@Three-Eyed-Crow
One of the things I heard a lot of postmortems about the RNC was how the whole thing was not the main event, that it was a celebration of Being Republican. Whether or not any of us agree with this, it does put in mind that people were boo-ing a character, not the actor. It was entirely mis-placed, but know your audience is a writer's first rule.
If Joss Wheedon wants to change his audience, good on him. I still think Drew Carey is a bit of a home-town traitor in a way that a lot of people thought that LeBron was before he came back. They built up an expectation, and it's really up to history to determine if they paid it back. I think Joss and LeBron have. I don't think Drew did, but that's in the past.
During a convention I went to with the Babylon 5 actors, Ed Wasser (who played Morden) started with: "Okay, everyone raise your left hand. C'mon, everyone. Everyone? Okay. Now wave, just like this." It got a laugh and it got us out of any mindset that he was his character.
I can't imagine how any of this applies to running a game.