Santa Barbara Discussion Thread

[Jdee43]

No doubt Robin Wright's feelings for the show are also clouded by her meeting one of her ex-husbands on it, who the show also didn't treat well.

Santa Barbara was the only show where A and Marcy were truly "the stars." I'm sure they regret its cancelation. Not sure they could have done anything to prevent that though; had they stayed, the show probably would have been canceled anyway, right?

Edited August 15, 2024 by Jdee43

[Khan]

I think so.  By the time the lawsuits were settled and the Dobsons were allowed back onto the set, I think cancellation was all but guaranteed, despite Bridget's insistence that they would need two years to get the show back into shape.

[chrisml]

The contracts are never there to protect the actor. That's why the Beverlee McKinsey situation was so shocking for the execs. I can also see it would be a logistical nightmare to manage people's time off to make movies while producing a soap opera. This is especially true on something like SB where the same family dominated the show until Long came along.  Plus, it's not as if Wright did much for a few years after she left the show. She was known primarily as Sean Penn's girlfriend then wife. 

[Carlos Abad]

Robin Wright was pregnant in 1991 and 1993. That’s the reason why she didn’t do very much.

She had to turned down a lot of big and commercial movies like Robin Hood, Jurassic Park, The Firm and many more due to her pregnancies.

But she managed to do State of Grace (1990), The Playboys (1992), Toys (1992) and Forrest Gump (1994), her biggest movie, in all these years.

Edited August 16, 2024 by Carlos Abad

[Jdee43]

Watching episodes from late January 1985, I've come to appreciate Stephen Meadows. It's too bad that they screwed up his character from the very beginning, giving his background as high school teacher, then having him be a cooperate exec, then revealing he had been a male prostitute, then turning him into a jealous bad guy willing to resort to murder, then a hospital patient for a couple of months, and finally a serial killer. He didn't mean to be a serial killer; it was all caused by a brain aneurysm he got as a result of injuring himself while trying to kill Joe

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At least the show gave him the chance to go out in a blaze of glory, and he rose up to the challenge. But again it's too bad they couldn't give him a decent long term character, he was good.

[Keri]

I agree about Meadows, just rewatched some of that, and had the same thought.

 

[MarcyWalkerFan]

So apparently, since the 40th year reunion was such a grand success the team have announced that they will have another "major" event in 2025 (31st July/ 2nd August tentatively) at a bigger venue.

Guess they were pleasantly surprised by all the outpouring of love & how much SB is still admired by its loyal fans (Lane mentioned in his Facebook post), what with so many international fans travelling  from France/ Belgium/ Germany even Norway for this event not to mention the many domestic fans from various states.

[dc11786]

I think that type (the slightly ambitious morally corrupt male) was ever evolving on Santa Barbara. In some ways, I think that Jack Lee replaces that archetype later followed by Kirk Cranston and eventually Keith Timmons. Granted, each of those characters had different shadings to them I feel they are sorta similar, though I'd be open to discussion on why I am wrong lol

Someone who once worked in the industry suggested that Mr. Bottoms' name was innuendo, which given the twisted sense of humor that Dobsons had I wouldn't be surprised. 

In the Bible, Ted was a more morose character and it was proposed that he would have an affair with his teacher (I am not sure if she was named or not) with the suggestion that Ted's interest in the teacher was a bit of an Oedipus complex due to the death of Sophia, as I don't think the original plan was for Sophia to come back from the dead. 

This is how I feel about the subject. She didn't have to take the role. She made a choice. Twenty years later, an actress her age would have been signed automatically to a four year contract on a soap. 

Additionally, I feel more sorry for her colleagues (especially her romantic interests) who's stories may have stalled because she was off filming. 

[Liberty City]

No one's storylines stalled to my recollection, though. They wrote around the exit(s) and shifted things, as I am sure they had time to know when she'd be off to plan ahead.

[Carlos Abad]

These last weeks we have been talking here about Robin Wright negative attitude towards Santa Barbara.

In one of the SB facebook groups they have posted a long article where Robin Wright talks about the show during the years.

After reading the page, this is what I think about robin wright disliking some parts of the show.

 1.       THE FIRING OF DANE WHITHERSPOON. According to this post she said in 1985:

“However, Robin’s most frustrating moment came with the firing of Dane Witherspoon and the dissolution of the Kelly/Joe storyline. “I was told that the Kelly/Joe/Peter storyline was the hottest thing going, then they killed them both off and left me stranded to mourn for weeks,”

Witherspoon’s departure was particularly difficult. “Oh God, that was death,” Robin moans, admitting that working with replacement Mark Arnold “was terrible for the first two months because I was real good friends with the original one and I still am. But I was being real close-minded about it, too, and people got on my case.”

Although NBC spokespersons say Joe was killed off because Arnold didn’t want to renew his contract, Robin has her own theory. “I think Dane was the biggest loss on the show, and the Dobsons knew it; that’s why they got rid of the character”.

 

2.       SHE DIDN’T LIKE THE CHARACTER OF KELLY AND MOST OF HER STORYLINES.

The article says:

But right now, Robin Wright is disappointed and frustrated with Kelly’s story because she was looking forward a more adult and stronger role, but her most recent storyline with David Haskell, who plays Nick Hartley, had her lose her memory and revert to a childlike, dependent state.

She hopes that changes very soon because Wright wants to play a strong and confident young woman character who doesn’t need a man to rescue her.

 In another interview from 1986:

Robin Wright is not a fan of her story with Page Mosely. She says: “The dumbest thing that Kelly did was sleep with Nick’s brother, Dylan. She obviously didn’t think of what the outcome would be. Kelly has done plenty of other dumb things. She’d better wise up!”

 In another interview of 1986:

Robin Wright said she’s very disappointed that they transformed Kelly Capwell into a confused, naive little schoolgirl. “The change in Kelly really upset me,” admits Robin. “She turned into a real baby. For a while there she couldn’t make up her mind about anything. She went back and forth between Dylan and Nick like a ping-pong ball! It was pretty frustrating for me as an actress.”

“I’m nothing like that,” she continues. “I like to get to the point of things-make decisions right away. It took Kelly months to get Dylan out of her life and out of her system. I would have done it in a matter of days.”

 3.       SHE DISLIKES THE SHOW BECAUSE SHE COULDN’T DO SOME BIG MOVIES SHE WAS OFFERED

The article says:

Robin Wright also explains that, if she has any reason to be unhappy about her long-term commitment to the soap opera, it’s because it’s clipped her wings. No time for travel and she misses it a lot. Also, she’s not able to do other works. She says: “I’ve turned down two movies and two commercials in the past year. I couldn’t take them because I’m always working.”

One of them is the movie ‘Weird Science’. The casting director of the film Jackie Burch revealed that Kelly LeBrock was not the first choice for the character of Lisa. Robin Wright was cast but they lost her because she was working on ‘Santa Barbara’.

 Also this is from an interview in 1992:

She said: “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 three movies, so every extra week extended approximately a month or two onto my contract. I could have walked, but I would have had to have paid [in legal fees] three times the amount I made on that show in the whole two years.”

She feels a little sad because she couldn’t take the leading roles of some movies she really loves like ‘Weird Science’ or ‘Dirty Dancing’.

 4.       SHE DIDN’T LIKE THE HARD SCHEDULE

In 2022 robin wright said:

“On Santa Barbara, we were sometimes doing 18-hour days, and it was an hour-plus drive home, so I often just slept in my dressing room at NBC Studios. You had to manage your time, your sanity, and your immune system. But what I really learned was the technical side of performing. We worked with three cameras at all times. How do you not only remember your lines but also when you need to turn a bit to the left to favor camera one or at which line you need to face camera three. At that age, I was also working with older, experienced actors and watching and learning from them.”

 

 Well, sorry for this long message. But I really like reading all of this.

As a fan I adore Robin Wright, Santa Barbara and her Kelly Capwell role. But I understand her perspective as an actress and how frustrating could be some of these things for her especially because she was a 18-22 years old beginning her career.

If you want to read the full page it’s here: https://robinwright.org.es/santabarbara/

[Keri]

Never mind 

Edited August 19, 2024 by Keri

[dc11786]

It's interesting that Robin Wright was upset about the change in Kelly because it's made pretty clear in the Bible for the show that Kelly is a neurotic who had severe psychological issues that C.C. was working hard to keep underwraps. After Joe had been sent to prison, Kelly was found hovering in the corner of the room semi catatonic. I am curious if this wasn't mentioned in the casting breakdown or if Wright just assumed that she could put her own mark on the character, which is fair since the character of Ted underwent major changes with Todd McKee in the role. Or maybe the Dobsons planned Kelly's psychological issues to be a surprise. Either way, the intention was always to make Kelly disturbed.  

[DRW50]

This seems to be a better quality copy of Bar Girls, Marcy Walker's 1990 pilot, than what was already on Youtube.

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[j swift]

Can someone give me the TL:DR version of Bar Girls?  Are they lawyers or bartenders (or both)?  Because it is hard to believe that title made it past the first draft.

Edited August 20, 2024 by j swift

[Efulton]

Didn't the Dobson's write out both Nick Hartley (David Haskell) and Dylan Hartley (Page Mosely) to create a story for Kelly's temporary exit?