Those watching Amazon\u2019s Legally Blonde prequel series Elle were treated to a surprise recently, as the show offered a posthumous appearance by James Van Der Beek. The actor, who died in February aged 48, had a fun little role as a crooked school district superintendent. As with most of his roles since Dawson\u2019s Creek, Van Der Beek\u2019s performance was bright and happily self-aware.<\/p>\n
However, Van Der Beek is far from the only actor to have appeared on screen after their death. Here are some other standout posthumous performances.<\/p>\n
Robert Forster, Better Call SaulFully fleshed out \u2026 Robert Forster in Better Call Saul. Photograph: Netflix \/ AMC<\/p>\n
Forster had a small but vital role in Breaking Bad, playing a vacuum cleaner repairman whose side hustle involved hiding wanted criminals from the law. While other actors might have simply used the character as a rote plot device, Forster filled out the role beautifully. He was calm, faintly amused and morally inscrutable. His appearance in Better Call Saul was minor \u2013 he briefly agrees to disappear Jimmy McGill \u2013 but the groundwork laid in the previous show meant that the cameo felt fully fleshed out.<\/p>\n
Miguel Ferrer, Twin Peaks: The Return<\/p>\n
The entire series of Twin Peaks: The Return feels slightly elegiac, given the sheer number of actors who died between production and broadcast. Catherine E Coulson, Warren Frost and Marvin Rosand all shot their parts shortly before their deaths. However, as FBI agent Albert Rosenfield, Ferrer had the biggest role of any of them. Age had sanded down some of his character\u2019s rougher edges since the first Twin Peaks was aired, and his performance was so bruised and tender that he was posthumously nominated for a Saturn award.<\/p>\n
Carrie Fisher, CatastropheExtremely funny, and a genuine monster \u2026 Fisher with Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney in Catastrophe. Photograph: Ed Miller\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
When you think of the posthumous roles of Fisher, chances are you\u2019ll think of the nightmarish CGI version of her that Star Wars bodged together to fill in a plot hole in episode nine. But a much better, and much more appropriate, performance came in Catastrophe, where Fisher got to play an actual person. As Rob Delaney\u2019s mother, Fisher was a genuine monster: rude, brittle, unsentimental and extremely funny. She filmed the third series before she died, and its final episode is dedicated to her.<\/p>\n
Bernard Cribbins, Doctor Who<\/p>\n
Wilf Mott was an extremely important part of Doctor Who lore, a big-hearted optimist who began as Donna Noble\u2019s grandfather, blossomed into the Doctor\u2019s companion and became a kind of father figure to him along the way. Cribbins played Wilf for a final time during 2022\u2019s Wild Blue Yonder, from a wheelchair, just a few months before he died. The performance was absolutely lovely \u2013 all involved must have known it would have been his last. It\u2019s hard to think of a better send off for such a beloved actor.<\/p>\n
Chadwick Boseman, What If\u2026?Wonderfully light and mischievous \u2026 Chadwick Boseman as T\u2019Challa in What If\u2026? Photograph: Disney<\/p>\n
Boseman\u2019s death came as a shock to the entire world, not least because he went out at the top of his game. His final film performance (again released posthumously) in Ma Rainey\u2019s Black Bottom won him an Oscar nomination. However, the following year, the voice part he recorded for Marvel\u2019s animated What If\u2026? series came out. Playing Black Panther\u2019s T\u2019Challa, his most iconic role, Boseman gives a wonderfully light and mischievous performance that bears no trace of the illness he was suffering from.<\/p>\n
Ray Liotta, Black BirdHis all-time best \u2026 Ray Liotta in Black Bird. Photograph: Apple TV +<\/p>\n
Liotta went on a bit of a late-stage tear just before he died, stealing the show in David Chase\u2019s The Many Saints of Newark and winning a posthumous Emmy nomination for Dennis Lehane\u2019s Black Bird. As James \u201cBig Jim\u201d Keene, Liotta plays the father of Taron Egerton\u2019s character, a jailed FBI operative who agrees to go undercover to stop a serial killer. However, he more than makes the role his own. The result \u2013 equal parts loving and scary \u2013 was arguably his best of all time.<\/p>\n
John Spencer, The West Wing<\/p>\n
Spencer\u2019s death happened during the production of The West Wing\u2019s final series. As such, the show decided to roll with the momentum and build its big election night episode around it. That in itself was moving, giving cast and viewers alike an opportunity to grieve both actor and character. But Spencer was noticeably frail in the performances he filmed prior to his death, which retrospectively gave his final appearances a sense of inevitability that cannot be faked.<\/p>\n
Rob Reiner, Life, Larry and the Pursuit of UnhappinessA fitting performance \u2026 Rob Reiner as George Washington in Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness. Photograph: HBO<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll end with the most recent. Rob Reiner\u2019s final screen appearance came seven months after his shocking death, on Larry David\u2019s historical sketch show. It\u2019s a fitting performance, as he plays George Washington, announcing that he would not seek a third term as president in order to preserve the sanctity of the constitution. What follows is several minutes of onlookers \u2013 largely David \u2013 predicting the rise of Trump many years in the future. As chaos ensues before him, Reiner sighs, \u201cWe\u2019re fucked.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Those watching Amazon\u2019s Legally Blonde prequel series Elle were treated to a surprise recently, as the show offered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-786509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}