'True Blood' Vet Lucy Griffiths Leaves NBC's 'Constantine'

True Blood vet Lucy Griffiths had a fairly high-profile role in one of the more hotly-anticipated pilots of the fall TV season, NBC's adaptation of DC Comics series Constantine. However, Griffiths isn't sticking around long enough to usher the show into its premiere.

Apparently, producers behind the NBC series have decided to go in a different direction creatively, cutting the character of Liv Aberdine (Griffiths), the daughter of one of Constantine's late friends. Liv, who possesses the ability to see supernatural beings, not unlike Constantine (Matt Ryan) himself, was intended to be the show's female lead. Liv has now been replaced by Zed, "a psychic who teams up with Constantine to battle various evil forces." Zed has yet to be cast, but she's expected to show up fairly early into Constantine's first season (which you can watch the trailer for here).

Credit: HBO

But why jettison Griffiths now? Was the character of Liv really just not working? Was there some kind of problem with the performance Griffiths was giving? Here are further details straight from producer Daniel Cerone (via Entertainment Weekly):

Constantine executive producer Daniel Cerone says that the show is replacing the wet-behind-the-ears Liv with the more experienced and feisty Zed to give its main demon hunter a more effective partner/foil. “When you put a wide-eyed innocent into that world, she’s just very reactive,” he tells EW. “The nice thing about Swamp Thing, when he first teamed up with Constantine, was that Swamp Thing had abilities, Swamp Thing had skills. Constantine needed those skills. One of the coolest things about Constantine he doesn’t have any ‘powers.’ He came out of a time with all these superheroes with their garish colors and flashy powers, and he just comes out with a rumpled coat, wearing browns and greys, and he just knows a lot magic and spells, but it’s all knowledge-based. Anything he can do is based in knowledge and his own studying. Zed is actually one of the first women Constantine meets in the comic books, and she has various psychic powers. We felt ultimately she’s going to service the first season better as someone to pair Constantine up with. She can get in his face a little bit and have some of her own realizations and skills and really push him. But if whoever Constantine is working with is constantly on her heels, that just wouldn’t service the show really well.”

So it looks like the issue wasn't Griffiths at all, which is good to hear, since Griffiths is a talented actress in her own right. I mean, her storylines on True Blood were almost uniformly terrible, but she always did fine work with what she was given.

Of course, while it's a shame to lose her, her departure doesn't dull my excitement for Constantine. There are so many ways this could go right, and just as many ways this could go wrong, given the property (and the network it's going to be running on). I'm quite intrigued to get my eyes on this thing.