Santa Barbara Discussion Thread

[amybrickwallace]

I'm not sure, but I believe she and Dane Witherspoon (OG Joe Perkins) split up during that time.

[Chris 2]

I wonder if she’s forgetting some details. It has been over 30 years after all.  Santa Barbara premiered in the summer of 1984. The Princess Bride was filmed for four months in late 1986 and released in 1987. So if she originally had a two year contract, it would have been up before filming for the movie started. My guess is that she had a three year contract (more standard for a newbie anyway), and they agreed to let her out to film the movie in exchange for a one-year contract extension. That takes you to June 1988, when she left. And she was off for four months filming the movie, so they really got another eight months from her, as opposed to 12.

 

A theory, anyway.

[FrenchBug82]

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.

Edited February 18, 2021 by FrenchBug82

[pdm1974]

Did we ever find out the whole story about why the Dobsons got rid of Dane Witherspoon? If you watch the pilot, Joe is definitely of the show. 

[AbcNbc247]

Damn. What was her problem?

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[FrenchBug82]

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.

[Vee]

She was young.

[FrenchBug82]

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.

[Carlos Abad]

I also have found this on a article about 'The Princess Bride'

 

‘The Princess Bride’ required a 4 month shooting schedule on location throughout England and Ireland. And the time of filming the movie, Robin Wright was playing Kelly Capwell, one of the heroines of soap opera ‘Santa Barbara’. In exchange for allowing her time off to film the movie, they required her to extend her contract by almost a year. Robin wanted to leave the soap in July 1987, but then she was chained until June 1988.

“That wasn’t a fair trade,” Robin said, “but it was worth it. My agents and managers decided that I should agree to anything, to work Saturdays, to kiss their butts for the next nine months, whatever it took to get out and do the film.”

Years later, in 1992, Robin also talked about this. She explained: “I had a clause in my two-year TV contract that let me out for four weeks once a year to do films. But no film gets shot in four weeks and I did 3 movies, so every extra week extended approximately a month or two onto my contract. 

 

In December 2015, Cary Elwes also addressed this subject: “I consider Robin a very dear friend. Everyone knows what an extraordinary talent she is, so we were lucky to get her on the film. She was doing ‘Santa Barbara’ at the time, and they wouldn’t let her out of the contract so Norman Lear, our producer, and Rob Reiner worked very hard to get them to release her.”

[FrenchBug82]

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.

[Carlos Abad]

Yes, I know. Probably she's wrong. In that video she also says something like they killed off Kelly Capwell and that's not right. 

[amybrickwallace]

It's hard to believe that she was just 18 at the beginning of SB. I know someone who was acquainted with Robin years ago, and she said Robin was one of those people who loved to be unhappy and thrived on it. 

[DRW50]

Was this a strike story?

 

Santa Barbara - Soap Opera Commercial - Murder Mystery Bones (1988) - YouTube

[amybrickwallace]

 

I believe it was.

[DRW50]

 

Thanks. What did you think of the story?

 

I forgot Pearl was still on by then. I guess he vanished not long after.