FAN CASTING OF A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC (SHADES OF MAGIC BOOK SERIES) revisited by magiunific
I wanna start off by saying that it's been a few years since I made one of these. I read the first book when I was 17, and the second and third book when I was 19. Now I am 25 and I haven't read the Threads of Power books yet, but I plan on doing it sometime in the future.
Since it's been a while, I feel like my casting choices back in 2020 were good, but they could’ve been a little more diversified in the sense of picking actors from different backgrounds and such. I did look at more recent fancastings and as far as I can tell, they're pretty good. Fancasting for me personally makes a lot of sense because oftentimes we’ve read the source material over and over again, so there’s a pretty solid understanding of the ways we can play around with different possibilities for these characters. That is NOT to say the author doesn't know any better, on the contrary, especially when they’re actively working in the production of an adaptation, as we know V has been doing for quite a while.
In the end, this is just something that I do for fun, and at most it’s a suggestion.
Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen as Kell Maresh
Caleb Mclaughlin as Rhy Maresh
David Corenswet as Holland Vosijk
Anika Noni Rose as Queen Emira Maresh
Idris Elba as King Maxim Maresh
Saiorse Ronan as Astrid Dane
Alexander Ludwig as Athos Dane
Michael Cimino as Alucard Emery
Rodrigo Santoro as Osaron
Starting off with Kell, I think Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen is a really nice choice, he’s a pretty good actor and has the looks, which for Kell, I feel like it’s an important part of his character as a whole, the whole feeling of being isolated by the way he looks next tio his family is mentioned a few times here and there. Having in mind everything regarding Kell Maresh, I ideally would have chosen Domhnall Gleeson in his mid 20’s for this part, however, he’s forty now, so, no.
Now, Lila is kind of a tough choice for me, because, yes, I pictured her as a white, 19 year old, short haired, skinny and tall girl. I chose Zendaya previously, because I felt like she could give Lila a little more dimension on screen, and I was also trying to bring something different to the casting options back then. Nowadays, as I was looking for a good actress to interpret Lila, I came across Dafne Keen, which at first seemed like a bit of an odd choice, because I only knew her through her role in Logan, but after I saw her now, she seems like the perfect onscreen pick for Lila Bard, also having in mind the way her character was written and how she is observing and distrustful of everyone around her? Yeah I feel like Dafne gives off that vibe as well.
Rhy was kind of difficult because his character means a lot to this series as a whole, so it’s crucial to pick an actor that is likeable, mostly younger looking and a good actor overall. I also chose to interpret the Maresh family as black people, I know there’s room for interpretation because I’m not sure V has talked about it a lot, but that’s just how I see them. Most of us are very familiar with Caleb McLaughling’s work in Stranger Things and I like him, to me honestly he gives off major Rhy vibes.
As it is clear, I couldn’t maintain Cillian Murphy as Holland. I feel like he’s great and having to substitute him for someone else does hurt me a little, because Holland is probably on my top 3 ADSOM characters, and from his first appearance all I could think about was that in my mind's eye he looked like Cillian Murphy and I still associate him with Holland. However he’s almost fifty, and even though he doesn’t exactly look it, since I am trying to be mindful about the actors and not exactly their ages, but the age they appear, Holland is supposed to be at most, ten years older than Kell, so that would mean the actor should look like they are in their early to mid 30’s to interpret him. I did a lot of research for this do-over, and as I came across David Corenswet as Superman, I thought “well, this guy could be a great Holland Vosijk”, so I chose him.
I would like to include that I kept Idris Elba as Maxim, and I chose Anika Noni Rose for Emira, also because of the whole trying to be mindful about ages and stuff, not much to say about them, tho.
Saiorse Ronan as Astrid didn’t really cross my mind until now, I think, but I do like this option, I feel like it’s better suited for her nowadays, instead of having her interpret Ojka, as I previously thought. Alexander Ludwig is good, not ideal, but good nonetheless, it’s close enough to what I would’ve liked to choose, ideally it would’ve been Max Riemelt but again, he’s like 40, so no. I honestly don’t think Astrid and Athos are all that important when talking about the casting for Shades of Magic, but I do like to choose actors that I feel could do a good job.
Alucard is my favorite character of this universe, closely followed by Holland. Michael Cimino as Alucard not only makes sense to me, but came to me through a tiktok (yeah, I know). I saw him in some random role with longish hair and I thought "Alucard Emery? let’s fucking GOOOOO", so yeah, not much to say about that. I did look online a lot for a good casting for Alucard but none of them really clicked for me? So this is as good as it’s gonna get for my favorite character.
Ojka, as a character, doesn’t really matter to me that much, but I do think Amybeth McNulty is great and could really shine in this role. I do wanna finish this by saying that Rodrigo Santoro is a god and there's no one else I could want more than him to interpret Osaron. That's just me, though.
