FrenchBug82

I am excited to hear how RG talks of her experience on Loving. Have not heard her talk about it before.

I wish soaps would learn indeed that it is a more compelling story to see a real layered likeable human falling in love and competing for half of supercouple than whatever caricatures of evil vs supercouple-we-are-supposed-to-root-for writers go for 90% of the time. I hate that they think the audience is so simple-minded that we can't deal with anything other than the spoilers being evil, crazy or unlikeable (including turning established characters into this when needed) and would not accept "It is complicated" as a story.

That's very true. That's why I give Tamara Tunie allowance for her refusal to talk about the show, despite my frustration about it. I get it. BUT being in the public eye means faking it to an extent. How many movies have sets where everybody hates each other, bad things happen left and right and it is dysfunctional and awful? Probably a huge proportion. How many actors refuse to promote the movie for that reason or spend their PR tour talking about how much they hated it? How many even discuss bad experiences even years later? Very few and when it happens it is generally for movies thar are masterpieces and get BTS documentaries made. It should be the same for soaps. Even if you weren't happy there, there are easy ways for someone who became more famous later to give a saccharine content-free answer about how grateful you are for the opportunity and the fans you made along the way. And then next question. When someone like Meg Ryan refused to even entertain questions it was because she was ashamed of that work and as a soap fan, I am offended.

I don't think their careers quite track.With all due respect to Lucci who was great in her own way, McKinsey was a spectacular - read: better - actress. But while she had some mainstream fame on Another World, I don't think many people would ever know her name - unlike Lucci who had the drive and smarts to make herself known in many ways. McK was huge within the industry - probably proportionally bigger in her time than Lucci ever was, if only because the industry was different when she peaked - but Lucci is more traditionally famous.

I am not going to turn this into a bash-Wright post because I really don't have a personal investment in it, but the last interview I posted of her a few days ago did shock me in terms of open hatred for the show and disrespect for the fans. To get back to ATWT though, Moore has always shown appreciation. When she was "big", Meg Ryan used to ban questions about it altogether although I don't know if that's still the case.

Well to be fair, some of the things, as documented recently on the SB thread, Wright said about her time on SB were pretty cross-the-line horrible. Moore never spoke of it that way. Softening with time is good and I take it but there is a reason for which the bar is higher for Wright.

Yeah I never took her discomfort with her own work at having anything to do with the show. She speaks openly and warmly of her time on ATWT - get Meg Ryan to talk about hers and see what she says in comparison. But she is, like so many actors/resses, self-conscious, tough on herself. And even if we liked her work then, she has obviously grown as a woman and actress. Meryl Streep once said in an interview that she cringes when watching herself in "French Lieutenant's Woman". I mean even the most talented of performers are tough on themselves!

It is my understanding. And they didn't tell her so she was pissed because she thought they had a proper story for her AND she didn't think putting Cliff/Nina back together was fair to the character evolution they had tried to play. I don't know if she feels that way but while I can understand that logic at the time, giving fans closure that way was probably the right thing to do even if it wasn't great writing.

The host is a "huge daytime fan" but she doesn't know there are still four on the air every day? Urgh. This is why daytime soaps can't win.

As I said earlier, she was pissed she wasn't *asked* but that doesn't mean she wanted to do it. I don't think she would have - and certainly not for the long-term tenure that Jill Larson ended up doing.

I sort of understand why she would have looked at the role of Drucilla as written when she came in with suspicion but I'd be counterintuitive and argue that Drucilla ended up being the much better stereotype breaker. Specifically because she succeeded at making something of herself while still speaking and carrying herself as a proud black woman. Not that Olivia wasn't proud - and I miss her and the Winters clan - but her character could be read as code-switching to succeed. Drucilla was unapologetically who she was and she did fantastic with herself, breaking a lot more stereotypes in the process. That's a bit of the parallel between the DS vs CK debate for Lilly.

It could even be that she would have declined anyway but simply wanted the "courtesy" of first refusal. Actors are weird sometimes.

But it is my understand she was really pissed they didn't ask her first when they brought Opal back and went straight to recast instead. That was long after of course but the story of why they did that if she was open to returning is an open question.

Dack Rambo's history of losing jobs abruptly is quite a thing to behold (setting aside Another World which is rather sad since it was linked to his AIDS-related decline). I have always wondered to which extent it was his homosexuality and to which extent he may have been a problem behind-the-scenes for a reason or another.

That's why I said "reasonable" success LOL I am well-aware there isn't a gazillion dollars on the table for it. And that's why my pitch included a lot of things on top of the archives - including content surrounding the current shows. I am not deluded all this would happen but if I had Bill Gates money, I'd create that foundation

I sometimes wonder if it is a case of them genuinely believing the metrics or them knowing the metrics are flawed but since the metrics are what advertising rates are based on, it doesn't matter to them. They are probably aware that a LOT more people watch soaps - on various platforms - than what official ratings show but since the shows are only worth it for them if they get ad money from them, it is irrelevant to them. And I get it; I mean it is a business and they need to get revenue. But they are leaving SO much money on the table by taking the metrics at face value: CBS or PG could put all their years of archives online, the new shows as they air, special featurettes or extra online-only scenes, charge a reasonable Netflix-style fee for accesss to it all and I bet it would be a reasonable success.

I was not referring to these early years at all. It is my personal opinion that these later years where he got too broad is when Tuc started phoning it in. Maybe because the writing of David as a buffoon displeased him. But I don't think in the last few years he was making the same kind of effort he made early on - as you describe - to balance the comedic with the serious. He is talented and David was a great creation, that's not the point I am making. On the contrary that is because he is talented and David was a great creation that the later years sting.

That confirms Chris' theory (particularly the one extra week equals one extra month on the contract) but there is a contradiction in the article. If her contract ended in 1987 then it was a three year contract, not a two year contract. Other than that, the math matches perfectly.

And admittedly the bad blood from what happened with her then-boyfriend (whatever that might have been) may have made her extra salty as she was being interviewed when those wounds were still fresh (and as she was probably also pissed that the show had muscled an extension out of her if she wanted to do TPB). I think her quotes are pretty awful, even taking into consideration her youth and her bitter battles with TPTB, but I appreciate that while she still doesn't pretend SB was a great experience for her, she has mellowed and talks about it diplomatically enough to give comfort to fans of the show. That's all we can ask of them, really.

The article I link to above has just this line "Dane has been replaced in the show after some disagreements with the producers" Of course "disagreements" does a lot of work here and could mean a lot, particularly coming from Dane's then-girlfriend.

Alan probably did. "Oh no, something remotely controversial might be said!"

Your theory definitely makes a LOT more sense. Three years is definitely more standard for a contract for one, and on the flip side a one-year extension - or rather eight more months extra aka two months of extra SB for one month gone - seems reasonable enough. Because I am a suspicious Suzy by nature I wonder if there isn't a personal reason for her to fudge the dates and obligations in her contract for reasons unknown to us (maybe because of her relation with Dane Witherspoon) rather than simply "forgetting" but it is true that, OMG, all these events are thirty-freakin'-five years old so she could just be confused. UPDATE: So I did some digging and in an article published in 1986 she says that she has a three-year contract that ends in Summer 1987. http://santabarbara-online.com/articleRWright-DWitherspoon2.htm UPDATE 2: I also found this 1987 Interview from a magazine called Interview and while it wasn't a secret she wasn't happy and she wasn't hiding it, there are still pretty uncool things to say, especially while still on the show: “People who never see soaps—those with nine-to-five jobs—well, they ain’t missing a damn thing. I tell you, being on a soap is the hardest work, and it gets so old. Get on your mark, get in the light, don’t turn too far upstage—that’s all it is. It’s melodrama, it’s suck, it’s puke, it’s ughhhhh. Plus, you have to memorize 40 pages of script a night. Right now I’m really champing at the bit to leave, to do another movie, so that I can act again. In nine months my contract is up—I’ll be a free bird. Free to go to a place that’s been calling me for a long time—Brazil. It’s the center of the world, you know, a spiritual center. It’s where all the gurus are—the healers. After three years on a soap, I could use one.” Yikes.

Yeah American network executives have not believed in daytime soaps as a genre for twenty years. I think their beliefs about why the genre has declined here are very offbase: in other countries like the UK or NZ or France (France didn't have ANY daytime soap fifteen years ago and now has four) soaps are doing very well and it is not like things like the Internet or attention span of viewers is different there from here. The differences are in tones and in content (a lot more socially progressive in any of these shows) and what time of the day they air - all of them air in late afternoon, early evening over there. But I think the contempt of Hollywood for soaps means it is unlikely they will take a chance at trying to revive the genre barring an executive who has a personal interest in it.

So many culprits there. -The writers first and foremost who fail to understand that a character that can be funny DOES not have to be merely comic relief, particularly when it has a layered relationships with many characters, a lot of history and a good actor. - Tuc Watkins who, I am sorry to say, just phoned it in and let the camp take over even though he can act. He clearly was written as a buffoon but there was stuff he could have played understated and he chose to amp it up instead. Was he over it and just cashing the check? - Robin Strasser who is a fantastic dramatic actress but who cannot do comedy. As her stints on Passions and Days showed, she just thinks comedy is over-the-top and broad. And since they were written as a twofer, TW kept up with her instead of, again, trying to rein it in since David should not have been the "straight man" (comedy terminology obviously, not the other kind) in that dynamic. But when you have camp interacting with camp, you end up with the disaster of these last few years. - And finally the soap press. Boy did they love the "shenanigans". But in the small world of NY soaps and publishing I bet a lot of that was about personal friendships. And instead of calling them out, it encouraged them to think the audience loved it A shame really. I hated the retcon of Bo as his father but if they were going to go there, so much more could have been, considering what had happened between David and that family, rather than turn it into an odd couple comedy show.

It is one of those small things that show how deeply conservative (not in a political sense) American soaps are, as we had discussed earlier around gay relationships. Part of it is because its audience is probably more conservative than the US at large or that their similar counterparts abroad where the demographic discrepancy isn't as pronounced. But as always with these things, there is a bit of chicken and egg dilemna: American soaps get a somewhat conservative flavor on social issues (from marriage being the goal to discomfort with gay sexuality to women with abortion being "punished" in some way to the dreadful way race topics and people of color are tackled in soaps) because their audience is somewhat more conservative. But as the audience shrinks, its audience becomes more and more reliant on those conservative viewers because they are eskewing more modern stories that could attract different audience and new generations. And the more their remaining audience relies on them, the more they have to stick to those stories and the less attractive to any potential audience they become. It is a self-fulfilling spiral of decline. I have always said there is plenty of room for a show that would intentionally take the risk to break out of the pack and be bold and push the envelope on social issues and commentary.