Meet Todd Jason McCallister
With Everwood-fan favorite Emily VanCamp coming aboard as Rebecca and veteran actor Peter Coyote in the wings to spark Nora’s next romance, speculation has been running rampant on the next big casting challenge: Todd Jason*, the senator’s brother and a potential love interest for Kevin. Names like Dan Futterman and Josh Charles and even, er, Bert or Ernie have been tossed around on blogs and message boards, but now the speculation is over: According to TV Guide’s Ausiello Report, the producers have chosen neither a well-known name nor an absolute nobody, settling on Eric Winter, who will be recognized by soap fans as Rex Brady on Days of Our Lives, by ABC family fans as R.J. Blake on Wildfire, and by the rest of us as a vaguely familiar face from guest shots on a variety of successful and failed prime-time shows.
Is this the right casting choice? It’s sure to bring in boatloads of soap devotees, and a ratings spike here at the end of the first season would further burnish hopes for a second one. As fun as it is to see a name actor take a part, this show is fairly overflowing with them, and it’s probably just as well to go lower-profile for this character. He does look like he could conceivably come from the same gene pool as Rob Lowe, so that’s a plus. The big question is, then, can he act? We’ll start finding that out for sure when he makes his debut next month, but if you’ve seen his work, share your thoughts in the comments.
* Though the name given for the character was originally Todd, by the end of March most sources were showing it as Jason. We’ll have to wait ’til he shows up on the April 15 episode to see what he calls himself for real.
Brothers & Sisters, ABC, Eric Winter, Todd, Rob Lowe
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