We reported on the controversial recasting of Gotham's Poison Ivy in which young actor Clare Foley was set to be replaced by someone older in order to let Ivy's canonical sexuality take a place on the show. Maggie Geha, who's had small roles on 30 Rock and in Ted 2, has just been cast in that role.
When the news broke, some were holding out for an all-new Poison Ivy considering the character on the show is known as Ivy Pepper and not the DC Comics character name of Pamela Isley, but that's not the case. Geha will be taking over the role completely from Foley in Season 3. Zap2It.com has a description of her “transformation” from Fox:
Following an encounter with a monster from Indian Hill, Ivy Pepper finds herself reborn, and one step closer to the DC villain she is destined to become: Poison Ivy. Now a 19-year-old woman who”s harnessed the full power of her charms, she sets her sights on Bruce Wayne.
So a monster makes her older and sexy? Gotcha. Is this description what it looks like though, or is it just poor word choice?
The bright side of this latest news is they didn't cast a barely-legal actor just so they could do sexy. The bad news is the 28-year-old Geha is playing an adult on the show who is seemingly meant to go after 15-year-old David Mazouz's Bruce. I'm hoping/probably sure they won't actually take this into really gross and inappropriate territory but I also have seen too much in Hollywood like this to not consider it. Remember when HBO aged-up Tommen on Game of Thrones and then the character suddenly had post-coital scenes with Natalie Dormer's Margaery? She used KITTENS to control him in the books.
Geha looks the part of Poison Ivy and I'm sure she'll do great in the role. Mostly I just can't understand why Fox would cast a child in a part known to be sexual in nature from the start. It was a bad decision and they weren't thinking ahead. Looking at the initial cast of Gotham, The Riddler probably would have made a much more interesting character to start as a child instead.
Zap2It also notes Foley posted a photo recently on her Twitter on set of Gotham so it appears we will actually be seeing this bizarre aging-up on screen.
In other Gotham news, Entertainment Weekly reports Jamie Chung joins the cast “as ace reporter Valerie Vale, who is also the aunt of DC Comics character Vicki Vale.” And it looks as if her storyline will intersect with Ivy's:
Brought on as the newest member of the crackerjack Gotham Gazette team, Valerie digs into Ben McKenzie”s Jim Gordon as the key source to unearthing the truth behind Indian Hill, a fishy research facility fronted as a toxic waste dump to cover for its mysterious human experiments.
The actor has recently been on ABC's Once Upon a Time as Disney's Mulan.