OLTL: Mia Korf's Blair

[Faulkner]

In a Y&R thread about Jack's son Keemo, I mentioned Korf's Blair on OLTL being one of the few Asian-American characters to have a frontburner storyline on a soap. (And man, was she frontburner! I think SOD named Korf's Blair the "Most Overexposed Character" one year.) But how politically incorrect was it to replace a minority actress with a white one, especially considering how few actors of color are on daytime? What was the reasoning behind OLTL's decision? Hmmm, we have an Asian character played by a half-Asian actress - hmmm, let's recast her with Chelsea off of Guiding Light? WTF? Was there any outrage? If that had happened today, the show would suffer a lot of bad press. Just think if ATWT had recast Jade with a white actress...all hell would have broken loose, and Jade isn't that popular of a character.

My question - does anyone remember the reaction to DePaiva being cast? Was it controversial? Or were people just sort of thinking, "Ah, it's a soap. Crazy things have happened."And what did people think of Mia Korf as Blair? I quite liked her, and ironically, thought she had much more chemistry with James DePaiva, whom Kassie Wesley later married.

Recently, Kassie DePaiva spoke to Nelson Branco about being cast as Blair:

[DRW50]

I think there probably would be less controversy now, just because daytime has become irrelevant to so many people. People may already assume that daytime has little use for anyone who isn't white. At the time, soaps were still diverse.

I'm sure there was some controversy, but since Blair was off the canvas for at least a year, there probably wasn't as much reaction. I'm also not sure how popular the character ever was. She didn't seem to take off until Todd and Blair. If they had recast Jesse with John Wesley Shipp when Darnell Williams left AMC, that would have caused a big backlash.

[marceline]

I'm sure plenty of people thought "WTF?" I know I did. But the internet wasn't the factor it is now and there was also less competition from other sources of entertainment so they thought they could get away with it and I guess they did. Mia Korf's portrayal of Blair turned me into a permanent fan of hers. I've followed her career ever since. I've always thought of her as "real" Blair, to use the ABC parlance.

[Scotty]

I agree...it was 1993, and if the Internet had been a big thing back then, I'm sure there would have been a backlash.

[DRW50]

Mia Korf left the show by her own choice, didn't she? That can also sometimes make the recast face less opposition, at least among those who are in the know.

[Scotty]

Yes, I believe she left on her own and was not forced out or anything. According to Wikipedia, she left to appear in the Broadway play Face Value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia_Korf

[SFK]

Marceline beat me to it, but it was more of a "WTF!?" reaction than anything else. Like, bewilderment that they'd even go there, and surprisingly not much of an uproar at all. But it definitley was brought up in the soap press. I have tried, Lord KNOWS I have tried, but to THIS.DAY. I still have trouble accepting that the two Blairs are one and the same. But I must say that OLTL's later regimes have done a nice job of helping me cope with little comedic winks to the audience about this crazy bit of casting.

I had this discussion on Another Board years ago, and I remember some lady saying that Blair's asian ethnicity was no longer important (!) because she only needed to speak Japanese for the Japan/Jaba City s/l. That's almost like saying that Carla Gray no longer needed to be played by a fair-skinned black woman after the passing s/l was over. Race reaches far beyond plot points, it's a part of who people freaking ARE. And on a purely aesthetic note, I thought Korf, Koffman (then Bonarrigo), and Princi/Strassser looked stunning together, especially raven-haired cousins Blair and Cassie.

A similar not-so-big stink was made when black/latin Wanda Acuna was replaced with wite Italian Jennifer Gatti as Keisha on Y&R.

[miajere]

Even if she left by choice, why wouldn't they find another Blair of Asian ethnicity.. it's as SFK said- her ethnicity no longer "served a purpose".

[Dale]

Count me in as a huge Mia Korf as Blair fan!! I loved the way Blair wormed her way into just about every storyline on OLTL at the time. I will always remember her showdown with Asa when she admitted that she slept with Max on top of the wedding dress that she wore when she married Asa later that same day! ohmy.gif Asa keeled over with a heart attack, and Blair withheld his medication (shades of Aunt Dorian!) A few days later she stole the show when she took the microphone at the town's new year's party and told the sordid tale of how she had come to marry Asa, how badly he treated her and Addie and that she slept with Max on top of her wedding dress. LOVED the stunned reaction of the town folk!!

Now, I loved Kassie Wesley as Chelsie on GL, but when I heard that she was taking over as Blair, I was puzzled. And to say that her first few months in the role was a disaster is an understatement; her over the top hammy performances and her desperation to be "sexy" turned Blair into a bad cartoon. After about six months, Kassie finally started to find her footing and now, I can't imagine anyone else as Blair. Kassie owns the part.

[SFK]

Yeah, at this point one can't deny that Kassie's is OLTL's definitive Blair. She's been there for years now, mostly on the front burner with both Todds. Any original actor can make a lasting impression even if they weren't on nearly as long as their replacement (Dorothy Lyman, Robin Strasser, even Nancy Pinkerton), but what makes this case unique is that it's so damn hard to wrap your brain around the fact that this is the same character. I try to think of it in terms of Elizabeth Ashley and Diahann Carroll both playing the psychiatrist in Agnes of God, or Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt both playing Catwoman. Not a race switch, but i remember scratching my head when sexy, slinky, blonde Laurel was replaced with Felicity LaFortune on AMC.

[SFK]

I just looked up the original Laurel and recognized a familiar name... she's Kristen Jensen, a photog not far from me in CT.

[Cheap21]

this was the biggest WTF recasting in soap history

[DavidEvanSmith]

Mia Korf was DAZZLING as Blair. She was gorgeous, I had the biggest crush a young boy (before he realized he was gay, LOL) could have on a soap actress/character and LOVED that there was an ethnic actress in such a frontburner role. It was nothing I'd ever seen before, and the role of Blair was treated in a very color blind manner while Korf held the role. Korf had that perfect quality of guilt all over her face as her lies and deceptions came back to haunt her, snowballing and compounding. She had that Robin Christopher quality about her.

Blair was FLAMING with Max and the scandalous sex on her wedding dress the day of her wedding to Asa Buchanan was amazing for its time. I also remember her in a blue sequined dress dancing a hot tango with Max for New Years.

Blair left town, and as a hint to the audience that she was returning, they showed a woman packing that same blue sequined dress into a suitcase. It was days of lead-in before they would reveal her face. I remember watching the DAY they revealed her face, because I was DYING for Korf's return, and then it was blond, southern Kassie Wesley and I was like, "Damn! It's not Blair!" and then they started calling her Blair and I was so damn confused. I was ten years old. I felt SO betrayed and didn't understand why they would rob daytime of such a vexing, multi-cultural actress to replace her with this... blond.

But Kassie's Blair grew on me during Max's gambling story. But I still view them as two different characters.

[Darn]

The thing about this is that the actresses looked so much alike! If you didn't know you couldn't really tell.

[Scotty]

OLTL did make a reference to Blair's change of face.....

It is from the November 15th and 16th, 2001 episodes of OLTL when Asa faked his death and all his surviving ex-wives showed up at the church. Watch near the end of the clip when they show a flashback to Asa saying "I do" to each wife, and when it gets to Blair, they show the clip of Phil Carey and Mia Korf. Afterwards, Kassie DePaiva looks into the mirror in her compact and has a "WTF?" kind of expression on her face. It's classic....