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Bionic Woman/Becca Sommers
| Becca Sommers | |
| Bionic Woman | |
 | |
| Actor | Lucy Kate Hale |
| First Appearance | 1x01 - Pilot |
| Series Billing | |
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Becca Sommers is the sister of the titular character on Bionic Woman. She is played by Lucy Kate Hale.
Contents |
Basic Information
Character History
Memorable Moments
Trivia
Casting
Originally, the role of Becca Sommers was to be played by Mae Whitman in a drastically different fashion. In the unaired pilot, Becca is deaf, cynical and rebellious. In a bit of dialogue between her and Jamie, it's mentioned that she has three tattoos and she's clearly constantly at odds with her sister/surrogate mother. All of Whitman's parts were reshot with Lucy Hale for a number of reasons. Foremost of those reasons was backlash from deaf groups who took offense to a deaf character being portrayed by an actress with her hearing. There was also some perceived insult because both main characters aren't fluent signers.
Secondly, a subplot which necessitated the character's deafness was cut early in production. In an interview, executive producer Jason Smilovic explained that Becca was deaf to facilitate Jamie communicating with chimps in a lab with sign language. In his own words, "we were looking for a -- an organic way for her to be talking to the chimpanzees in sign language." Both the lab and the chimps were cut from the script, but the deaf sister stayed until a NBC executive asked that the character's hearing be restored and her personality reworked.
The final major reason for recasting the character is that the Whitman version of Becca tested very poorly with focus groups who saw the pilot. What exactly was said about the character isn't know, but the complains must have been far reaching to necessitate not only the recasting of the actress but the complete revamping of the character's fundamental personality and background.
The official stance of NBC was given by a spokesperson shortly after the story broke, "The decision was purely creatively driven. It is very common to change story lines, characters, actors after the initial pilot is shot."
