Well, I did say Lucy Griffiths' performance in Constantine wasn't great in my recent pilot preview. It seems someone at NBC agrees, because the network's announced that Griffith's character, psychic Liv Aberdine, won't return for the full season of the supernatural drama. Liv's integral to the pilot's storyline (which is shot and ready for broadcast), so the writers will simply pretend she was never meant to be their hero's partner in ongoing adventures.
Instead, a new female character called Zed (originating from the Hellblazer comics) will make an early appearance, and become the female lead. Zed's a wayward daughter of an evangelical family, and former lover of Constantine. That sounds like a more interesting twosome already, and will presumably remove what was set-up as a reliance on Liv's psychic abilities guiding Constantine to demonic hotspots.
What do you make of this? It's bad luck for poor Lucy Griffiths, who's been trying to find a breakthrough role in U.S TV, but beyond her stint on True Blood it's not happened yet. She was also the lead of The CW's zombie pilot Awakening (that didn't get picked up), and now this set-back. Oh well, hopefully she'll find something that's a better fit for her soon.
Update 13/07/14: NBC have revealed that actress Angelica Celaya (Burn Notice, Dallas) has been cast as Zed.
