Why The Role Of Greg In Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Was Recast
By Ava Barnes
"Settle for me," Greg once sang to Rebecca, but the series wasn't settling with Skylar Astin's Greg. He fit into the role marvelously, taking on Santino Fontana's Greg mannerisms and sliding back into place with Rebecca. The series used a clever storytelling device to explain the change: Rebecca was now seeing Greg as everyone else had always seen him. Their time apart, with him dealing with his alcoholism and her confronting her Borderline personality disorder, changed how they view each other. No one else saw Greg as a different person, only Rebecca.
The character didn't need to come back, but the writers wanted to revisit him. Before Fontana left the series, they had a whole story arc planned for Greg and Rebecca to become friends after their breakup and to show Greg's own journey, series co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna told Entertainment Weekly. However, by the time Season 4 began airing, Fontana was busy singing on stage in the musical "Tootsie." Despite that, McKenna told Vanity Fair, "We just felt like, dramatically, it was important and interesting for Greg to come back. So we committed ourselves to that — and that opened a lot of avenues up for us."
They found the new Greg in Astin. McKenna said, "There is a nice salty, sardonic side to Skylar in some of the parts that he's played, so we felt like that would work well." Plus, he had the Broadway experience and went to college with co-creator and star Rachel Bloom. McKenna said he immediately got along great with everyone.
When Vulture asked Fontana about the recasting, he reacted positively, saying, "I love Skylar! He's a buddy of mine. We've been texting, we've got a whole back-and-forth going. We're brothers from the same mother. That's what I'm calling it. Brothers from the same mother." Astin ended up playing Greg in half as many episodes as Fontana, but he rounded out Greg's character development with a lovely reprise of one of Fontana's iconic songs, "What'll It Be."
