Just goes to show how closely I pay attention to shit. I just now saw this from two weeks back, going through Google to see if there was anything new on the big man…

Netflix Just Canceled Its 3rd Show in the Last Week

…and yes, they do mean The Irregulars.

It did not look to me as if they had killed off Rory’s character so, owing to the possibility they could have brought him back again, I’m a mite irritated. I mean, they probably wouldn’t have addressed his character again, given the direction the story took in the first season, but now they definitely won’t.

I have some thoughts about this, but before I get into them let me just say hold your damn horses because this isn’t criticism, more analysis, and I’m totally on Rory’s side here. If you think I’m not, that’s your opinion and you alone are responsible for it, but you are not entitled to your own facts. But this is a big reason I backed off from social media. I wanted to be able to say my piece and not have to deal with crazy over-reactors. So here goes.

At one point, getting small roles far between was a source of major frustration for Rory. We all know this; he came out and said so in the media whenever he could. I’ve got a “paper trail,” if you like, of articles where he does. But he’s since had a big multi-year role in Game of Thrones and, although he previously had had a pattern of spend up all the money he earned from a project and then live close to the bone until the next gig, I have a feeling it would have taken him major, major effort to be broke from GOT by now. He was in the introductory credits every single time he was on that show, and that level of pay would not be small potatoes.

So he’s very likely not desperate for work. So the voice acting roles, the little bits in TV shows, I wonder if these things are all we can expect to see from him in the future and whether he wants it that way.

Those who support the notion that he’s married — and he very well could be, we just haven’t seen solid proof yet, just hearsay — would argue he’d want to work less so as to spend more time with his wife, and that’s completely valid (and I would hope he’d be that sort of husband). Or he may just be burnt out from everything he had to do in GOT and various fan conventions, and from the attention from fans, and from the loss of privacy. Knowing what I know of him, which admittedly is not as much as I’d like, I think either possibility has equal weight. We’re talking about a man who will go off to the wilderness and live in caves and tents to get away from people. Hell, he could be dealing with both situations simultaneously, the being married and the being burnt out. Who knows.

If he does want more work, on the other hand, obviously COVID is an issue, but it wouldn’t be the whole story. The entertainment industry is still managing to crank out content; for instance, The Walking Dead was able to finish its most recent season. There has been weird shit going on in the UK with Brexit affecting how actors living in that country can get work, but I doubt it’s been a complete roadblock; couldn’t have been, or they wouldn’t have been able to make The Irregulars.

So I’m wondering if Rory’s age and lack of training are working against him at all.

Men generally get away more with being older in a field of employment, and acting isn’t much different, but I notice that most of the male actors with longevity already had multiple decades’ worth of work stacked up. The older they get the fewer of them the industry wants to work with. Odd, since the older a man gets, usually the easier he is to work with — they are at their most difficult in the same age range that they are the worst drivers! — but ageism is a thing, and men are only just so insulated from it. Rory looks damn good for his age, mind you. I think I’ve mentioned before that I once dated a guy in his late 20s who looked older in a lot of ways than Rory does now. But Rory hasn’t got a very long filmography, what there is is a bit padded with TV episodes, and the parts he did get were mostly bits and supporting stuff with not as much screen time and as often as not, he’d be killed off. Even in his best-known work he was always near the end of the episode intro billing, and he had to take an entire season off. The highest he has ever been billed that wasn’t his first billing in Jack ‘n’ Jill was The Crew, where I think he was listed third, and probably he’d prefer we stopped thinking about that one. It’s a good film, I think, but not one that would have wide appeal.

He has never been a bad actor, only an untrained one; so far as I know he’s had one acting seminar his entire life, not even theater class in the UK equivalent of high school, which he dropped out of anyway, and certainly nothing theater-ish in forestry school later on. I don’t know if he ever planned to get any more training apart from on the job or what obstacles might have been in his way if he did want that. I imagine being broke for most of his career would have been a major problem. I don’t know how nontraditional schooling works in the UK, anyway. He does have charisma, and I’m convinced that’s what got him the Scotts Porage Oats Man gig; yes he’s gorgeous, but he’s got that certain something. But again, ageism is a thing and anyway, if he prefers being bad guys in his roles now, you have to have the right kind of charisma. The kind that says I am one evil motherfucker instead of I smolder better than Dr. “Smolder” Bravestone. Drop your pants, ladies.

Hollywood, she do like her archetypes, and American viewers in particular hate seeing those mixed up.

I wish I understood why.

(Oh, who am I kidding. I probably understand why, but explaining would probably make me an asshole, and I’m not in the mood just now.)

Whatever the fuck’s going on, I’m not ready to jump to any final conclusions about which way I think this will go. I’d like to see us get all the way out of this pandemic and then see how the chips fall. From there, maybe I can make some better-educated guesses.

Especially with all his talk two Octobers ago about wanting to focus more on his career. So I’m probably worried about nothing.

I have to say I’m still holding out a little hope that Denzil Meyrick gets his way and that his DCI Daley books are translated to the small screen. Because I agree, I think Rory could do very well as Daley, and it’d thrill the hell out of me to see him top-billed in something. More Rory! Yay! But only a little hope. And another Jumanji film is still a strong possibility, certainly stronger than a DCI Daley show. So that’s something to look out for, probably.

Okay. I’m gonna go conk now; it’s just after 3:30am as I’m finishing this up. POSSIBLY more Rory screencaps by the end of this week. No promises.