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The serendipitous circumstances that paved Kevin Tighe's way to Emergency!
"By chance, it happened to be me."
Despite the fact that a television series seems made for an actor like Kevin Tighe, the actor was an incredibly late addition to the cast of the popular series.
According to Tighe, his first interaction with the series came when he received a phone call from Emergency! creator, Jack Webb.
“One morning, I got a call from Jack Webb about a role in a new series he was putting together,” said Tighe during an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “So I went in and had read about four lines when he suddenly stood up and said, ‘I want you for the series.’ So they signed me to the contract immediately.”
Tighe would take on the role of paramedic and firefighter, Roy DeSoto. The series ran for six seasons, plus a handful of television films that helped to round out the series. Though it was the series that gave Tighe his big break as a television actor, it turned out that originally, there was another unnamed actor who producers had in mind to play Roy DeSoto.
“As I later learned, it just happened that they’d had an actor who was originally going to play my role,” said Tighe. “But when he found out that he couldn’t get top billing, he checked out the day before they were due to start filming. So they just took a wild stab in the dark at the first nut who walked in the door and could read a script. By chance, it happened to be me.”
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