The Marquis wrote:I can't really think of any except one...
I vastly prefer Moira Kelly as Donna over Lara Flynn Boyle. I have since I first saw FWWM. It's not that I'm not satisfied with LFB as Donna, but when I saw FWWM, my immediate reaction was "Oh, I wish she could have been Donna all along"... I just like her general demeanor more and she feels more like I think her character was supposed to feel.
I think that when you look at LFB as Donna in the pilot and earlier episodes, there's more of Moira Kelly's innocence. Later on, with behind-the-scenes issues, it seems the attempt was made to 'sex up' Donna, which never made sense and only managed to make the character dislikeable.
I feel people shift from 'boyhood' to ''manhood' or from 'girlhood' to 'womanhood' at an almost indefinable moment. It's sometimes subtle, but nevertheless becomes obvious. It's in the way they carry themselves and instinctively respond in situations and, with actors, some of the choices they make. It happened to a lot of the younger cast of Twin Peaks in that first two seasons.
James changed drastically between dorky teen in the pilot to a more charming grown up in the first episode. LFB changed between seasons one and two, Mike and Bobby changed between the pilot and first episode and even more so by the end of season two. I can understand why there was supposedly discussion about making a significant time jump between seasons two and three, because the sight of most of those 'kids' at high school was ridiculous – while it's not uncommon to see twenty-somethings playing high school kids, normally young-looking actors are cast in the first place.
In a sense, Donna's innocence was one of the most important aspects of the character. We know from the Secret Diary that Laura had got her into trouble before and that FWWM is where it hit it's peak (unintended pun) but keeping Donna more 'virginal,' for want of a better term, would make her more interesting as she examined her friend's more outré secret life.
Moira Kelly nailed Donna as she was in the pilot and as she should have been for the first two seasons. She still managed to seem young and wide-eyed, where LFB's shift to womanhood gave the character a 'knowing' quality that ran against the idea of Donna, 'the teen investigator.'