Jon Cryer auditioned to play Sandy Cohen in The O.C., according to series creator Josh Schwartz, offering a mildly disorienting glimpse at an alternate version of Newport Beach.
Peter Gallagher ultimately made the role his own, playing the principled public defender, dedicated surfer and father figure throughout the Fox drama. Still, Cryer was one of several recognisable actors who read for the part before the cast was settled.
“Jon Cryer read for Sandy,” Schwartz said in E!’s Greatest Year in Pop Culture: 2003. He added that “some other members of the Brat Pack” also auditioned, although he did not identify them.
Why Peter Gallagher won the role
By the time Gallagher met Schwartz, he had already built an extensive career that included work in Robert Altman and Steven Soderbergh productions. That experience immediately impressed the young creator.
“Meeting Peter, having him read my dialogue for the first time was a huge thrill,” Schwartz recalled, pointing to Gallagher’s performance in Altman’s The Player and his work with Soderbergh. “He was an incredible actor.”
The casting decision gave the series one of its most recognisable characters. Gallagher brought warmth and authority to Sandy without making him seem implausibly perfect, although the eyebrows did arrive fully prepared for prime time.
Cryer’s career hardly suffered. He went on to play Alan Harper in CBS’s Two and a Half Men, which premiered in September 2003, one month after The O.C. launched on Fox. Both shows became major hits, so television history managed to avoid an actual disaster.
Ben McKenzie brought a different Ryan Atwood
After Gallagher was cast, producers continued assembling the Cohen family and the teenagers at the centre of the series. Ben McKenzie eventually secured the role of Ryan Atwood, but Schwartz said the actor did not initially match the version imagined on the page.
“He came in the room, he didn’t say three words to us,” Schwartz said. “I think he was nervous, but he was playing it very, very cool.”
McKenzie’s restraint turned out to suit Ryan, a guarded teenager from Chino who enters the wealthy and highly dramatic world of Orange County. Schwartz said the actor brought “incredible intelligence and thoughtfulness” to the character.
That quality mattered because Ryan often functioned as an observer rather than the loudest person in the room. “So much of Ryan’s character had to be listening and reading people,” Schwartz explained, “and not having a ton of dialogue.”
McKenzie’s understated performance won him the part and helped turn Ryan into an internationally recognised television character. Gallagher’s Sandy became equally central to the show, leaving Cryer’s audition as an intriguing casting footnote rather than the beginning of a very different Cohen household.
E!’s Greatest Year in Pop Culture: 2003 is available through Fandango, E! Entertainment’s YouTube channel and E! Online. E! and Fandango are both owned by Versant Media.
