Trivia / The 10th Kingdom

• Acclaimed Flop: It was well received by critics, but its ratings performed well below expectations in its original airing.
• Acting for Two: As well as Tony, John Larroquette plays the giant seen in the opening credits.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Camryn Manheim accepted immediately when she was offered the role of Snow White, ecstatic that the miniseries had chosen to portray the princess differently than the familiar ones.
  • Kimberly Williams-Paisley dislikes working in TV due to the fast-paced nature of it, but accepted the role of Virginia in order to work with Dianne Wiest, Jimmy Nail and Rutger Hauer.
• Billing Displacement: At the beginning, Ann-Margret is listed among actors who appear throughout the entire miniseries, yet she doesn't actually appear until the very end. The same goes for Camryn Manheim as Snow White, who, other than a Dream Sequence, appears only in part four.
• Dawson Casting: Sally Peep announces that she's just turned eighteen. Lucy Punch was already twenty-three. Averted with Daniel Lapaine, who was one year younger than Wendell is said to be.
• Fake American:
  • South African actress Moira Lister puts on a Mid-Atlantic accent to play Virginia's grandmother.
  • Ironic considering the below, but Hilary Tones is British playing Christine, who is a New Yorker and the Time-Shifted Actor of Dianne Wiest.
• Fake Brit:
  • Daniel Lapaine is an Australian putting on an English accent as Prince Wendell.
  • Dianne Wiest is American likewise using RP for the Queen. The Reveal however is that she actually is a New Yorker who travelled into the Nine Kingdoms and was tutored by the English-accented Evil Queen. When she's dying, she reverts to her natural accent.
• Edited for Syndication: Due to the extreme length of the miniseries, when it was re-broadcast for a second time in August 2000, various scenes were cut. Some versions of the VHS copies also had these scenes missing, and apparently even some of the DVDs. Later versions of the DVD had all scenes restored.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The novelization is now out of print. Also out of print are the original home video releases, which presented the series as one enormous feature. Current releases only contain the initial five episode format.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Queen Red Riding Hood III’s line "Incredible, for 200 years old," was used a lot in advertising, but it does not appear in the actual miniseries.
• Novelization: Seeing as it was based on an earlier version of the screenplay, it suffered from invalidated script syndrome, but this did allow for things which would have been intriguing had they made it into the miniseries (such as the Queen telling the Dog Prince a "bedtime story" about how she came to end up in prison, the literal burying of the magic axe, Virginia's Recurring Dreams about Wolf, or an interesting variation on the Swamp Witch's cottage scene with Clay Face rather than Acorn). Other sections have some surprisingly deep explorations of character and motivation, such as the longer conversations between Virginia and the Huntsman, Virginia and the Queen, Virginia and Snow White, or Virginia and Tony about her mother; or where they hear in Little Lamb Village about the Trolls ravaging the kingdom and Tony, who accidentally golded Wendell, feels responsible. And some explanations for otherwise headscratching moments are included, such as the old woman in the forest and the Cupid girl in Kissing Town both being Snow White in disguise, and smaller details not mentioned in the series such as Cinderella being the maternal grandmother of Wendell.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Dianne Wiest, usually kindly mother figures plays the Big Bad herself - the wicked queen.
  • Camryn Manheim certainly isn't the first one you'd think of to play Snow White, which was invoked by producers.
  • Ed O'Neill as the bloodthirsty Troll King is certainly different. While it is a somewhat comedic role, the king is notably more serious and effective than his bumbling children.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ed O'Neill was first considered to play Tony, but O'Neill feared he'd make the part too similar to Al Bundy on Married... with Children and asked to play the Troll King instead.
  • As originally scripted, and featured in the novelisation, Virginia would've encountered Clayface in the Swamp Witch's house instead of Acorn. However, Jimmy Nail proved unavailable for further shooting, which led to the expansion of Warwick Davis' role as Acorn.