Central Park West Discussion Thread

[GSGfan2017]

Um, was Marcy Walker considered for a role on Central Park West?  Marcy played Tangie Hill on the CBS soap Guiding Light in the mid-1990s.

 

Believe it or not, I actually met Mariel Hemingway at a bookstore event in 2007.  She was promoting her book Mariel Hemingway's Healthy Living from the Inside Out.  I wonder if Mariel has ever met Marcy in the flesh.

[GSGfan2017]

Mariel Hemingway left Central Park West after only 13 episodes.  As far as her career was concerned, was it already too late?  

 

Who thinks that Mariel would fare well on a daytime soap opera?

[John]

Mariel would have been a good Liza on AMC

 

Jamie Luner is good but she was no Liza

[Soaplovers]

I heard that mariel quit because the show wanted to downgrade her from lead cast member to recurring.

 

Ironically..the show wad finding its footing when CBS yanked it...and retooled it to a bad version of Dynasty.

[GSGfan2017]

I remember reading an article where Mariel said that TPTB wanted her character on the show to have a new hairstyle and stuff like that.

[dc11786]

Stephanie underwent a rather radical personality shift in the course of the first thirteen episodes. The pilot began with Stephanie as a fish out of water; a West Coast girl in a world of cunning East Coast wolves. Pitted against Madchen Amick's Carrie, Stephanie, nor Hemingway, stood much of a chance. I suspect the powers that be realized this early on which is why they introduced Kylie Travis as Rachel Dennis. Rachel and Carrie's relationship was complicated; they had been friends, Rachel wanted Carrie's JKJ Jr.-esque brother Peter, but they were able to unite against a common enemy, Stephanie. When Stephanie did try to step up her game, she failed. Her scheme to undermine Carrie producing Mark's play blew up in Stephanie's face. In the episodes that CBS didn't air, Stephanie finally played dirty and managed to thwart Rachel's advances at Communique by producing the Fashion Sucks! edition. This version of Stephanie seemed much more capable of playing down and dirty with the likes of Carrie and Rachel. In Stephanie's final scene, she delivers a rather insightful speech about becoming to hard and jaded and chooses Mark and her marriage over her career and manipulation.

 

If Hemingway had stayed, I suspect her role would have been minimized as the show was heading from the internal struggles of Communique to the battle between two media companies. If they had continued, I imagine Stephanie would have remained loyal to Allen, while Carrie would have sided with Brock to anger her (former) stepfather, and Rachel would have played whoever she had to to get ahead. Essentially, Stephanie was replaced by Noelle Beck's Jordan Tate, an editor with a romantic interest in Mark Merrill. If the show had continued, I imagine Jordan would have taken a position at Communique and this would have pitted her against Rachel and Carrie.

 

I don't think Hemingway was hurt by Central Park West. CBS had a rough year. Besides Hemingway, both Patricia Wettig and Mary Tyler Moore intended to leave their roles in new dramas, but both series were cancelled before their characters could be written out.

 

[te.]

It was pretty obvious that CBS did a desperate retooling of the show - apparently Darren Star more or less admitted that he had the rug pulled from under his feet and basically had no control over those last eight episodes where Camille Marchetta took over and turned it into Dynasty.

 

They more or less wrote out several of the younger cast members - Stephanie (though Mariel used her exit option she had with the 13th episode), Peter, Alex (dead), Mark (dead) and even poor Nikki's resolution to her own storyline was cut out of the 14th episode in the US airings (I believe they cut in some Alex / Peter / Robin scenes instead) and she pretty much made a random appearance to have drinks with Carrie and that was it. She was most likely done too.

 

They had already commited to 22 episodes of CPW before it even aired as a way of enticing Darren to leave Fox - though they only produced 21 episodes; I assume one was cut to fund the revamp. Too bad it didn't work out and didn't get to see what Darren had planned originally (apparently the divorce trial between Allen / Linda was going to be a huge spectacle and not the wet fart it ended up being)

Edited August 16, 2017 by te.

[j swift]

Since we were discussing it in the Knots thread, I thought I would redirect the topic here.

Looking back, it was odd that Darren Star cast Mariel Hemingway, got her to host SNL, and dressed her in S1 Tom Ford for Gucci and then created a character who was completely blind to the motives of those around her.  I don't care if her character was supposed to have moved from the Pacific Northwest or Mars, if she couldn't detect what was happening with her husband and her editor right under her nose then she was dense about a lot more than this season's trends.

As for the rest of the cast; Lauren Hutton has never acted in a role that I've found to be charismatic or interesting, she was always pretty good on talk shows, but she could not embody a character.  Gerald McRaney was built for primetime soaps because his masculinity was so over the top, I would say the same for Ron Liebman who was both geographically correct and his ability to play smarmy always left me wanting more. 

As for Raquel Welch it was the wrong casting for the times.  Look at the fashions of the early 90s, they were all referencing a time when Welch was a star, then look at the hats and suits they put her in to look like a poor man's Alexis from Dynasty.  It just wasn't the right fit for the period and it made the show look unsophisticated.  We wanted a peek into the lives of Manhattan elites, not busty broads and ballsy retorts.

But, reading the wiki, it was also a tumultuous time at CBS, and they may have been more patient if they were less worried about affiliates.

Edited February 21, 2022 by j swift

[Sapounopera]

They should have cast someone younger and more sympathetic for Stephanie's part. Same goes for the husband.
Maedchen Amick was perfect and so was John Barrowman.

The idea of Lauren Hutton as the mother sounds interesting, but they needed a more charismatic actress for their Jackie O meets Sue Ellen hybrid.

Kylie Travis should have been there from the start and a more vibrant actress for Nikki might have helped. 

I hated the first opening and the second one screamed 80's mini series shot in Italy.

The reboot cheapened the show.

The original idea was Sex and the City as a real soap opera and it could have been amazing.

[Forever8]

So, instead of Lauren Hutton who you would've cast as Linda? 

[Sapounopera]

I adore Lauren Hutton and I would keep her as another character. Perhaps the gallerist who is also Allen's mistress. In my mind Linda should have been brunette, stylish and sophisticated. Not necessary a super star. Perhaps a daytime actress or someone famous from the 80s. As I said, the idea is Jackie O meets Sue Ellen, no real casting ideas though. 

[Khan]

As much as I hate to admit it - because, Lord knows, if she'd been cast, she would've been a nightmare to work with - I would have cast Cybill Shepherd.

[Soaplovers]

Cybill would have been good.

Problem was that CBS skewed older, and they would have gone for this had it been at 9 PM instead of 8 PM...plus had a better mix of older and younger characters.

The Linda/Allen/Nikki story was actually the strongest story and most realistic.  Older man/younger woman, loveless marriage between older man/older woman, etc.

I think the Stephanie/Mark characters were the problem.

I also think Gerald Mcraney was a good hire..and he and Lauren Hutton had a good rapport.

[Huntress]

I liked both incarnations of CPW – however, the show's biggest problem was that they tried to jump into "juicy" storylines way too fast. They didn't really flesh out everyone's background stories.

Also, the show lacked any shocking, "Oh my God, they didn't" moments. Everything that was supposed to be "shocking" had been foreshadowed for at least a couple of episodes.

For a show targeted at a younger audience, it was also quite dialogue-heavy, gloomy and very static. That's not bad per se, but it reminded me of a daytime soap, just with better production values.

It also lacked characters the audience can root for as everyone is a selfish bitch. Even the supposed "good" characters like Peter, Linda, and Nikki just cared about their own well-being. Stephanie sat on a high horse, but in reality, she was just as rotten as Carrie and Rachel. Regarding Carrie, we didn't even know why she was so evil. Was she just doing it for fun or because she was bored?

Ironically, the episodes that were initially not broadcast in the US (episodes 10 to 13) where the best in the whole series. There was slick dialogue, some heated confrontations, and some of the characters showed new character traits.

The "reboot" had a rough start, but Gerald McRaney and Noelle Beck were good additions to the cast. Raquel Welch was problematic, though. She simply annoyed me, especially the way she spoke with that faux-seductive voice all the time.

The writing in the B plots (Peter/Alex & Carrie/Mark) felt very controversial to me and also quite rushed. In season 1, Peter and Alex are a happy couple, then Peter sleeps with Nikki and acts nonchalant about it when Alex confronts him. Of course, she is hurt and breaks up with him, only to blackmail him into marriage with a faked pregnancy – but in the reboot, the show wants to make us believe that Peter has always been the good guy in this scenario and Alex is the crazy bitch. No, Peter was initially responsible for Alex' downward spiral because he broke her heart.

It was the same with Carrie and Mark. In the beginning, Carrie was obsessed with Mark and she forcefully wanted to destroy his marriage with Stephanie. When she got bored of him, she ditched him in the cruelest way. When he returned in the reboot, he was suddenly portrayed as the bad guy and Carrie acts as if she had a clean slate, even warning other people of him. No honey, you were responsible for him going crazy and you got a taste of your own medicine. The whole storyline was a bad attempt of turning the meanest bitch into a victim.

[Khan]

Another reason why (referring to what I wrote in the 90210 thread) I think it would have been a good idea to bring in Michael Filerman and/or David Jacobs to help Darren Star at least initially w/ CPW.  They understood better how to pace so that viewers got to know the characters before thrusting them into heavy-duty stories.