TV URBAN LEGEND: A character who was not in the pilot of Carol's Second Act was edited into the show before its premiere.

Here's the opening scene from the premiere episode of Carol's Second Act, CBS' new sitcom starring Patricia Heaton as a 50-year-old former teacher who went to medical school and is starting over in her "second act" as an intern at a California hospital...

Here, then, is the promotional video that CBS did for the show when it was picked up back in May...

Notice anything different?

Cedric Yarbrough, who plays Nurse Dennis on the series, was not on the show originally. He was still appearing on his acclaimed ABC sitcom, Speechless, during pilot season...

and no one on Speechless knew whether they were getting renewed or canceled. Sadly for that show, they were, in fact, canceled, leaving Yarbrough available for a nee series. Shows add new characters to series after the pilot all the time. It's an extremely common occurrence.

However, sometimes, shows decide that they want the character present right from the start, so they do little editing tricks to add them to the series. A few years back, I did a legend about Gray's Anatomy's pilot and how one of the original cast members was literally added to certain scenes using computer graphics, as well as an additional scene just edited into the pilot.

It does not appear as though they went to the effort of using computer effects to add Yarbrough to the series. Instead, it appears as though they filmed a new scene at the start of the episode with Yarbrough's Nurse Dennis walking through the new doctors and then re-did a walking scene (notice the cut at around 3:20 of the first video, it seems like there is a noticeable edit around there) to lead into an additional scene between Yarbrough and Kyle McLaughlin's doctor character. That was it for Yarbrough in the premiere. He's been featured much more heavily in the two episodes that followed.

I asked Yarbrough about it, and he was nice enough to explain...

EDITED TO ADD: Amusingly enough, Ashley Tisdale, who plays Carol's daughter on the show, was ALSO edited into the first episode, with her only scene appearing at the end of the episode as a "bumper."

The legend is...

STATUS: True

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