What Happened To 4400's Lily?
Viewers of the June 11 third-season premiere of USA Network's The 4400 learned the fate of a key character, and executive producer Ira Steven Behr told SCI FI Wire that the change came about unexpectedly as a result of a business issue with one of the show's regular cast members. (Spoilers ahead!) In the two-hour premiere, "The New World," the character of Lily Moore, previously played by series regular Laura Allen, aged suddenly by 50 years and was played by guest star Tippi Hedren (The Birds). At the end of the episode, Lily died. Allen was seen only in a brief flashback as the young Lily, and Allen won't be back. Behr said in an interview last week that it wasn't his initial choice not to have Allen or Lily back.
"At the beginning of the season, when we met with the network to start talking about the new season, we pitched the series that had Laura Allen in it," Behr said in his office in West Hollywood, Calif. "And events kind of took hold on their own, and I was basically told that she wasn't going to be back. And we [came] back to [rewrite] the opening two hours, and we had to, you know, change course."
Behr didn't detail the issue that led to Allen's departure from the show, but confirmed that it was "a business thing. Yeah. It was not a creative decision, ultimately. It was a business decision. And, as I was saying, there's ... just so many things that I'm sure you hear all the time from people on shows. They're just money decisions and business decisions, and there's a lot of people with a lot of say in all these things. A lot of people who have to answer to a lot of other people who don't have any dealings with [us], and it just ... got out of hand. And, suddenly, there you go. So you just move on."
Had Allen remained with the show, Behr said, it's possible her character would have aged in any case. "I will say this, though," he said. "One of the stories we had for her did involve her getting older, so that was going to be in there, but that was going to be an arc that was going to end in a slightly different way. But, you know, these things happen all the time." The 4400 airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. USA is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM/PT Sunday timeslot. USA is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.