In Deadwood (HBO) actor Garret Dillahunt plays two recurring characters in consecutive seasons - has this happened in any other shows?

Garret Dillahunt did it again in 2007/8, when he was on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. First, he played Cromartie, the main villain in the first and parts of the second season (a role he took over from Owain Yeoman who played the character in the pilot episode). That character got killed off halfway, only for him to get reintroduced to the audience a couple of episodes later to play the physical avatar of the artificial intelligence John Henry.

Always sunny in Philadelphia. The interviewer in the pepe Silvio episode becomes the recurring waiter character. They never acknowledge this and its part of the characters shtick that they never remember him. He calls out waiting on them in the past but never mentioning the corporate job.

In *The Sopranos*, Joseph Gannascoli, the actor who played Vito Spatafore starting season 2, originally appeared as another character, a bakery customer named Gino, in season 1.

Has happened a few times with guest actors on Doctor Who then coming back in more major roles. In the later seasons of Scrubs, they killed of the character of Laverne, but the show got unexpectedly renewed, so they bought the actress back as an almost identical character that no one else noticed similarities between except JD.

Jeffrey Combs in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Played Brunt, played Weyoun all recurring multiple times over the whole seven seasons. And I know he had at least one other one-off guest roll, he may have had others. He's a superb character actor.  Star Trek, in general is known for having recurring guest actors playing multiple roles across the series. You'll see a lot of Tony Todd in various roles. There are lots of others too. These are just the first that came to mind.

Paget Brewster played the IT lady in season 5 of community and then Frankie Dart, a humble outsider who came in and nailed it, in season 6. There’s even a joke where she’s like “I’m trying to find the IT lady but her emails bounce back to me and when I call I hear a high pitch whistle that makes my nose bleed”

Veronica Mars. James Jordan plays the high school janitor "Lucky" for three episodes at the end of season two. Then he's back as Veronica's college TA Tim Foyle at the beginning of season three (and an episode in season four). Tim was a fairly major character -- meant to be a foil (hence the name) for Veronica.

Devon Sawa plays a new character in each  season of Chucky He even plays multiple characters within season 1 (twins) and 3 (>!The President and his body double!<)

Gilmore Girls - Sherilyn Fenn plays both Sasha (Jess’ “stepmom”) and Anna Nardini, Alex Borstein plays Drella the harpist and Miss Celeste, and Sean Gunn plays a character named “Mick” before settling into his longtime character Kirk.

This is a David Milch thing, he has his guys. So there are plenty of actors on his other shows who first appear in a small part, then Milch thinks, "Hey, this person is good" and they wind up coming back. Here's a thread on all the instances in NYPD Blue: [Actors Playing Multiple Characters : r/nypdblue](https://www.listnook.com/r/nypdblue/comments/189qxu4/actors_playing_multiple_characters/)

Garret Dillahunt is an awesome actor and seems like a cool dude. I can see why they wanted work with him again

Harry Morgan in M*A*S*H* played a crazy Major with a death wish for the season 3 premiere and then when CO Col. Henry Blake left/died at the end of the 3rd season, Harry took over as Col. Sherman Potter at the beginning of season 4 and played for 179 more episodes. He was two characters in the same year and became a full-time cast member. He was awesome.

Stargate Atlantis.Jewel Staite shows up in costume as an alien and then as a human for two different roles.

In Malcom in the Middle, Merrin Dungey first played the role of Malcom's teacher and then was reintroduced later as Stevie's mother.

Nirvanna the Band the Show has a guy play a musician in S1 and an improv teacher in S2 Rachel Dratch makes repeated cameos on 30 Rock in tons of roles

In The Flash every season has a different Harrison Wells

Ali Larter did the same in Heroes, if I remember correctly

This was very common in the first several decades of television, although the trend was mostly dying out by the time Deadwood aired. It was an extension of the old-school mentality of an acting troupe, where the same group of people would do one play after another. Since most shows didn’t really have intensive continuity, the thinking was that, pre-streaming/home video, people just wouldn’t particularly care (or even remember) that someone had been on the show years earlier. You see this in many older film series as well. James Bond movies in the ‘60s and ‘70s reused many actors in different roles, like Charles Gray being 007’s ally in one film and then playing supervillain Blofeld two movies later. One big example from another Milch show is Dennis Franz on Hill Street Blues. He had an arc as corrupt cop Sal Benedetto in the third season and was killed off. When Milch took over as show runner in the sixth season, he brought Franz back as a series regular playing Norman Buntz and basically made him the new star of the show.

In 'Sharpe' (starring Sean Bean), Julian Fellowes (creator of Downton Abbey) played Major Dunnett in the first episode "Sharpe's Rifles" before returning a few years later as a deranged Prince Regent in "Sharpe's Regiment"

Christa Miller played the woman that gets her clothing felt by George, which causes him to lose his job as a bra salesman. She then plays his girlfriend that doesn't care how he looks in a later season.

Nicholas Lea in The X-files. In season one, he has a one-off as an almost victim, Michel; then, becomes Krycek in season two.

Always happens in soaps, but 2 actors spring to mind. Eileen Davidson played Kristen Dimera....then a lookalike Susan Banks. But it didn't end there. She played 3 more of the Banks family, including a brother, sometimes multiple characters in the same scene. The other actor is Michael Easton. Google him to find all the characters he played on Port Charles, General Hospital, and One Life to Live. He started on PC as a priest and his twin brother....who was a vampire. Turns out, they're the same guy; the vampire felt so guilty, he developed a split personality. Then he came back as Stephen Clay, rock singer....who turned out to be the vampire, Caleb from before. Then, when OLTL was cancelled, that character moved to GH, until a lawsuit took him off. But they liked him so much, they did the vampire story on GH with him as Stephen Clay.(BTW - 2 other actors appeared in both as different characters - Kelly Monaco and Ian Buchanan, both in the vampire storyline). When that was over, he came back as a lookalike cousin of the OLTL character, THEN as that character's twin...or something. I've probably screwed up on the order, and I know this reads like the ramblings of a mental patient, but he played 6 or 7 different characters. Whew!🤪

Just here to say I loved his Francis Wolcott portrayal in Deadwood. Had a sense of fragility and repressed cruelty to him

Law & Order

Veronica Mars James Jordan plays "Lucky" in S2 and "Tim Foyle" in S3.

Not TV - but it happened a couple of times in the Bond franchise. Maud Adams played a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun, and then played Octopussy in Octopussy. And Joe Don Baker was the villain in the Living Daylights before coming back as Bond's CIA contact in two of the Brosnan movies.

I binged Deadwood a year ago and had to look it up to make sure Jack McCall hadn't come back under an assumed name or something. Probably wouldn't have been a big deal if I wasn't going through the episodes so fast but it definitely confused me for a while. Dillahunt was great in both roles though.

In Veronica Mars, James Jordan played a janitor in Season 2 and a college TA in Season 3. (Slightly disguised with a wig and some facial hair. Fortunately the wig was better than some of the other... things that were supposed to be hair... that they used that season.)

Dean-Charles Chapman played Martyn Lannister in Game of Thrones and then played Tommen Baratheon for a few seasons after that.

Star Trek has dozens of actors who have played multiple roles throughout the shows and movies.

Matt Ryan plays John Constantine in a couple of seasons before playing an unrelated gay WW1 medic in the final season of Legends of Tomorrow

In Two and a Half Men, a lot of Charlie's girls in early seasons show up as different characters in later seasons.

Justin Theroux played a guy Carrie briefly flirted with in S1 of Sex and the City, then in S2 played a different character that she dated for an episode.

The Law and Order universe does this a lot. Aasif Mandvi has played 4 different characters in the OG Law & Order, 1 in L&O:SVU, 1 in L&O:Criminal Intent and 1 in L&O:Trial by Jury. David Harbour, 5 different characters in various L&O shows. Jeremy Allen White, 2 different characters. Those are the bigger names, but there's plenty of actors that played multiple characters in the L&O universe.

Fun fact, when his character in Raising Hope wakes up after surgery he says a Jack McCall line.

Veronica Mars: James Jordan played Lucky in season 2 and we saw a lot of him in the final episodes of the season. Starting in Season 3 he shows up as a completely different, prominent character: Tim Foyle. First time we watched it when it originally aired we were like, wtf? That’s Lucky.

Imagine being so well liked and important to the vibe on set that, even though your character has to die, they just give you another. And then a third time for the movie. AND he had this happen again on the Terminator show. Says *a lot* about Garret Dillahunt, imo

Robert Downey Jr played like five recurring characters on The Sympathizer.

I think David Hasselhoff’s wife played like five different characters throughout Baywatch’s run

In monk Tony Shalhoub's wife Brook Adams played like 4 or 5 different roles in the series in different episodes.

Yeah, actor Elias Toufexis of Deus Ex fame explained in a podcast that you are allowed to come back to a show to play a different character every other season or so. Which is how he was able to play 3 whole different characters on Smallville. Although in hindsight this was on the old 20 episode season format, so it was a good 20 to 40 episodes buffer between appearances.

He's the dad in raising hope!

I watched the new Saturday Night movie from last year a few days ago, Nicholas Braun plays both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson in alternating scenes.

Stargate is quite well know for this, and reusing actors in general. The main actors often play other characters in disguise; or just as the voice of various aliens.

Several nurses on MASH appeared constantly under different names, one nurse in particular had a relationship with Hawkeye across like 4 seasons, in at least 2 seasons she is explicitly introduced as though she is new, one of her names was Nancy, can't remember the rest

Jeffrey Combs played 4 different characters in Deep Space Nine.

Not recurring, but Dennis Franz was on Hill Street Blues as Detective Sal Benadetto (a dirty cop who damn near got Neal Washington killed) and then came back a year or so later as Norman Buntz

Seinfeld has a bunch of examples of this.

Mark Lenard played two very different characters in Star Trek TOS; but I believe the makeup department used the same pointed ears both times. Romulan Commander in 'Balance of Terror' and Spock's father Sarek in 'Journey to Babel'. He also played a Klingon in the first Star Trek movie, but I'll be damned if I remember him in that role. The two TV roles are perhaps a couple of my favorite Trek episodes.

Jeffrey Combes played multiple characters across various Star Trek series, most notably recurring roles as Liquidator Brunt and multiple clones of Weyoun in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He even played both characters in S07E24.

It happened on The Rockford Files all the time.

One of my favorite actors. Love his acting style and delivery. He was also one of the cannibals in The Road Jeffery Combs (Star Trek) at least 20 different characters Star Trek is known for casting actors in multiple roles. Here's 20 of them https://screenrant.com/star-trek-actors-next-generation-voyager-deep-space-nine-multiple-roles/

It's happened plenty of times on 80s TV shows such as Murder, She Wrote and the Golden Girls. But my favorite example is John Hillerman playing Jonathan Higgins and (his many) half brothers Father Paddy McGuiness, Elmo Ziller, and Don Luis Mongueo

Any anthology series like American Horror Stories for instance where it’s basically the whole cast

Jaleel White as Steve Urkel and Stefan Urquell

gilmore girls - sean gunn

Only one was recurring (over SVU & Criminal Intent), but Denis O’Hare has played 6 different characters in the Law & Order universe.