Vanessa Angel almost left the show to appear as Xena Warrior Princess back in the mid 90's. It was said that she came down ill and could not film the show and that is why Lucy Lawless played Xena. I think it worked just fine the way it turned out though.
shareThat's actually wonderful news. Lucy was born to play Xena. She had the right height and build. Vanessa fit the role nicely as Lisa.
If it were reversed, I think it would've been a little wonky. It also would've taken a while to get used to them playing different roles. Good thing Vanessa passed up on the opportunity. Maybe feeling a bit under the weather was a blessing in disguise.
Vanessa Angel was sick at the time and that is why she could not take the role. Sam Raimi or the casting director was the one who selected Vanessa Angel for Xena and Lucy Lawless I do not think tried out for the role until Vanessa Angel was under the weather. We do not know how the show would have turned out had Vanessa Angel left Weird Science. I think that show would have done poorly had she left after the first or second season of the show. Barry Dillar back in I believe around 1996 or 1997 was trying to clean up some of the programming that was on USA Network at that time because he was wanting to make a profit from the network to be bought out by NBC to become a sister station to NBC because there was no room for MONK, or the other shows that USA Network started showing including Law And Order.
I still honestly feel that Barry Dillar should have sold the USA Network to someone who would have kept the same style programming that I loved watching throughout the 80's and 90's until the dark age of NBC buying it out because I noticed that once USA Network changed its programming both TNT, TBS, and other networks began to follow what NBC did with USA Network. I used to love watching ION television, but they have changed in 10 years time from showing TV shows like Mama's Family, Perfect Strangers, Valerie/The Hogans, The Steve Harvey Show, The Drew Carey Show, or any other show that I might not have mentioned. Now ION just shows crime and drama shows and even got rid of some of the movies that they used to show that were in the early 90's type films that were popular to watch.