Just three days before shooting was due to start for the first episode ofThe Blacklist, James Spader said yes to the role of Raymond “Red” Reddington, the central character of the landmark crime series. It’s now hard to imagine anyone other than Spader playing the role, which during the course ofThe Blacklist’s 10 seasons has come to define the actor’s career. However, it wasn’t always meant to be this way, as four other actors were offered the part of criminal informer-turned-FBI informant Reddington before James Spader eventually said yes.
Spader was actually the fifth choice to play the lead in the series, and only got the role after some of Hollywood’s biggest names turned it down. According to showrunner and executive producer John Eisendrath, the agent of every actor who was initially preferred to Spader when he wascastingThe Blacklistsaid no to him. “I’m not sure if our offers even got to those actors,” Eisendrath toldVarietyin 2018, “or if their agents just said, ‘Forget it.’” In hindsight, some of these actors must be kicking themselves that they didn’t push their agents to accept the part.
Kiefer Sutherland
Jack Bauer actor Kiefer Sutherland was offered the role ofRaymond Reddington inThe Blacklisttwo years after his nine-season run as the central hero of24had come to an end. As one of TV’s biggest action stars at the time, it would have been difficult for Sutherland to make his next major career move by signing onto another thriller thatdidn’t involve anything like the kind of physical performance his portrayal of Jack Bauer required.
Instead, he went back to movies, with the 2014true-story historical disaster moviePompeiihis most successful project. The fact that this movie is scarcely remembered today is testament to how things have gone for Sutherland since he turned downThe Blacklist.
It’s easy to say with hindsight, but the show turned out to bea serious opportunity missed for the actor, who would have had the chance to stretch himself as a performer in a very different role from the hero he depicted in24. Having Raymond Reddington alongside Jack Bauer on his résumé would have made for one heck of an acting CV.
Richard Gere
In retrospect, it seems kind ofbizarre that Richard Gere was offered a role as dark and double-crossing asThe Blacklist’s Raymond Reddington. Admittedly, he’d just come off the back of playing a villainous financial tycoon in the acclaimed crime dramaArbitrationat the time, as well as starring in the forgettable spy thrillerThe Doublethe year before that.
Richard Gere would have had to make Raymond Reddington a very different character for his casting to make sense.
In general, though, Gere’s turns as a machiavellian bad guy tend not to work out very well, and the version of Reddington that James Spader ended up playing inThe Blacklistseems completely wrong for thePretty Womanactor. Richard Gere would have had to make the character a very different one for his casting to make sense.
Bryan Cranston
On the other hand, it’s no surprise that Bryan Cranston received a call about playing Raymond Reddington. In 2012, Cranston was busy filming thefinal episode ofBreaking Bad, the seminal crime thriller series in which he plays one of the most ingeniously duplicitous antiheroes of 21st-century television, if not of all time.
Even fans ofThe Blacklisthave to admit that Cranston would have made a good Raymond Reddington, albeit a very different one from James Spader.
His agent probably felt that lightning doesn’t strike twice, andhe’s gone on to have a successful post-Walter White career in a range of other roles, stretching his already impressive acting range even further. Nevertheless, even fans ofThe Blacklisthave to admit that Cranston would have made a good Raymond Reddington,
Pierce Brosnan
When Pierce Brosnan was called on to play Raymond Reddington inThe Blacklist, his trajectory as an actor had taken a very different turn from his days as the fifthactor to play James Bond in Eon’s007franchise. His role in Roman Polanski’s celebrated neo-noir thrillerThe Ghost Writeraside, Brosnan was mostly starring in middling romantic comedies, and his career needed the shot in the arm that it now appears to be getting more than a decade later.
Given Brosnan’s history as a legendary big-screen spy, a shift to the small screen in a comparable but much murkier role could have worked well. It wasn’t to be, though, as the Bond star said no toThe Blacklist, and had to wait a further 12 years for Steven Soderbergh’sBlack BagandThe Thursday Murder Clubto bring him a late-career renaissance.
