[TMC]

https://popculturereferences.com/fiv...the-same-time/

Today, we look at five actors who did two TV pilots at the same time.

In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five things from pop culture that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently enough to be worth pointing it out). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I’ll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is “missing” if it is not listed. It’s just not one of the five examples that I chose. You can always feel free to suggest ANOTHER example that fits the theme, if you’d like, but nothing is “missing” from this list.

A very common thing in the world of TV pilots (a world that is becoming less and less of a thing within the cost-cutting modern TV world. “Us pay YOU to make an episode for us to decide whether the show is worth being made? But what if we just didn’t spend ANY money and you just write us an entire season’s worth of scripts on your own dime and THEN maybe we’ll make three episodes of your show and then cancel it”) is the idea of “Second position” actors in the pilot. This means actors that are already committed to another TV show, but are hesitant enough about the other project that they are willing to gamble on a second project, with everyone knowing that if the first project continues, the actor will not be available for the second project. Obviously, this is not something you should try with stars on shows that are clearly not getting canceled, but if it’s a show struggling in the ratings (or a new show that hasn’t debuted yet), then it can be worth the risk to get a quality actor. However, this sometimes means actors will appear in the pilots of two shows in the same pilot season. Here are five times that that has happened (amusingly enough, these examples all literally come from five consecutive years, 2008-2012. That’s just a weird ass coincidence).

Sarah Chalke on Freshmen and Team Spitz



For the 2010 pilot season, Sarah Chalke was cast as the lead character on an ABC pilot called The Freshmen, where Chalke would play a young first term congresswoman who lives with two other first term representatives as they navigate their first experience as part of Congress. Taran Killam would have co-starred and I belieeeeeeeeve Phil LaMarr would have been the third freshmen congressman. At the same time, Chalke was also cast in Team Spitz, a Rob Riggle comedy vehicle for CBS about Riggle being a popular coach/teacher at a high school. I assume she would have been his love interest (amusingly, five years later, she would play Riggle’s wife in ANOTHER failed pilot, 48 Hours to Monday). The good thing for Chalke is that while both pilots weren’t picked up, CBS had a pilot initially intended for the fall season that was pushed back to midseason, and thus Chalke became free to be cast in it, and she was the star of Mad Love, which at least had a full first season (interestingly, Tyler Labine, one of her co-stars on the show, was starring in a new show, Sons of Tucson, when he was given the offer to be on Mad Love. He turned it down at Fox’s request, but Tuscon was obviously quickly canceled, and when Mad Love was pushed back, he was free to join it).