Y&R: Interview with Tonya Lee Williams

[Mr. Brightside]

Hey guys, so I got the chance to interview Tonya Lee Williams the other week. We discussed her upcoming role on CBC's "The Border". Daytime wise, she talks about what it would take to launch a successful soap in Canada and I also got her take on the reasoning behind stunt storylines on Y&R.

I hope you guys enjoy it. My blog at Dose.ca has the full interview (which covers the soap portion) here. While Canada.com has the 'Border' focus here.

Here's an excerpt regarding the Y&R stuff:

[ian]

She's marvelous and trying to see the good but she's giving TPTB too much credit, but I guess she doesn't want to send Olivia over the cliff either

[DRW50]

I know she's just trying to keep her job, so this isn't a criticism of her.

The excuse which is often used for bad pacing on soaps is that the audience just can't handle longer stories. I have always had a hard time believing this. The idea is often that soap fans are now too stupid to understand anything so let's just throw out everything as fast as we can. I think this is just laziness from the people in charge.

Y&R relies on shock value but even worse than shock value is they do not care about playing any beats. So we get months and months of absolutely nothing with Ashley other than Adam terrorizing her and Ashley acting crazy.

Or we get Phillip's return, where the entire story was rushed through in two weeks and now he hangs around doing nothing. That isn't the audience's fault. They didn't ever expect him to be brought back and have it treated as a nonevent.

And there are other sick parts of the Ashley story which have nothing to do with demanding fans, like Ashley repeatedly being examined by a man who molests his patients.

[ian]

This is true. I've always thought part of the fun of soaps is keeping up with the characters, keeping everything straight, and usually having INTRIGUE. I think if anything the onus is on the shows themselves to put updates and summaries and history on their WEBSITES (I miss ABC's yearly summaries from the beginning of OLTL and AMC. I read them completely before starting to watch the show) Luckily with Wikipedia and Google searches you can find what you're looking for, but who's that invested anymore? I do like that Sony's site (wow I remember when that was soapcity... long time ago that was!) has the Y&R summaries from 1973.

At least on the ABC pages they used to have a thing where it tells you what's going on with just the background on the stories.

It's nobody's fault but their own new people aren't watching soaps cause of the popular misconceptions about Daytime and what connotations "Soaps" have begun to take on, and them not making it easy for new people to get into it. To the networks: You have the internet, put it to good use and promote your shows the way u should.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Pretty much.

[sheilaforever]

I would call her a class act.

[Greg's GL]

"... It's drama at it's fittest ..."?!?!?!

I don't want to repeat anything Carl has already said (quite well), but I would have a hard time believing that any true soap fan wants a story to happen in a WEEK.

Y&R's pacing is soooo off - either very rushed (like Devon/Tyra, the Deacon mess) or way too slow (the gaslighting). Can't they find a happy medium? If the writers had any talent whatsoever, they would be able to play out a story within a few months, play the beats and get people invested in the story. No one is going to care when you have a character like Amber threatened AND raped in one day by some guy that just showed up in town a week ago.

The stories don't have to unfold over 12 - 24 months like they were in 1990. A talented writer should be able to tell a story in half that time and tell it in a way that their existing viewers like AND attract new ones. It can't be that difficult. But then again, maybe it is cuz no one in the industry now knows how to do that.

[Sylph]

That would be disastrous and completely wrong!

Sucking up to your boss, this blatantly, is not being a class act!

She could have done it differently and she could have insinuated to a few things much, much better.

[DRW50]

I don't know if the black actors on the show are in that position, or at least she may not be. She hasn't worked on the show in months. She may also know that Nia Peeples and Kristoff St. John already blasted the show. If she made a peep, we probably would have had Adam turn Olivia into lunch meat.

[DeeeDee]

Yep.

[Sylph]

That's true. But this :

It's too much. There are way to congratulate your boss and then there's exaggeration. Un-needed.

[DRW50]

MAB might write that out on cards and actors can recite it if they don't have anything better to say.

She should have talked about how she admires MAB's commitment to bringing art to daytime.