Berenger originally intended to play Colonel Leonard Wood, with Stephen Lang to play Roosevelt. Berenger said the mini series "needs a couple other names.'.. It'll be as much fun as `Gettysburg' was to do ... a bunch of guys playing a famous military unit... The casting director of `Gettysburg' told me she had 6,000 actors' submissions for that production. There were a couple of big names who wanted to do it so badly they said, `Just give me a couple of lines and a uniform - that's all I want.'"