Trivia / The Magicians (2016)

• Acting for Two: Not counting Alternate Universe counterparts, at least two actors play multiple unrelated roles: Olivia Taylor Dudley plays both Alice and the mythical Cassandra (though their resemblance is noted In-Universe), and Sean Maguire plays both the Dark King and the pig man Lord Effingham (under heavy makeup and an exaggerated accent).
• Actor Allusion:
  • The Battlestar Galactica (2003) reference in season three qualifies, given that Rick Worthy, Keegan Connor Tracy, Michael Hogan and Alessandro Juliani have all appeared in both series.
    • Given that Margo and Eliot are familiar enough with BSG to reference a major plot point and apply it to their situation, one has to wonder how they've missed that their dean bears a striking resemblance to another Cylon.
  • Margo pretends her lady parts have teeth in order to dissuade an unwanted suitor. Hale Appleman starred in Teeth (2007).
• Actor-Shared Background: Like Penny, Arjun Gupta is from Florida.
• California Doubling: Vancouver stands in for New York and surrounding locales. The pilot was shot in New Orleans for the same effect.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • The songs that get performed are a prime example. "One Day More" in the second is one, and then "Under Pressure" and "All I Need Is The Girl" in season three; the latter two are especially vehicles for Jade Tailor (Kady), who is a trained singer.
  • Hale Appleman, Jade Tailor, Brittany Curran, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Trevor Einhorn, and Rick Worthy are all talented singers. With so much musical ability, it's no wonder the writers keep finding reasons for Musical Episodes.
  • Bonus for Jade Tailor, who is also a trained dancer who used to perform burlesque earlier in her career. So of course they found a way for her to do a burlesque number.
  • They also found an excuse to have her speak Hebrew because Jade Tailor's father lived in Israel, and she is at least somewhat fluent.
• Dawson Casting: At the beginning of the series, Quentin was about 24. His actor Jason Ralph, on the other hand, was almost 30 (about 29). The same applies to most of the main cast — although their characters are in their early to mid-20s, they were almost 30 when Season 1 was filmed and well into their 30s by Season 3.
• Development Gag: The shot of the "Welcome to Vancouver" sign in "Ramifications" appears solely because Vancouver is where the show is filmed.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Deaf magician Harriet is played exclusively by deaf actresses in the present day and in flashbacks: Marlee Matlin (her present-day self), Winter Sluyter Obidos (as a little girl), and Stephanie Nougeras (as a young woman).
• Fake Russian:
  • Mayakovsky chants a Russian spell in S02E12 with a very heavy accent («Подобное притягивает подобное чтобы составить цельное.» \ “Like attracts like to make a whole”).
  • In S04E11 his accent is so thick, even native speakers cannot understand him saying "Where am I?".
• The Other Darrin: Laci J. Mailey played Fen in "Have You Brought Me Little Cakes" and was replaced afterward by Brittany Curran.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Hale Appleman has identified as sexually fluid/queer in real life.
• Throw It In!:
  • According to Jason Ralph and Hale Appleman, they were given the freedom to do whatever they wanted for several of the vignettes seen in the montage from "A Life In The Day" and quite a few of them ended up in the final episode.
  • Several of the cast confirmed that Summer Bishil ad-libbed the line "you really love that sloth, don't you?" from "The Fillorian Candidate".
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Madeleine Arthur (Fray) is physically very believable as Hale Appleman and Brittany Curan's daughter — ironic, considering Fray is revealed to not actually be their daughter.
• What Could Have Been: The original (2014) pilot script had some major changes from the final version that aired, including:
  • Kady dies in the fight with the Beast at the end after getting her eyes ripped out, and there is significantly more Body Horror involved with the Beast than just the extra fingers and the moth cloak. The professor teaching the class also dies.
  • While it opens on Quentin in the hospital, it opens in his room and the coin trick he does is more heavily implied to be actual magic, and the reveal that it's a mental hospital is done slower and more subtly.
  • The Chatwins' story is closer to the original novel, where there are five Chatwin siblings instead of three and Jane is the youngest at only ten.
  • Some content of the sixth Fillory book is shown, including a mention that the Chatwins' story is much darker than the books have implied, foreshadowing what's found out later.
  • Josh isn't in the Neitherlands, but is instead a member of Quentin's class and his lab partner.
  • Eliot and Margo find out that Julia remembers at her birthday party, after Quentin walks away from her, and tries to convince him to tell the Dean.
  • The script also explains how electronics don't work around magic, but the school library has computers that work for checking email, and it's confirmed that there's only one pay phone on the entire Brakebills campus.
• Written-In Infirmity: Julia's second pregnancy was written into season 5 because Stella Maeve was pregnant during filming.