It's about time we started hearing some news on the "Breaking Dawn" casting front. The last time we heard anything was at the end of August when Rami Malek was cast as Benjamin, a vampire from the Egyptian coven, but considering there are a grand total of 33 vampires included in the appendix at the end of "Breaking Dawn," we expected casting news to come a little more quickly.
Well, finally we have someone new cast, and it's one of the more significant characters. Deadline is reporting that Maggie Grace, the girl you love to hate from "Lost" and "Taken" (well, at least I love to hate her), has been cast as Irina, a vampire from the Denali coven who spoiler alert is also the only character in the entire book to meet an untimely—or in this case, very timely—end.
You've probably already heard that the epic battle scene that the last third of the book builds up to is anti-climactic to say the least, but it actually doesn't even count as a battle because everything is resolved peacefully. That is, everything except for Irina, who was killed at the hands of the Volturi for giving them false information.
Irina actually triggered all of the events leading up to the Cullens' big non-violent face-off with the Volturi after she saw Bella, Edward and their daughter Renesmee walking in the woods and thought Bella had illegally turned a child into a vampire because of the fact that Renesmee looked much older than she actually was. Irina was the lover of Laurent, who was killed by the Quilette wolf pack in "New Moon," but she was under the false impression that it was the Cullens who killed him and took her revenge on them by reporting this allegedly illegal vampire to the Volturi.
Alice foresaw this and that was why the Cullens started gaining vampire supporters to come stand by them in what they thought would be a battle against the Volturi, and thus giving Stephenie Meyer leave to introduce the aforementioned 33 new characters in the book. When she realized both of her mistakes—it was the wolf pack who killed Laurent and Renesmee was not a child vampire—she accepted responsibility for her actions and Caius had her killed.
In the books, Irina was described as having chin-length silvery blonde hair and the golden eyes of vegetarian vampires, and Maggie Grace can easily fit that description. It will be nice to see her play a character with more confidence than Shannon in "Lost" and Kim in "Taken," and also play someone who can actually be considered villainous instead of just annoying and despicable (yes, I'm looking at you, Shannon). Hopefully she isn't asked to run in the film, either, because her horrifically awkward run will totally ruin the image of "Twilight's" suave vampires.
Do you think that Maggie was a good choice to play Irina?
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