12/03/26 · Television
— Tinsel
Two people at the Redfern production office, who do not know each other and who told me on different days, have said the same thing: one of the four leads is being recast for the back half of the season, and the announcement is deliberately being held until after the mid-season break.
That timing is the ordinary reason to disbelieve a rumour and, in this case, the reason to believe it. A break cliffhanger is worth a lot of promo, and a recast announced in advance turns the cliffhanger into an administrative notice.
What convinced me was the call sheet rather than the talk. The character is written into four episodes after the break. The actor is not scheduled for a single day of them, and the block those episodes shoot in is already locked.
The other thing worth noting is who has gone quiet. The publicist who normally answers within a day about anything to do with this show has now not answered twice, which is not evidence of anything and is nonetheless a thing that happens before announcements.
For what it is worth, I do not think this is a fallout story. Everything I have heard points at a second job that clashes, which is the most common reason a lead leaves a long-running drama and the least interesting one to write about.