12

On Gotham, Ivy Pepper (Poison Ivy) was originally cast with 14-year-old Claire Flory.

In the third season, her character was artificially aged and recast with 28-year-old actress Maggie Geha.

For the second half of the fourth season of Gotham, her character was chemically transformed and the part recast with 31-year-old Peyton List (not the Disney actress) replacing Geha.

I can understand why the first recast happened (Ivy was simply too young), but not the second.

Why was Poison Ivy recast from Geha to List?

Improve this question
3
  • So Peyton List has now played DC characters on three different shows. Lucy Lane on Smallville, Lisa Snart on The Flash, and Poison Ivy on Gotham. Is that a record?
    – Kevin
    Mar 12, 2018 at 13:19
  • @Kevin - Depends whether you count animated voice acting and different iterations of the same character; then Mark Hamill wins (Joker and Trickster in multiple unrelated shows / universes, + other characters (incl. Swamp Thing)).
    – JoshDM
    Mar 12, 2018 at 14:08
  • I wonder if anyone keeps the Lists separate by thinking of them as Peyton "A" List and Peyton "B" List?
    – M. A. Golding
    Mar 12, 2018 at 15:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
11

In-universe explanation: By the end of S04E11 - Queen Takes Knight episode, Poison Ivy consumes all the "mystical" potions since she is done playing "nice". The resulting drinking of potions changes her face and gives her more powers...

Out-of-universe explanation:

Based on the co-exec producer's comments on recasting Maggie Geha:

"The change was all based on the idea that she's continuing to evolve to become more of the Ivy from the comic books and what we really enjoyed," Wynbrandt explained. "What's been really cool about her character, and Maggie [Geha] was so great, was you had Clare [Foley] for the first iteration be the child who is trying to find her way in the world. Then when she evolves into the second iteration of Ivy played by Maggie. She is amazing and embodied sort of a fun kind of comic and zany quality to her who then starts to see that she wasn't being respected so she wanted to do something about that.

"In this third evolution you're going to see a really self possessed, really scary and driven version of the Ivy character, who is intent on kind of making the world in the image she sees it should be, which is the green world. The world where the plants rule and people are an after thought."

So based on this, they wanted to portray the transformation of a cheerful Ivy into a unhinged version and thus went with the recast...

Improve this answer
2
  • 8
    Yet, that also sounds like an excuse / cover for Geha choosing to leave, or for them simply wanting to remove Geha from the role.
    – JoshDM
    Mar 12, 2018 at 11:00
  • Even though the actual decision to grow Ivy from child to woman was dumb, I appreciated Geha's role in it... So sad they recast her soon! Oh well... For now, the only warning I could give is to not get attached to Peyton so soon as it wont be long before the execs want a transformation from "unhinged" to more "unhinged" and other dumb reasons... -_-
    – Nikhil Eshvar
    Mar 12, 2018 at 11:49

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .