Why Scott Speedman Almost Said No to Felicity — and How Scott Foley Almost Got His Part

Felicity’s central love triangle almost looked a lot different.

On the beloved series, which aired for four seasons between 1998 and 2002 on the WB, Keri Russell’s Felicity was perpetually torn between Scott Speedman’s Ben and Scott Foley’s Noel. But, as he explained on the June 25 episode of The Ringer’s re-watch podcast Dear Felicity, Speedman almost passed up the opportunity to play the heartthrob for whom Russell’s character uprooted her life.

“I had gone down to theater school in New York and had a had a good time in New York, but a tough time at the school,” the Canadian actor, 48, explained. “It just wasn't for me, so I dropped out and got back to Toronto.”

Speedman said he was living with his mother when a casting director called wanting him to audition for Felicity.

“I was like, ‘No, I don't wanna do stuff on the WB,' " Speedman recalled. “I was just at that stage in my life. And then an agent heard that I had said no somehow. She got me the script, and I read the script, and I thought it was amazing. I really did. Genuinely thought it was amazing. And I knew … that role was kind of — especially for where I was in my life — made for me in a certain kind of way. I just felt this kinship with it right away.”

“I don't know what I was thinking,” Speedman said of his initial reluctance. “I was just, you know, in a very tortured part of my life at that point. But, honestly, once I read it, that all went out the window.”

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Also out the window: the show’s producers’ original plan to have Foley play Ben.

“I think they liked this guy as Ben better,” Foley told the crowd during a 2018 Felicity cast reunion at the ATX Festival, gesturing toward Speedman. “Nobody could have played Ben Covington better than Scott Speedman.”

On Dear Felicity, Speedman told hosts Juliet Litman and Greg Grunberg — who played Sean Blumberg on the series — that he and Foley never talked about the casting shake-up at the time.

“I don't remember bringing the subject up,” he said. “I don't know if I knew that right away, so it wasn't something I ever brought up.”

Speedman also noted that he had never seen the final episodes of the show’s second season before Dear Felicity’s hosts asked him to revisit them for the podcast. “It was crazy watching them for me,” he said. “It was emotional watching it.”

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“I'm 48 now. I was 24 then. And it's just fascinating watching this kid go through all that stuff,” he continued. “My father had died the year before … So I'm looking at this kid trying to figure it all out and going through that, and it's impossible for me to separate those two things, especially in that season.”

“It was just an interesting time to be — you know, your life was changing in all these kinda crazy ways,” Speedman added. “All that stuff was really happening in my life, you know, the vulnerability and the soft-spokenness and the rawness and all that kind of stuff that really comes through.”