By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 16, 2025 |
Way, way back in the day, we used to do these fun pictorials where we compared an actor in a show to how they looked in real life, as we did, for instance, with Game of Thrones. It was fun back then because no one was familiar with the cast members, initially, so to see Hodor in his street clothes blew everyone’s mind. I remember, too, the first time we surfaced a photo of Nick Offerman without a mustache and our readers lost their shit.
We haven’t done those photo arrays in a long time, mostly because Buzzfeed came along and ruined the fun by posting 4,000 variations on that same theme every week. But here we are, 15 years later, putting one together for Netflix’s Peter Berg series American Primeval for some reason. There actually is a reason, but I’ll save it for last. Let’s just do this in reverse order from the most recognizable to the least.
Betty Gilpin is instantly recognizable whether she’s in a period dress from the 1850s or in full 1980s makeup in G.L.O.W.. Man, I still miss G.L.O.W.
Taylor Kitsch is covered in a layer of dirt and beard, but he’s still fairly recognizable from Friday Night Lights twenty years ago.
Not a lot of folks are familiar with Saura Lightfoot-Leon, but I watched all of American Primeval wondering where I remembered her from only to watch the latest episode of The Agency and realize I’d been watching her weekly for two months.
Jai Courtney from Terminator: Genisys, among others, is actually a little less recognizable in the series than this photo suggests.
It’s still Kim Coates, from Sons of Anarchy, but he’s less recognizable on Primeval when he speaks, because there is nothing whatsoever similar between Tig in SoA and Brigham Young in Primeval.
Joe Tippett is probably better known for his role in Mare of Easttown or as the real-life husband of Sara Bareilles. But a pic of him without facial hair in The Morning Show makes the comparison more fun. He genuinely had the best beard in the show, too.
Conversely, Shea Wigham could be covered in seven pounds of latex, but you’d know exactly who he was as soon as he began speaking, even if the heavy beard makes him practically unrecognizable from his Boardwalk Empire days.
Remember Dane DeHaan from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, among many other things? It took me a long time to recognize him in Primeval.
The stitches didn’t help.
Finally, here’s the reason I actually created the article. I had no idea this was Lucas Neff until I saw the credits on IMDb and thought, “What? Lucas Neff is in this? Where? When?” And I had to go back in and find him. A mustache and a much, much different context make him completely unrecognizable from his Raising Hope days.