‘Hell on Wheels’ season 4 spoilers: Boss on Mackenzie Porter’s new take on Naomi
Recastings are almost always a tricky thing to do, but sometimes they are inevitable. On occasion an actor gets an opportunity to play an enormous role somewhere else, and there are other times you realize that you need creatively someone a little bit different in the role.
In the case of Naomi on “Hell on Wheels,” this is more of a case of the former. Siobhan Williams landed a role on the ABC show “Black Box,” which left the series with having to recast the part with country singer / actress Mackenzie Porter. Like any other recasting (see Tommen on “Game of Thrones” or Robin Hood on “Once Upon a Time”), it will be handled like business as usual on the show, but some viewers may notice a difference.
If you are concerned that this change could lead to some sort of confusion or a feeling of missing someone great, executive producer John Wirth wants to do his part to help you relax. While you can never fully replace one performer with another, he tells Entertainment Weekly the full story of the swap while also saying that Porter is bringing quite a bit to the table:
“We start where we left off. As you can imagine, having left Cullen in a place where he married this young woman and had a child on the way sort of predicated the kind of story we needed to tell this season. We found ourselves in the unfortunate position of having lost our actress: Siobhan Williams went to another series, and we got into some scheduling conflicts, and we were unable to bring her forward. We were kind of desperately considering how we should handle this: Should we recast? Of course, whenever you have that conversation, the two Darrens situation [from ‘Bewitched’] is always brought up. It was not my first choice, but we went ahead with it, and I think we were really lucky to get MacKenzie. She’s a helluva actress and has really grabbed onto this part and brought a soulfulness to it. As matter of fact, I was standing on the set [June 19] talking with Anson about it, and my first expectation was that his character would marry her out of a sense of honor. We’ve established a pretty strict moral code with him, which doesn’t preclude him from shooting people in the head when they need it but would preclude him from walking out on a woman in that situation. So I was fully prepared for his position being, “I’m doing this out of responsibility,” because he’s a Southern gentleman. And what I’ve been surprised by in looking at the film is that there’s a growing intimacy there and possibly even a love affair happening between those two characters. The baby is born, and we see him interacting with the baby, and I think he’s surprised at how he’s feeling about them.”
Naomi is going to be a hugely significant character in that this is a woman that forces Cullen to evaluate his own life, and consequently the decisions that he has made so far. Will he stay around to protect this new family? He will definitely feel a sense of obligation, but there is also a chance that he may end up feeling love.
Saturday, August 2 is the day when all questions will be answered.