Lumbergh Was Almost Crockett

The most interesting tidbit I’ve learned during my Miami Vice Month research thus far is that Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas edged out Gary Cole and Jimmy Smits respectively for the roles of Crockett and Tubbs. Smits is well-known for his subsequent work in LA Law, NYPD Blue and The West Wing. And it’s not a stretch at all to see Smits as Ricardo Tubbs. I think if he’d gotten the role, he would have played it even better than Thomas – or at least have been more successful in parlaying the role into future work.

However, what really strikes me is that Gary Cole is the guy who went onto play Bill Lumbergh in Office Space. I’m surely not the only Office Space disciple out there who admires the Lumbergh role to no end, but that role makes it all the more difficult for me to accept Cole as an undercover slickster working low and high society in Miami. Then again, Cole has honed his dramatic chops for years as a partner and performer in Chicago’s renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and is an understated force in comedies like Office Space, Dodgeball and the upcoming Talladega Nights.

So who knows what Miami Vice would have been like with Cole and Smits as Crockett and Tubbs. At least they weren’t ousted completely. Smits played Crockett's partner Eddie Rivera in the first episode, but was killed in the first twenty minutes of the show – then came the meeting with Tubbs (see yesterday’s entry). As for Cole, he got to play a low-level middleman in a season one episode called Trust Fund Pirates. Hardly the TPS Report Nazi that made him famous, but work nevertheless -- and at least it aint Nash Bridges.