A lot of TV shows have a big “will they, won’t they” romantic storyline between two main characters. However, some of the best onscreen relationships weren’t meant to happen at all (or the writers only had loose ideas about them) until an actor in a small role had so much chemistry with a lead that their characters seemed meant to be.
Here are 21 TV love interests who started out small, but grew into an important part of the show:
Spoilers ahead!
1.
On The Office, Holly Flax was originally meant to appear in only one episode. Amy Ryan told the Office Ladies podcast that she had her agents reach out to the show about the same time they reached out to her. She said, “I don’t remember reading a script. I remember hearing it was a one episode only and potential love interest, which obviously I knew was code for, ‘we’ll see how you do, kid, if we have you back.’ I remember also because I was a big fan of the British series. David finally gets a woman who likes him too. So it was loosely based, I think, on her for the first episode. And then, our group took it to a different level. So there was no script that I was privy to. But I knew the kind of general idea of it.”
However, Amy proved to have the perfect dynamic with Steve Carell’s Michael Scott. Writer Paul Lieberstein told Fanbolt, “We didn’t have a deal with her yet [at the Season 4 finale], so we were really hoping. But no, we knew that she would stay around, or we hoped…[Holly’s character development] was talked about among the writing staff a great deal, and I would say – but it really crystallized in the episode that you saw on set when we started to see this really silly side that Amy brought to the character and found almost like a junior Michael in her. And we all saw it and knew what we had.”
Amy and Steve worked together again, playing Timothée Chalamet’s parents in Beautiful Boy. Amy told The Hollywood Reporter, “I think it really helped having history with each other and deep friendship and respect. The relationship in the film, they’re a bit more fractured, but they find this common bond and love and step aside and would do anything for their son. I remember in our first take together, I just started laughing, which is really wildly inappropriate for our movie.”
2.
Gerri Kellman was originally a Succession side character — and the writers initially planned for her to be a man. Executive producer Mark Mylod told Vulture, “We didn’t really have a character, just somebody to help with exposition.” However, of the few women brought in to audition, J. Smith-Cameron stood out because she saw the “dark comedy” in the sides. She also leaned on her familiarity with Kieran Culkin, whom she previously worked with on Margaret. She said, “I’ve known Kieran for a long time, and I knew he was one of the sons, and they’re so cheeky and boorish in the audition scenes that I could just picture him doing them. On the tape, I was wincing every time he said anything, which I think then began to define the character.”
The way she and Kieran played off each other helped transform Gerri into a character who stuck around. Mark said, “There are a couple of characters in Season 1 who fell away because we either didn’t have enough meat for them to evolve, or it wasn’t a good fit. But J. was a perfect fit. We, but basically J., evolved the character, and she made herself indispensable. She found a humor to the character, and a ruthlessness to the character, and, of course, through her friendship with Kieran, sliding us into that second-season relationship.”
Specifically, an improvised moment between Gerri and Roman during Shiv’s wedding at the end of Season 1 inspired their relationship storyline. Mark said, “We were shooting that scene at the welcome party, and we got past the scripted dialogue, but, as ever, I’d kept the camera rolling, and it followed J. over to the bar. Kieran was sat there, and they went into a riff about how they liked their martinis. For me, that was a revelation. There was a spark between them, and I think that was the seed of where we went with that quasi-dominatrix maternal sexual connection.”
3.
Jessica Capshaw originally signed on to play Dr. Arizona Roberts on three episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, but she ultimately stayed longer as a love interest for Sara Ramirez’s character. Jessica told NBC News, “Shonda [Rhimes, the series creator] had this idea that my character could present a storyline for Callie [Torres]. It was an experiment to see what worked. It just kind of kept working.”
4.
Stefania Spampinato originally played Dr. Carina DeLuca-Bishop as a recurring role on Grey’s Anatomy, but in 2019, she began appearing on the spin-off Station 19 as well to help connect the two shows. However, executive producer/showrunner Krista Vernoff told SheKnows that Stefania’s magical chemistry with Danielle Savre, who played Maya Bishop, was apparent “from the table read.”
Stefania added that “the room froze” when she and Danielle first read together. She said, “Everybody was holding their breath, and it was just a meeting in Joe’s bar. But the chemistry was so strong in that scene, the whole room felt it. It was crazy.”
In 2020, Stefania was promoted to series regular on Station 19.
5.
Parks and Recreation co-creator Mike Schur told NJ.com, “We originally conceived of Andy as a character who would fade away after the first six or so [episodes], but Chris [Pratt] was so great we had to make him full-time — and we decided that right after we cast him. It seemed like a waste to have him around for such a short time.”
When Chris was promoted to series regular in Season 2, Andy was still trying to win Ann back. However, the decision to pair him with April came from an improvised moment between Chris and Aubrey Plaza in the Season 1 finale. Speaking at the Paley Center in 2011, series co-creator Greg Daniels said, “He was just talking about the band, and she made the choice to be really into the band.” Audrey added, “Everyone was gathered around, and he was asking, he was trying to explain what kind of music his band played. And everyone was like, ‘I don’t get it,’ and I was like, I bet April would kind of, like, think he’s cute and get it. So, I was like, ‘I get it.’ And I looked at him, and that’s where it started.”
6.
On Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls was introduced as an antagonistic side character. However, Jason Dohring’s chemistry with Kristen Bell was unexpectedly intense, and the longer he was on the show, the more fans rooted for him to end up with Veronica. It turned out that production was also “feeling it in the writers’ room,” so they decided to steer the characters toward a slow-burn romantic arc.
Series creator Rob Thomas told Vox, “It was gratifying that the audience responded in the same way we were. It felt kind of undeniable to us. It allowed us to kind of slow-play that relationship a bit, because it wasn’t supposed to happen. I think the first kiss might have been [Episode] 17 or 18? I’m a big fan of those proper British dramas where the romantic leads, like, touch each other’s wrists, and it’s like, ‘Oh my god!'”
7.
On The Big Bang Theory, Amy Fowler was meant to be a one-off joke in the Season 3 finale. In The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series, Mayim Bialik said, “They decided after that summer break that I would be brought back, but they book you one episode at a time, which is not stressful at all! After my episode in the season three finale, I literally thought my character might never come back. I had been out of the industry for so long…it really could have gone either way.”
Writer/producer Steve Molaro said, “Chuck [Lorre, the series co-creator] was the biggest early adopter and proponent of Mayim. Even when we felt that the character may be polarizing — because some viewers weren’t comfortable with the idea of Sheldon being involved with a female — Chuck was like, ‘I don’t care, you put that face on TV!’ We, in the writers’ room, were into it, but we didn’t know where it was going to go. We didn’t know they were to have a second date, or how that was going to play out and keep evolving through the years. But we went into it like we do with all additions to the show and all the characters: We’re hopeful and trying to do our best to make it grow into something better and interesting; that was one of those that obviously did. But it took a little while to shake off the ‘female Sheldon’ description and let her become her own person.”
Jim Parsons, who played her onscreen love interest Sheldon Cooper, added, “I know at the audition they said they needed a female version of Sheldon, basically, but that’s untenable long-term. There was no choice but to evolve the character. And at some point in Season 4 — I don’t know if something caused it or not — I remember saying to Todd [Spiewak, the EP], ‘I will not let this character go without a fight.’ That was notable for me, only in that I almost never disagreed with the writers. But at some point I felt a certain way about working with Mayim that I was like, ‘If for whatever reason we seemed to be weaning her off of this show as a character, I would go and talk to them.’ I said this years ago, but I believe it even more now that one of the smartest things that the writers’ room ever did was introduce Bernadette and Amy at a point where, as far as interests and storylines go, we did not need them yet.”
8.
Noel Fisher was initially only contracted for a few episodes of Shameless, and in the first script he saw, Mickey Milkovich was “dirty.” He told the Chicago Tribune, “That’s as close a descriptor I can think of. I think the script said something like, he was a step away from a full-on street kid. Like one step removed from a kid who slept under bridges and lived on the street. Like, very dirty and rugged and ready to scrap. I’ve always considered the Milkoviches as a more divided, violent version of the Gallaghers. Instead of Frank, who is just kind of a hilariously narcissistic and self-involved absent father, Terry [Mickey’s father] is a violent force for negativity.”
Season 1, Episode 7 is where it all began. In 2015, executive producer Etan Frankel told BuzzFeed, ” We all saw potential in a Mickey character. The English version [of Shameless] had done a lot with the Mickey character, but we also knew it early on that we would divert from what the English show had done, simply because we had different actors — our actors had different strengths, our writers had different strengths. For the sake of the American show, it had to find its own identity. We could have gone in any direction, honestly. Episode 7, which I wrote, where Mickey and Ian pair up for the first time…And then it goes from fighting to fucking. Like any normal relationship… Sometimes you reversed it — fuck then fight, just to shake it up a little bit.”
“But once that episode happened, we all realized there was something super interesting there. I don’t think any of us knew where it was going to go. Which, as a writer, is the most exciting thing, because it becomes very organic. You can surprise yourself. And then when you see these two on-screen and what they do with it … if you don’t have two actors who can play the characters the way they are written but also find really subtle moments to show what’s going on below the surface, it doesn’t give you anywhere to go. Noel and Cameron are so good at keeping the integrity of who these characters were from the beginning, but showing you subtle moments where they begin to change along the way. If you watch them in Season 1 and Season 5, they’re exactly the same people, but they’ve changed so much. It’s been incremental and it’s a huge credit to these two guys,” he said.
9.
On Glee, Blaine Anderson was not originally written as a love interest for Kurt Hummel, but actor Darren Criss became “such a sensation in one week.” Finding that there was “a hunger for him and a positive relationship role model,” series creator Ryan Murphy signed a deal with Darren to return as a regular. Then, he waited to see the audience’s reaction to determine if Blaine should be Kurt’s boyfriend or just his mentor. While he was still deciding what Blaine’s role in Kurt’s life should be, Ryan told AfterElton.com, “I didn’t want to decide that until we got into sort of the middle of the season. We’re figuring it out now…Kurt will definitely get a boyfriend. The question is who will it be and how will it be.”
10.
Similarly, in the first season of Glee, Santana Lopez and Brittany Pierce were only side characters. However, fans excitedly embraced their relationship, and Naya Rivera and Heather Morris were promoted to series regulars. In 2011, Naya told AfterEllen, “I think Heather and I have great chemistry, and we work well together. I know that the fans love it and send, like, angry death tweets…Hopefully we’ll end up together. I don’t know! …[I] can hint at something that [I] like, but I think that they listen to the fans a lot, and what the fans want really means a lot to them. And I’m sure that we’ll see a shift.”
A few days later, series co-creator Brad Falchuck tweeted, “Brittana is on. Brittana was always on. Episode 15 — and Gwyneth is the one who gets them together…”
11.
Luke Kirby’s chemistry with Rachel Brosnahan is what kept him (as Lenny Bruce) on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino told Vanity Fair, “When we cast Luke, it was just for the pilot. We had absolutely no real intention of bringing him back and continuing him. But when we looked at Luke, in addition to doing the real essence of what Lenny is, he’s just a great actor and just a darling guy. Every time you get them together, they just had a camaraderie and a chemistry — and it was the fact that he wasn’t looking at her like, ‘I just want to get in your pants.'”
“The fact that she was there for him last year when he was feeling low and in the season finale, and she shows up for him…I think that, that a lot of time it translates into, ‘Well, eventually they’re going to have sex.’ Right? But it’s not necessarily the way it’s going to go,” she said.
12.
Spike wasn’t meant to be Buffy’s love interest on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and James Marsters’s popularity with the audience allegedly angered series creator Joss Whedeon so much that he pushed the actor into a wall. James told the podcast Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, “In Joss’s world, evil is not cool, and I really respect him for that. Vampire were just a metaphor for the challenges that you get over in your adolescence. So vampires are supposed to be overcome, and he got talked into one sexy vampire that’s not gonna be killed off. That was Angel. And I was supposed to come in and get killed off. And the audience immediately reacted to me in a way that was gonna make it very difficult to kill me off. And the network was telling him, ‘Oh my God, keep this guy in the show’ and all of that. I was basically ruining his show.”
He continued, “But the thing is that that [decision] is gonna change the show from being about a teenager overcoming adolescence into a show where those problems are kinda sexy, aren’t they? All this psychotic…I was killing people all the time! I was shredding them! And the audience was going, ‘Oh, we want more of that,’ and Joss is like, ‘No, no, the point is that you overcome the evil! That’s the point.’ So, if I was in his shoes, I would’ve killed me off. I wouldn’t have pushed me against the wall. I just would’ve killed him off immediately, saying, ‘I know I told you five episodes. We’ll pay you for five, but you’re dead after two, sorry.'”
“He just got frustrated and figured it out, but there was that day when he pushed me up against the wall. I don’t remember how it started. I just have this image of him, and he’s in my face. He goes, ‘I don’t care how popular you are, kid. You are dead. You are dead. You are dead. You got me?’ …I just said, ‘It’s your football, dude. You gotta do what you wanna do,'” James said.
13.
According to ET, Felicity Smoak was initially intended as a single-episode character on Arrow. However, Emily Bett Rickards’s chemistry with Stephen Amell was so electrifying that, in Season 2, she was promoted to series regular and became Oliver Queen’s endgame love interest.
Oliver had another love interest, Laurel, but even if she had lived, Oliver was going to end up with Felicity. At a 2018 Heroes & Villains Fan Fest in Portland, Stephen reportedly said, “In our show, it was Oliver and Felicity, and it was going to be them no matter what.”
14.
On Friends, Phoebe Buffay was originally supposed to end up with David, not Mike. When David went to Minsk, actor Hank Azaria “didn’t know that was the end of David.” He told HuffPost, “The plan always was kind of to bring him back. I think, honestly, what happened was Paul Rudd is so awesome that they sort of found a groove with him, and [my character] became more of just the grist for that mill. As opposed to the other way around…It actually did sting a little bit. Whatever part of me is David the science guy who went to Minsk, which admittedly is probably a small part of me, but that part of me wanted to end up with Phoebe. So I was sort of sad when I didn’t…[Paul] certainly has gone on to prove that he was comedically deserving of Phoebe’s love.”
15.
The West Wing series creator Aaron Sorkin told Entertainment Weekly, “Janel [Moloney] built her role from scratch, basically. Donna was a character who had two lines in the pilot episode. And when it turned out that we were 20 seconds short or 40 seconds short… [director Thomas Schlamme] and I huddled up, and we said, ‘You know, it was really nice when Josh and Donna were talking to each other. Let’s just do a little bit more of that.’ She was in all 22 episodes of the first season, but each week never knew if she was gonna be in the show the next week. She just built herself into one of the leads of the show.”
Donna and Josh’s “will they, won’t they” dynamic wasn’t originally part of the show either. Janel told the Associated Press, “But very early on, Aaron saw something in the chemistry between [Bradley Whitford] and me. In the pilot, there’s a scene Aaron wrote one morning and passed on to us to shoot the same day. The scene begins as Donna barges into Josh’s office. I say, ‘Put this shirt on.’ And he says, ‘No.’ And I say, ‘Josh, you’ve been wearing the same clothes for 31 hours. Put it on.’ And he won’t. And then I say, ‘All the girls think you look really hot in this shirt.’ He puts it on. I really think that scene sparked something.”
Aaron added, “Janel turned a recurring character who has a couple of lines every once in a while into what became a weekly set piece: the Josh-Donna Scene.”
16.
According to Collider, Lori Loughlin was only supposed to play Rebecca Donaldson on Full House for six episodes. However, her chemistry with John Stamos — along with the rest of the cast — and her popularity spurred producers to make her a permanent fixture. Becky famously joined the Tanner household, marrying Uncle Jesse in Season 4.
Many viewers wanted them to be together in real life, and John told HuffPost Live that they “actually did date” years before the show. He said, “We went on a date to Disneyland before we were both married. In real life, when we were 18, 19 years old. No disrespect to her family and her husband now, I would say that she could be the one that got away. She’s one of my dearest friends, and that’s good enough. I really do adore her.”
17.
On Supernatural, Misha Collins was cast to play Castiel for three episodes, but fans loved the character so much that he was brought back in longer stints and eventually stayed on the show for 15 years. He told Entertainment Tonight, “There are just a ton of die-hard Supernatural fans that are a force to be reckoned with. And that is something that I could have never anticipated when I went in to audition for my little three-episode arc.”
Fans were especially passionate about Castiel and Dean Winchester as a romantic pairing, and they rooted for the two to end up together. In 2015, Misha and Jared Padalecki won Best Chemistry at the Teen Choice Awards.
In the final season, Castiel finally declared his love for Dean — right before he died. Viewers accused the show of queerbaiting for years, then, after Castiel’s death, they accused them of perpetuating the “bury your gays” trope.
18.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Colin O’Donoghue initially signed on to play Captain Hook as a recurring character on Once Upon a Time, but he was promoted to series regular before his debut episode aired. He told TV Line, “I had a very specific idea as to how I would play him, and [showrunners] Eddie [Kitsis] and Adam [Horowitz] were on the same page from the get-go. I just made an innuendo about anything that I could — that was part and parcel of what he was — but I knew I could do it in a cheeky way so that you could kind of get away with it.”
“I wanted him to be somebody that guys would want to be and girls would want to be with but knew that he was bad news. That’s what I wanted him to be like, early on — very much the charming bad boy,” he said.
Hook became a love interest for protagonist Emma Swan. Colin told The Hollywood Reporter, “I think it was always sort of in the background, that there would be a thing [between Emma and Hook]. Hook and Emma have this kindred spirits kind of thing. They really see themselves in each other, and there’s no denying that there’s a spark between the two of them.”
19.
Julianna Margulies’s ER character, Carol Hathaway, wasn’t supposed to last beyond the first episode. On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Julianna said, “Honestly, I owe my career to George Clooney. I do…I seriously owe my career to George Clooney because my character died in the pilot of ER, and I was about to sign onto a not very good sitcom, ’cause I came back to New York. I needed a job. And he called me out of the blue, kind of put his neck out on the line for me, and said, ‘I overheard that your character tested well, and if I were you, I wouldn’t take another job, because I think they’re gonna bring you back to life.'”
Carol became Doug Ross’s main love interest because of the chemistry between Julianna and George. She told People, “That can’t happen if you don’t have a crush on each other. And with George and me, it was so organic. I was just supposed to be a guest star, number 39 on the call sheet. But he treated everyone the same.”
20.
In the Pretty Little Liars books, Toby Cavanaugh dies, but on the show, Keegan Allen’s chemistry with Troian Bellisario saved him. Showrunner Marlene King told Vulture, “We had one episode {Season 1, Episode 16] where we thought it would be interesting if Spencer volunteers to tutor Toby in French so she could get information. And the chemistry they had was so interesting, we wanted to push it toward a romantic place.”
She also said, “When it comes to the mystery stories, they’re plotted out very carefully very far in advance and we don’t waver from those stories. We do not deviate from them at all. When it comes to the character arcs, and the emotional paths that the girls and the guys take along the way, we kind of take that as it comes. We let the girls dictate that in a way; we see how people connect [and if they do], we’ll play that longer. So we’re flexible when it comes to the emotional arcs and rigid about the mystery arcs.”
21.
And finally, Gilmore Girls series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino told Entertainment Weekly, “Luke was originally a female character. [The network] came to me and said we need another guy, so I literally just took a character and changed the name, didn’t even change any of the dialogue because I’m that lazy.” Scott Patterson landed the role, and his connection with Lauren Graham changed Luke’s storyline even further. Amy said, “We did a few shows, and they just had chemistry. It was the episode [Season 1, Episode 7] where they were in the market, and Lorelai’s spying on Dean. Luke was there, and they had this scene that didn’t mean anything.”
Lauren added, “It didn’t seem like, ‘Oh this is the definite love interest.’ It’s just this funny, weird chemistry that we had in terms of being complete opposites and also this built-in conflict of he has the thing she wants — which is coffee. But in those first couple years, I had a bunch of different dates. Jon Hamm was one of them. We had Max Medina. It could’ve gone in any number of ways. It was just something about the two of those characters together that they kept going back to and then it kept growing.”
Are there any TV guest stars you wish had been given more bigger roles? Why? Let us know in the comments!