here. Jaye Davidson is sadly too old. Andrej Pejic, maybe, with darker hair, or Jo Calderone (Lady Gaga's drag identity - I bet she and Johnny Weir would have fun working together).

Let's see, who's left. Taura is going to have to be done by motion-capture like a Na'vi, so no strong opinion there. I haven't come up with anyone good for Ekaterin, Simon, or Alys... anybody?

Comments

[rahirah]

Hm. I've never seen Miles as waifish, myself - more like a guy who was meant to look a lot like Aral, but sort of... compacted.

[irilyth]

Yeah, I'm not sure whether my image of him is that he looks visibly skinny and fragile, or if it's just that his bones are made of glass and he's got a normal musculature over that. Do the books talk about this more clearly?

Also, if he was skinny, what happens as he gets more replacement bones? Does he add muscle over time, or keep his same build?

[rahirah]

I've always gotten the impression that he's skinnier than he should be because he forgets to eat, so he looks more gaunt than elfin, if that makes sense. If we go by Mark, his 'natural' build would be more stocky, like his father (for all Miles daydreams of looking like Ivan sans the solitixin.)

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

But Mark is built like a tank because it's more like someone took Ivan and compressed him down to Miles's height (or, well, didn't let him grow taller), so he's got the musculature and metabolism of someone over a foot taller. Mark is even less "natural" body-type-wise than Miles. Aral's kind of square, but Cordelia's lanky, so it's unclear what 6-foot-tall Miles would have been like.

[irilyth]

Hmm, I'm still only midway through Barrayar on my reread, but I thought Mark was built just like Miles when we first meet him, and only changes because he makes a conscious and determined effort to change his appearance quite radically. Am I misremembering?

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

Mark is built just like Miles when we meet him because he has to look exactly like Miles. He is starved to get that way. Actually, I don't know if the musculature is the same--I assume they look identical with clothes on (meaning same size and shape), and presumably have the same scars, but they might actually look subtly different without clothes. I dunno. I think Mark chooses to become *obese* (I know, chooses, obese, loaded words) later on, but if he eats enough that he's not being starved, he will be quite a bit heavier than Miles. My mental picture of him as "built like a tank" is from near the end of Mirror Dance, when he was both fat and strong. I don't know if Miles is as strong physically as Mark. I think he probably couldn't be, because if he exercised his muscles that much, they'd put too much stress on the fragile bones. (My sister has our dad's ability to develop lots of muscle combined with our mother's bird bones. It's caused her problems with things like her neck going out, and that's with normal-strength bones that are just very slender. I can only imagine that Miles would have worse problems.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

In my head, fragile translates as waifish on the screen, I guess.

Thinking about this more, I think I also think about casting less in terms of the exact physical description in the book (which I don't tend to pay attention to anyways, I'm not someone who pictures characters as I read) and more in terms of, like, whether the character and actor have overlapping connotations for me, which I guess might make sense only in my own head. Probably just as well they don't actually let me make movies ::grin::.

[rahirah]

Heh, I do picture characters in my head, and am always mightily annoyed when Hollywood fails to come up with an exact match. *g*

[gannet.livejournal.com]

I was just reading the eARC of the upcoming Ivan book, and it was clearly talking about the standard Vor (and Barrayaran) appearance being dark hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. So, more Mediterranean in appearance, unless that's a retcon.

[glassonion]

Not a retcon afaik: i had pictured Gregor as blond at some point, and noticed that canon contradicted it. (I couldn't tell you when, of course.)

[glassonion]

To follow up to myself, in fact, i've been picturing Vor as dark-haired Russians for awhile, now, which led to me this sadly completely useless site, since i don't think you want any of those guys. Err, but more serious searches suggested Alexis Denisof as Simon: i can't decide if that would be weird or good, but i will suggest it anyway and see what you think. (He may be too young, but otoh maybe not.)

[irilyth]

I've started re-reading the series, and he's described as dark-haired in Barrayar. Drou is blond, though, which I think also fed my sense that they generally look like various sorts of Russian.

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

Yep, Gregor's got dark hair. I think I always picture Ivan as being blond, but he's not, either. Drou and her daughters definitely are, though.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Huh, but isn't there some whole prejudice thing about "Greekies"? I guess that could just be about names and language/accent and not appearance, but, I had thought otherwise, but if everyone looks Mediterranean it sounds like Grecian-appearing people would fit right in.

[rahirah]

Prejudice is not limited to skin color, alas. :/

[gannet.livejournal.com]

I can answer that based on further text from the ARC (which I am rereading); it doesn't seem particularly spoilery, but I don't know your preferences on these things.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Oh also I have not read the ARC, so no spoilers for that please if the conversation continues ::grin::.

[gannet.livejournal.com]

You bet! I hope what little I said above doesn't count as spoilery (I couldn't think of a way that it did...)

[antimony.livejournal.com]

Weir seems more like a good Byerly to me -- I envision him as kind of waifish. Miles should be stockier, IMHO, though not as much as Aral.

I briefly used Aleksandr Abdulov as a face for Ges in a roleplaying thing -- but he's deceased. Picked him for having pretty eyes and being Russian -- I envision all of the non-Greekie Barrayarrans as Russians of various stripes.

[ccommack]

I figure that Byerly's circles mostly run towards the habitual users of cocaine, or the Galactic equivalent. Waifish is definitely one phenotype associated with that...

I imagine Aral as having stepped straight off an early Soviet propaganda poster. Tall, broad of shoulder, vaguely Slavic but no really strongly defined ethnic features, modest to the point of self-effacement. Absolutely what they were going for with the New Soviet Man.

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

Well, I only read one compendium of Miles V stories, but I have to say I think you picked a very good guy for the look I got in my head from reading it. ;)

Fat actress of color--Queen Latifah!! :)

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

I am surprisingly charmed by the idea of Johnny Weir playing Miles. It's not what I would have thought of, but it works in my head.

I really like your idea about non-Barrayar being very multicultural/multiracial. Cordelia's pretty definitely white, though, and has reddish hair. Much as I adore Cate Blanchett, I think she might be too exquisitely beautiful for Cordelia, who I picture as more ordinary-looking--there's that lovely bit in Barrayar, I think, where she decides the only mirror she needs is Aral's eyes, because in them, she's beautiful.

Crispin Glover is perfect for Bothari.

Inspired by my NCIS watching, I think Daniela Ruah might work for Elena--tall, slim, dark-haired, combines poise and elegance with bad-assery. And Cote de Pablo might be a bit young for Ekaterin, but she could do the very self-contained thing and then totally smash things to bits when necessary.

And speaking of NCIS, someone needs to get in a time machine and get a young David McCallum (the photo at the top seems the right age) for Simon, because it was his character on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Illya Kuryakin, that Bujold was apparently picturing when she wrote Simon Illyan (note the name, as well).

[irilyth]

"Her grey eyes stared back at her from the pale face in the mirror. Nose a little too bony, chin a shade too long, but certainly a servicable face, good for all practical purposes."

"The syntax was self-conscious but the sentiment naked-sincere in his mirror-bright eyes. In those mirrors, I am altogether beautiful, Cordelia realized warmly. Much more flattering than that one on the wall upstairs. I shall use them to see myself from now on."

So, yes. :^)