Demona Is a Performance, Not a Silhouette
After writing about why Jason Momoa is a poor fit for Goliath and why that role demands classical acting skill, I realized there is a darker, more revealing version of the same casting logic that deserves to be addressed. It shows up far less often, but when it does, it exposes something more troubling than bad taste. It reveals an indifference to acting itself.
There is a version of fantasy casting discourse that is merely shallow, and then there is the version that actively alarms me. One example I have seen, thankfully far less often, is people suggesting Gina Carano as Demona in a live action Gargoyles adaptation.
This suggestion is revealing because it strips the conversation down to its ugliest essentials. The logic goes no further than this: tall, muscular woman equals powerful female character. Wings and fangs get stapled on afterward. Acting is never part of the equation.
Demona is one of the most emotionally and psychologically complex characters ever created for western animation. She is rage and grief layered over centuries of betrayal, guilt, self loathing, obsession, and ideological extremism. She moves constantly between grandiose villain monologues, intimate confessions, biting sarcasm, and raw emotional exposure. She is theatrical by design. She weaponizes language. She lives in heightened dialogue.
You do not cast that role based on just physique.
Even setting aside everything else, Gina Carano has never demonstrated the ability to carry dialogue at that level. Her performances consistently struggle with line delivery, rhythm, and emotional nuance. This is not a matter of taste or politics. It is a matter of record.
There is also a piece of trivia that makes this suggestion almost darkly ironic. In Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, Carano’s line delivery was considered so ineffective that much of her dialogue was dubbed in post production. The uncredited actor brought in to replace her voice was Laura San Giacomo. Gargoyles fans will recognize that name immediately, because San Giacomo was the uncredited voice of Fox on the series.
So yes, there is a bitter little circle there. An actor associated with Gargoyles was literally brought in to repair Carano’s performance in a film because Carano could not sell the dialogue. And yet some people still think she should be entrusted with one of the most demanding vocal and theatrical roles the series has to offer.
That should be dispositive.
There is also a deeper problem at work here, which is the lazy reliance on casting to type. It is a disservice to acting as a discipline. If roles were only cast according to surface traits and perceived persona, some of the most iconic performances in genre history would never have happened. Deanna Troi would never have been Demona. Luke Skywalker would never have been the Joker.
Those performances worked precisely because casting looked past type and trusted actors with range, intelligence, and command of voice and language. Demona was not cast because only because she sounded tough. She was cast because Marina Sirtis could deliver operatic rage, bitterness, seduction, and despair, sometimes all in the same scene. The Joker was not iconic because Mark Hamill looked dangerous. He was iconic because he understood rhythm, irony, and theatrical menace.
Casting by physique and "type" alone does not protect characters. It flattens them.
Demona is gothic tragedy. She is operatic. She is closer to Lady Macbeth or Medea than to an action movie bruiser. Playing her requires vocal control, emotional precision, and the ability to inhabit heightened language without sanding it down.
When someone suggests Carano for Demona, what they are really revealing is how they engage with Gargoyles. Not as drama, but as imagery. Muscles. Anger. Aesthetic strength. They are not thinking about cadence, subtext, or how a line lands when spoken aloud.
Demona is not a silhouette. She is not a symbol. She is not a statement.
She is a performance.
