OLTL: Mia Korf's Blair

[CSF]

I used to watch One Life to Live back then and I adored Mia Korf as Blair. When they recast her with Kassie DePaiva I was like WTF? I was never really able to accept her as Blair because Blair was half Asian and Kassie isn't even 1/4! It was pretty absurd. I guess you can say Kassie clearly made the role her own, but fans of OLTL (who saw Korf as Blair), I'm sure will always be baffled by this odd recast.

However, my mother still watches One Life (and AMC which she has for over 30 years) and said to me on the phone last week in regard to Clint and Nora looking at Asa's wedding photos. When Nora saw Asa was married to Blair, she says "Blair looked different back then." My mother said to me "She sure did, she was Asian back then." I really don't understand when recasting a role, how you can leave out the most important feature, the character's ethnicity.

No offense to DePaiva on this because it's not her fault, but One Life to Live was always about diversity and social issues with the working class Wolek's and the story of Carla Gray. I feel like OLTL kinda took a step back when they made Blair American with DePaiva because they were no longer going to have a minority actress mainstream. It's also rather ironic because OLTL is an Agnes Nixon creation (even though she hasn't written for the show in over 38 years), and Nixon has always been about diversity, progression and change.

[CSF]

Kassie was PRICELESS in that scene. I really think everyone, not just at OLTL but in all of the daytime industry know that this recast was very unusual.

[DRW50]

I could watch that funeral clip again and again. Why Shelley Burch was not brought back full time as Delilah I don't know.

I think OLTL had already taken a big step backward with the Paul Rauch era of the show; even before then, the introduction of the Buchanans had moved away from the original stories. I guess you could say they really started moving away when they brought George Reinholt and Jacquie Courtney in from AW and the big flashy characters began taking center stage (Dorian, later Marco and Karen). They went back to some diversity in the early 90s but this all went to pot by the time Disney took over and especially when JFP took over.

[Cheap21]

I found a clip of Mia's Blair telling Tina that Cord died:

[DRW50]

She was much better than Karen Witter in that scene.

Then at the end CJ shows up. I never thought he'd completely vanish after the child actors who played CJ and Sarah left with Tina. Usually soap kids return at some point (Sarah has twice, unsuccessfully both times), but not CJ.

[CSF]

That's totally accurate, but do you (or anyone else) think that if there was still an Asian actress playing Blair in a leading role, it would have been harder to phase out the diversity? I know it's hard to speculate but going in to the end of the 1990s, around the JFP reign and when the effects of Disney were starting to come through, internet was a lot more prominent then as opposed to the beginning of the decade when it was basically non-existent.

[SFK]

Yeah, when SOD asked Y&R about it, they pretty much said that the nitty gritty of Keisha's race was "unimportant" because she was to be a stand alone "exotic" character. Not that I've ever known a Keisha who wasn't a sister, but then again, I was surprised when I met a white Tanisha.

Poor Keisha. Went to have a mole removed, and the doctor did routine blood work and discovered she had AIDS.

The funeral scene and Nora's line the other day, those were the little "winks" I was referring to in my original post, I really appreciated those. It's like, if the show can acknowledge that head scratching moment in its history, well I guess I can get over it. I just don't understand how tptb/tiic had the GALL to go there with Kassie in the first place, how did a group of folks sit around a table and convince themselves that it was okay to just change the character's race??

I didn't catch these eps, but apparently in flashbacks they showed Blair's dad, an asian orderly, forcing himself upon Addie, but then when Kassie came on, they redid the flashback with a white actor.

[ReddFoxx]

Nothing will ever top that recast as the craziest one ever in soaps. I doubt any of the soaps would ever do something like that today.

[DRW50]

JFP did what she wanted whether fans were upset or not. She had no use for the non-white characters (aside from Cristian, who was turned into the most generic hunk possible) and they were all downgraded, or completely ruined (Rachel), within the first 6 months of JFP's tenure.

I know this may sound crazy, but I think there would probably have been more resistance to Korf being replaced back in 1993 than now. That was before the big conservative resurgence in the media which has had an awful toll on soaps. That was also back when OLTL was known as a stable, sane soap. Today it's known more as a campfest, where anything goes. I can even see some in the soap press cheering OLTL for a "color-blind" or "daring" move. After reading all the gushing about the rapemance and how the story made Todd human and what a love story and all the rest, I'm not sure if any OLTL stories will face a serious negative reaction in the press. The fans might be another matter, but with Frons at the helm fans are meaningless, unless you love the characters he loves.

[Scotty]

CJ has gone the way of Max and Luna's kids Frank and Leslie, and of Eli, the HIV-positive orphaned boy that Carlotta was considering adopting back about 12 or 13 years ago.......they just disappeared and were never seen or heard from again.

They didn't even mention Frank and Leslie (that I can recall) when Max came back to town for Asa's death during the 10,000th episode back in '07.

And all I can really remember about Eli is how he threw paint or something like that all over Cristian's statue in Angel Square and how much he hated the little runt after that.

As far as CJ is concerned, it still boggles my mind that he hasn't returned to Llanview in all these years, and is rarely even mentioned anymore. But then again........it took them nearly 12 years to bring back the character of Tina (absent from early 1997 until June of 2008).

[SFK]

Bless Kassie, wouldn't imply that she didn't deserve her chance at a career/good money/success, but I can't help but wonder what Korf (or another asian actress) in the role would have done for the show, and daytime as a whole. Korf was not a marginalized ethnic character, I mean, Asa and Max plus Dorian's niece, I don't believe she would have been swept under the rug. But I do wonder if certain people behind the scenes were maybe a little uncomfortable with this woman in the forefront. I don't understand why they would be, but I don't have to convince you all that there are people in this world who can be pretty whack when it comes to race. But imagine if a character who has been so front burner as Blair has had been played by an asian woman for all of these years... if Starr and Jack were played by young actors of mixed asian/caucasian ethnicity, how wonderful would that have been!? It would have been groundbreaking, there's never been such representation in daytime.

[CSF]

I couldn't agree more! Blair is a front burner character and if the role had been recast with another Asian actress of if Korf had returned, it would have been monumental to have such representation. Like you said, if Starr and Jack were played by mixed actors that would have been groundbreaking and an incredible stepping stone for daytime. I'm pretty certain there would have been many people behind the scenes to try and not let things like this surface, but at the same time as Blair's kids would come into creation, I think it would be too late for TPTB to try and prevent mixed Asian/caucasian characters from being front and center without a major uproar, not just from fans, but from vocal organizations who speak out about racial discrimination. For such a step forward, especially in mainstream broadcasting, it would have been so highly praised and publicized in the press. Everyone would be talking about it.

I believe OLTL would have been phenomenal and you also have to take into consideration, how this would affect the other soaps and the ratings. It's often discussed that when GH skyrocketed with it's storylines under Monty and how other soaps emulated it, if other soaps followed suit in such diversity, there is no telling what ratings would be like today. Daytime could finally get the "real" respect it truly deserves.

[DRW50]

This controversy, which supposedly was much more trumped up among CBS executives than among fans, was one of the reasons Nancy Hsueh was fired from Love is a Many Splendored Thing.

[SarahJoyBrownFF]

Please, are you referring to the Anybody But Colored network and White Life to Live. THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT DIVERSITY when it comes to interracial couples, black folks, jewish folks, asian folks, etc. They live in David Duke Daytime.

[SFK]

I forgot all about that, I read about the early days of LIAMST in Waggett's Soap List book.

How the hell did Desilu get away with it??