'The Hamptons' Begin July 27 By JULIANNE HASTINGS , UPI TV Reporter
NEW YORK(UPI) - ABC's 5-part mini-series "The Hamptons" begins airing July 27 and there's nothing star BIbi Besch is hoping for more than the kind of ratings that will make it television's newest prime time soap opera. Miss Besch, who left New York for the West Coast in 1976 because she wanted to "expand her career," said Thursday she would never go back to the daytime soaps that gave her her start. "I don't feel like it would be a step up for me," she said in an interview at ABC headquarters. A step up would be "for this to go beyond and become a new series," she said. "You think sometimes when you do pilots, you think to yourself, would I really be happy playing, if this gets picked up, playing this character for a year or two or five years. Yes. I like playing this character. This has a lot of dimension to it"
The character is Adrienne Duncan-Mortimer, sole heir to the Duncan half of the Duncan/Chadway department store. She is in her early forties and married to a man (played by John Riley) who is five years her junior and president of the store. Miss Besch describes her character as a rich lush. "I've got a great line in it. Oh it's wonderful dialogue," she said. "She says to her daughter, 'Let's not talk about it. I'm tired and I'm loaded, and I've had a miserable day.' There's Adrienne right there.'' "And pooh does Adrienne dress well. You know, like those beaded numbers for five grand."
The other lead characters are Michael Goodwin, who plays Peter Chadway, the managing director of Duncan-Chadway,and Leigh Taylor-Young as Peter's wife Lee. Miss Besch said the cast works together well. "This script just smelted different, and everyone felt it," she said. "All of us wanted to do our part to make this a hit." Dressed in a pale grey, cotton pant suit with low-heeled white pumps and plenty of gold bracelets, the petite blonde actress predicted her show wasn't just going to go on to be another "Dynasty." "It's going to go on to be "The Hamptons.' And one day, people working up a new show will say, 'Let's do a "Hamptons,' she said. The mini-series was filmed on location in Manhattan and in Long Island's fashionable Hamptons, "We shot five hours out of sequence," Miss Besch said. All of the Hamptons scenes were done and then the crew packed up and moved to Manhattan for these shots, she said. "I had the great experience of playing my last scene first and my first scene last" "It was 40 degrees and raining when we were in the Hamptons and the kids had to go in the ocean," she laughed, "and then it was 90 degrees in New York and we were sweating all over those beautiful clothes." Miss Besch said it had been seven years since she worked in New York and she loved every minute of it. "There I was shooting on Fifth Avenue, dressed to kill, getting into- a pearl grey limousine," she sighed. "It was fabulous. It satisfied some sort of fantasy ego trip." "The Hamptons" will be the second time Miss Besch has worked with Gloria Monty, the producer of ABC's Emmy winning daytime hit "General Hospital" who is executive producer of the mini-series.
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