ApoluneEyes

On 1/16/2021 at 1:21 PM, dc11786 said:

The incest storyline was included in the source material, Charlene Keel's book "Rituals." The title of that book referred to the rituals related to coming of age and attending college. In the final speech, which use to be on youtube, the rituals which Christina was talking were like life, coming of age, finding love, and dying. One of those rituals at Woodbriar (or whatever the school was called in the book) was sleeping with Judd McBroom, the local drama professor. Judd slept with mother and daughter duo Charlotte and Priscilla Lawson and impregnated both of them. At the end of the book, Priscilla leaves town to have an abortion after learning she's carrying her father's child. 

It's very wild to me that the producers cast Philece Sampler to play Priscilla. I remember seeing early press stills and was excited to see she and Barbara Crampton as adversaries! What's wild is that Philece played a similar incestuous storyline on DAYS. Her character on DAYS, Renee, falls in love with Tony DiMera, but then it's revealed she is his sister. After a long run, it's discovered that Tony was not fathered by Stefano. Even though they had amazing chemistry, it was still weird to have Tony & Renee together, so they killed her off. I find it almost weird that she would agree to play another character involved with incest knowing how distasteful a taboo subject it is. Maybe they weren't going to go down that road in the early TV version? But I do wish they had kept Philece as troublemaker Priscilla as Lacey was dull, dull, dull. 

Glad to see that we're keeping RITUALS alive in 2020! I'm in touch with Philece Sampler who played Lacey on the series. Here's the deal:

Philece was one of the biggest names on daytime in 1983. She had a hugely successful run as the very bitchy, bitter, manipulative, troubled, angry, cunning, sexy Renee DuMonde DiMera Banning Marshall on Days Of Our Lives from 1981-1983. She was Stefano's first daughter and had a great love story with Tony, who at that time turned out not to be Stefano's son. She was killed off the series for ratings (and there was some backstage politics too - no one could be more popular than Deidre!). But in one of her final scenes on the series, "Renee" told off all of Salem at a party she threw at the DiMera mansion. It was riveting television!

Ken Corday, the producer of DAYS, loved Philece so when he was consulting and developing RITUALS he cast her and Barbara Crampton to play the female leads who were to have an adversarial relationship as they fought over the same man, a professor! She was to play Pris (Priscilla Lawson) and in the book, Pris discovers her lover is her biological father! Seems producers liked Philece playing bitches in incestuous relationships! 

The producers felt the pilot and story, true to Charlene's book, were too daytime. They wanted a more Dynasty-type series and shelved the pilot and re-wrote the series which is what we watched in syndication. 

The show was sold to syndicators with the promise of "big daytime names" which is why they kept Philece. Problem is, the character or Lacey was boring and whiny and shrill. Philece doesn't play sweet well, she plays bitchy and conniving to the hilt. That's what her fans (like me) knew of her and what we wanted. We wanted a reincarnated version of Renee DiMera. Instead, we got Lacey. Big mistake.

AW messed up with Philece when she was took over the role of Donna Love. Another bitchy snooty character she would have nailed, but instead they wrote her a victim and way too soft and she ended up alienating viewers and they brought back Anna Stuart. 

Sadly, Philece never worked again in daytime, but has a very successful career as voice-over artist. 

Here's a clip of Philece on the red carpet at the DAYS 50th event (2015) quoting her character's last line, "Renee DiMera is a survivor!" And then she gets murdered a short while later, haha.