Irene Bedard

Whoa — time for the casting switcheroo...

Whoa — time for the casting switcheroo again. New Clara. Does Joanna Going really look so much older than Rachael Leigh Cook that we needed a new face rather than some makeup? I'll say it once more: The baby powder in the hair and lines around the eyes may not fool anyone, but it's a miniseries staple we've come to accept. I mean, they stuck with Irene Bedard as Margaret Light Shines, and that works fine for me. Moving on....What can you say about the tragedy of the ghost dance? As if the Indians hadn't suffered and seen their hopes crushed enough, here comes a new hope destined to be crushed — and one that'll cost lives. "You just leave it alone, and likely as not the whole craze'll just die down on its own," Robert says of it, adding that locking up Sitting Bull will create the real problem that the dance isn't. Even then, I wonder if the problem might not have been so deadly had Royer shown everyone the bullet hole he blew in the ghost shirt, thus prov

Mon, Jul 25, 2005

Whoa — time for the casting switcheroo...

Whoa — time for the casting switcheroo again. New Clara. Does Joanna Going really look so much older than Rachael Leigh Cook that we needed a new face rather than some makeup? I'll say it once more: The baby powder in the hair and lines around the eyes may not fool anyone, but it's a miniseries staple we've come to accept. I mean, they stuck with Irene Bedard as Margaret Light Shines, and that works fine for me. Moving on....What can you say about the tragedy of the ghost dance? As if the Indians hadn't suffered and seen their hopes crushed enough, here comes a new hope destined to be crushed — and one that'll cost lives. "You just leave it alone, and likely as not the whole craze'll just die down on its own," Robert says of it, adding that locking up Sitting Bull will create the real problem that the dance isn't. Even then, I wonder if the problem might not have been so deadly had Royer shown everyone the bullet hole he blew in the ghost shirt, thus prov

Sat, Jul 23, 2005

Dispatches from Into the West

Some Native American extras from TNT's hit 12-hour miniseries — airing Fridays at 8 pm/ET — recently alleged in a television trade publication that they were underpaid and overworked in frigid weather during the show's arduous four-month shoot in New Mexico last year. Executives at TNT and DreamWorks refused to elaborate on the allegations, saying the Steven Spielberg production — which included 15,000 extras (many of whom were Native American) and a half-mile wagon train — "treated everyone with care." And that "we take these specific complaints seriously and will look into them immediately." Irene Bedard, who plays Margaret Light Shines Wheeler, the daughter of a Lakota and a settler, confirms that weather on location was awful. "Snow and mud and wind... we were all cold," she says, adding that the low temperatures were harder on the Native American actors, who were wearing skimpier costumes, than on the white actors in settler

Fri, Jul 8, 2005