Trivia / Genius

• Acting for Two: Samantha Colley plays Mileva Marić in Season 1 and Dora Maar in Season 2. The same happens with those characters in the Japanese dub.
• Actor-Shared Background: In the Japanese dub, Aretha Franklin is voiced by Maaya Sakamoto, who is also a professional singer by her own right, being the sole difference that, while Franklin was a soul singer, Sakamoto is a pop singer instead.
• Billing Displacement: Geoffrey Rush as Einstein and Antonio Banderas as Picasso receive top billings and most of the advertisement in their respective seasons, but the younger versions of their characters (played by Johnny Flynn and Alex Rich) actually have considerably more screen time.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In the Japanese dub, Ayana Taketatsu voiced young Hans Albert Einstein, also overlaps with Playing Against Type as this is a departure of her modus operandi of voicing cute little girls or spunky teens.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: The Latin American Spanish dub of both Einstein and Picasso were dubbed using voice actors from both Mexico City and Cuernavaca. On the other hand, however, the dub of Aretha was done entirely in the former city.
• Dawson Casting: 35-year-old Clémence Poésy as 21-year-old Françoise Gilot in Season 2.
• Dueling Works: The third season on Aretha Franklin took part in a TV vs. film duel with the biopic Respect (2021), which, unlike the Genius season, had been in development prior to the singer's death (she had actually been personally involved in its early stages). Both were significantly delayed by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Genius: Aretha got positive (albeit not superlative) reviews from critics but a mixed reception from audiences (though significantly better than Genius: Picasso in both cases). Respect got a similar reception from critics but a stronger audience reception; however, it was also a Box Office Bomb. (Notably, despite having ended months earlier, Genius: Aretha had a promotional category on a Jeopardy! episode less than two weeks before Respect's release.)
• Promoted Fanboy: Playing Pablo Picasso was one of Antonio Banderas' life dreams, not only for admiring his work, but also because both of them are famously from the same city: Malaga, in Southern Spain.
• Real-Life Relative: In the Japanese dub, Maaya Sakamoto voice Aretha Franklin, while her husband, Kenichi Suzumura, voice Maurice Solovine in Einstein.
• Reality Subtext: Picasso's disdain for Francisco Franco is loaded with how Antonio Banderas spent his youth under Franco's regime, and was arrested for protesting a few times.
• Schedule Slip: The switch to doing a season about Aretha Franklin after a good deal of preparation caused Season 3 to be delayed a year.
• What Could Have Been: Season three was originally slated to be about Mary Shelley, but after the passing of Aretha Franklin the crew decided to make it about her, while still hoping to cover Shelley at some point. With the announcement that the fourth season would focus on Martin Luther King Jr., it is unclear if the Shelley season will ever be made.

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