I was looking through a few old Digests, and one from 1987 mentioned Krista Tesreau and Vincent Irizarry being on an ABC show called Circus that had been picked up, which meant Krista would be leaving GL. That never aired, and Krista didn't leave until a few years later. What happened?

One from 1991 talked about how Kimberly Simms leaving was officially claimed to be based on her wanting to go, but actually they pushed her out because she was taking too long to make up her mind about staying. That sounds like the JFP of that era. While that can work out in some cases, it led to some horrible Mindy recasts, and a weakening of the show at a time when there were already so many new faces.

Tina Sloan interview from the June 20, 2000 Weekly (Primedia). Some of the text went blurry so I cropped that and will type up the last page.

so many commercials they used to call and ask for a 'Tina Sloan type,'" she says. "I made so much money, I'd pay the rent for my poorer actor friends." In the '70s she spent two years on Somerset as Kate Thornton Cannell, a year on Search for Tomorrow (as Patti Whiting), followed by Another World (as Olivia Delaney) in 1980. In 1983 she received a phone call from GL producer Gail Kobe and was offered the part of Lillian Raines, a nurse in the throes of a violently abusive relationship. "She said she was giving me the part without an audition because she knew me from Somerset," Sloan says, "and that they needed a strong woman to play a weak one; otherwise it wouldn't be interesting. It was only supposed to last for six months and it has been 17 years now, for which I'm very grateful."

From the beginning Lillian's fortunes were tightly bound to her daughter, Beth, who was raped by her stepfather, Lillian's battering husband. Sloan is both quick and eager to point out that the antecedents for the continuing bond between Beth and Phillip lie in this original story. "Phillip was the one who helped Beth through the incest," Sloan explains. "She confided in him, and he took her away. Those two would have done everything for each other. Then new head writers came along, had her meet someone else and not want him anymore. That would never have happened, and that's the way I still play it; like Harley is a total joke. I act like she doesn't exist."

Instead of being written out, Lillian was eventually given her own story involving breast cancer. "She had a lumpectomy," Sloan says, "and I painted a scar on my breast and left it on all the time, so I'd know what it was like. Lillian was very secretive about it, and wouldn't tell Beth. She said, 'I can't deal with her upset. I have to deal with it myself.' I thought that was the best line." Ironically, during the six months it took the story to play out Sloan herself developed a lump. It was benign, but she didn't tell anyone, either. "I didn't tell my husband and I didn't tell my son," she confesses, quietly. "And once I found out I was fine, I still didn't say anything." Also intriguing was a connection she made, in the course of her research, between her character's history and real-life case studies. "Abused women often develop breast cancer," she says. "I read that, and I also observed it among people I knew. It's not across the board, of course, but these women do tend to be very kind, giving people. I got letters from women saying, 'I didn't have time to cry for myself. I was too worried about my children and my family.' As far as I was concerned, that said it all."

That storyline led to yet another - a love affair with Ed Bauer, a married doctor she worked with at the hospital. Such a tale should have kept her in focus for some time. Instead, in a masterpiece of miscalculation, it resulted in her banishment to storyline limbo, where she has pretty much been ever since. "Lillian had always been in love with Ed," Sloan says. "He knew about the abuse, and he was the only one she confided in about the breast cancer. I think he slept with her because he felt sorry for her. She, of course, was happy for the first time in years." But when the writers killed Ed's wife in a car crash, audience response was so negative that the whole affair was shelved. "They didn't expect such a reaction," Sloan muses. "People were furious at Lillian, though Ed was involved in it, too. They blamed her, not him. That kind of thing gets me crazy. It was too bad. I wouldn't even had minded Lillian becoming a bad person at this point. It might have been fun. Instead, I was back-burnered."

Never one to cry over spilt milk, anyway, much of Sloan's attention was already occupied elsewhere. In 1980, at age 37, she had given birth to her first and only child, Renny, who recently completed his freshman year at Harvard. "It's the best thing I ever did," she says, grinning broadly. "I loved having a boy, and I've loved all his girlfriends, too. One of them I e-mail every now and then, just because I miss her. I go up to Boston, take him and his friends out to dinner, and have loads of fun. He's very closemouthed, and not all of them know what I do. So when several of them went to see Celebrity, which I was in, they went, 'Hey, Renny! There's your mom!' If I had a child at 20 or 25, dear god, the poor child! Because I had all my issues to work through. But at 37, hopefully, you've worked through some of them." And between Renny and the soap, she wasn't even too disturbed that the phone had stopped ringing so much. "It did sort of surprise me though," she admits, "not to be working a lot, because the commercials had come so easily, and the soaps had come so easily. Everything had come quite easily, workwise. And I certainly noticed, when I walked down the street with some young girls from daytime, that nobody looked at me. I was very used to being looked at, when I was younger. But you know what? We have to pass the baton. It's time to let that go. I went through a little phase where I thought, 'Well, this is the age I am. Maybe I should let my hair go gray. Maybe I should let myself be what I am.' With the blond hair, I don't look enough like TV's idea of a grandmother. I'd get more work if I had white hair, but you know what they'd have me doing? Dentures and diapers! It's disgusting. I'm not about to do that yet."

Actually, she is letting herself bye what she is, a beautiful woman who is no longer 17 or 27. She's 57, and makes no bones about it, even though she has to deal with dubious compliments like, "Gosh, I hope I look as good as you when I get old." "I may be the only actress you know who doesn't make any bones about it," she says. "Why should I? This is what 57 looks like. I'd rather tell the truth and have people say, 'God, you look great,' than lie and have them wonder."

If nothing else, it gives Beth Chamberlin, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Sloan, an up-close view of what she may look like in 20 years. When Chamberlin took over the role of Beth in 1989, she wasn't totally new to it. "Judi Evans had left and we thought Beth had died," Sloan says, speaking as both Tina and Lillian. "One day I (Lillian) see a girl walking down the stairs I think is her. I run up, she turns around, and of course, it isn't. Beth Chamberlin was the extra who played that girl." Sloan's affection for Chamberlin, and Hayden Patneiere, who plays her granddaughter Lizzie, is palpable. An exquisite framed photograph of the three of them sits prominently beneath a living room table lamp. Nor is that the only fusion between her private and professional worlds. She recounts with relish an occasion where an actor who formerly played Alan Spaulding looked around the room, an exercise in understated luxury, and remarked, "Now this is what the Spaulding living room should look like." Maybe it will, eventually. Only recently Lizzie was heard saying to her grandmother, "Nana, I dreamed you and Grandpa got together." Out of the mouth of babes, fans hope, to the writers' ears. "What a great idea," Sloan agrees, her green eyes glowing. "Lillian should be married to Alan, wear beautiful clothes and bring an elegance to the show that would be wonderful to have."

From the December 23, 1997 Soap Opera News (SOM Publishing Inc). Rare to get a Bucky Carter shoutout...

Interview from the 12/14/99 Weekly (Primedia Inc) with Paul Wasilewski, who has since gone on to complete and total obscurity.

I will type up the interview. It was by Mark McGarry. The photo is Arthur L. Cohen/Televest.

That's Paul Wesley. He's the lead on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES.

Edited December 24, 201014 yr by Amello

Clearly my sarcasm powers fail again.

NBC is going to love this. The ice-breaker for this interview with 17-year-old Paul Wasilewski (Max Nickerson, Guiding Light) is a discussion about the campy merits of Passions.

"I watched it a few times, and I think it's hysterical. Hilarious...it's a comedy," Wasilewski says over dinner (minus the Martimmies) near the GL studio. "What do you guys think of Susan Lucci's daughter?" he asks, meaning Liza Huber, who plays Gwen. "I like Susan Lucci...The one with the dark eyebrows, the girls like him, don't they? Is he popular?" he continues referring to Jesse Metcalfe's Miguel. As for Josh Ryan Evans as Timmy, everyone's favorite character: "I love that little one. I love his voice. It's hysterical; I can't even do it."

It's amazing that Wasilewski has found time to check out NBC's new, hip entry: When he's not at GL, he's at school (in his senior year). When he's not at school, he's in his room doing homework and/or studying the next day's script. Then to get from his home in New Jersey to GL, he commutes for more than an hour. For this interview, Wasilewski agreed to a late dinner, which makes me wonder: Doesn't his mother worry about him traipsing all over the city?

"Well, I'm a big boy," he says, smiling. "I think they're kind of cool with that. They call me all the time. I have a cell phone, and my mom calls me every five minutes." The phone does ring once during the course of the interview; Wasilewski ignores it. "I shut it off. I swear to god it's every five minutes. I'd be like, 'I'm OK, Mom, I'm OK.' She'd call back five minutes later. 'Are you OK?' I'm like, 'I was OK five minutes ago - why wouldn't I be now? My dad doesn't really care. He's like, 'Go get 'em.'"

Which is what Wasilewski has done. Much of his success so far has been due to a lot of hard work and hustling. "It's a long story how I got started in this business," he begins. "It was in third grade or something. My mom put me into this summer arts program, which I didn't want to do at all. She forced me to do it. I was like, 'I'll do it, fine.' We did all different kinds of plays, little scenes, singing, this and that. I said I might as well do a good job, so I did a good job. I actually tried my hardest, and I really started enjoying it. I enjoyed acting and singing and dancing. The director of the whole thing was my elementary school teacher. She put all the musical plays together. She said, 'I think you're great. You should be in all the musicals for school.' I said OK. The summer ended, and I began my school year. I started doing all the plays. My mom and dad said, 'Maybe you should do something professional with it.' I said OK, but we didn't know what to do [next]."

Wasilewski's older sister had done some modeling, so he and his parents took that route as an in to acting. During a runway show, an agent from Ford Models spotted him and signed him. An acting agency was there, too, and signed him as well.

"So both agencies picked me up, and I started auditioning and modeling. I didn't really like the modeling so much, to be honest with you. I did it for a year or so, and it wasn't a gratifying experience. I decided to stick with the acting. So I auditioned, and I did pretty well. I got a bunch of callbacks, and I booked some commercials. I did a couple films, but none of them really went through. With my bad luck, it was always something low-budget or delayed. Then my first big break came when I booked Another World. I was so excited. Then I found out it was being canceled. My luck again comes in."

Wasilewski had landed the role of Sean McKinnon, Jake's nephew. He says he learned a lot from Tom Eplin (Jake). "he has his own style. When I screen-tested, we connected. After the screen test, he told me he really pushed for me to get the job. The whole experience was cool. It broke the ice for me, and when I went to Guiding Light, I knew exactly what to do.

"my first episode on Another World, it was my television debut," he adds. "I was like, 'Here we go.' I was pumped, and I was a little nervous. I go out there and i do my first scene. I was like, 'Cool, I'll do it like this, and hopefully they'll give me direction, tell me what I did wrong, and I'll do it right, like in film.' So I did it, and then they're like, 'It's a take.' I'm like, 'What do you mean, it's a take? I did it once - what are you talking about?' I had no idea it was bam, bam, bam. I was bugging out. It was such a weird thing for me, and I was upset the rest of the day."

He also was upset when he saw that first episode air. "I thought I looked mutated. I thought, 'That's what I look like...?' I was so depressed. I slowly started to realize that maybe I wasn't that bad. Then I started getting some fan mail, so I felt kind of redeemed. I felt better. When you first see yourself, you get depressed. When you hear your voice...I thought I sounded like this high-pitched girl."

At the time of this interview, Wasilewski had just finished answering his AW mail. "I get all different kinds of mail. Mail from females and males," he says. "I get freaky mail, mail that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I get a lot of cool fan mail, too. A lot of people who say, 'I enjoy watching you and I support you.' I don't like my head shots, so I don't like to give them out. I want to get new head shots. I looked like a dork in high school."

Even though he hadn't been there long, Wasilewski couldn't help but be affected by AW's cancellation. "Actually, I could tell that everyone was upset. But they all had such good spirits about everything. The only time people were really depressed and crying was the last episode - the last scene of the last episode. The whole cast and crew were there watching. Everyone was like, hysterical. It was very sad, a very emotional moment. I was only there for two or three weeks, and I already felt an attachment to everything. To the cast, to the crew, even to the building. I missed it after we finished filming. I was like, 'That's it.' I was a little depressed."

Luckily, GL was in the market for a new Max, and Wasilewski was offered the role sans a screen test. (Procter & Gamble, which owns GL, also owned AW). "Both shows are different in many ways, yet similar in many ways," he says. "It's different in the fact of different writing. But my character is similar to my character on Another World. They're both troubled teens. It wasn't hard adjusting. It's not like I had to play a totally different character, so that was pretty easy. In terms of the people who work there, the staff and everyone, everyone is just as nice. Another World had a different style of acting. It's like I adapted to that, and now I'm adapting to Guiding Light."

Wasilewski has been paired with Brittany Snow (Susan), with whom he gets along "really good. You've got to get along. If you don't get along it's not going to work on-screen, you know? At first it was real awkward. Now it's like, whatever." Many times, the two frantically run lines right before a scene. "I use my long commute as an advantage. I study my scripts on the train. I rip out pages I"m in, and I carry it around with me and I memorize the script. It's tough, though, with the homework and everything. On certain days it can be really hard to memorize the script. Brittany will tell you that. We bug out. When we have scenes together, two minutes before we do it we're like: Oh, my god. Then we run it. We always bug out, but in the end we always seem to pull it off. It's nerve-racking."

Speaking of bugging out, Wasilewski says his school is doing just that because of his crazy schedule. "I don't know what I'm going to do," he says, truly concerned. "Maybe take adult classes at night or something like that. I'm going to try to talk to them, and hopefully it will be OK."

Yet, he gets good grades, which he hopes will help him to get into NYU next year. "That would be ideal," he says. He sees it as another step in the process. "Another World was a great experience, and that led to Guiding Light. So I'm getting there. I'm becoming more and more experienced every day. Hopefully, I'll flourish as time progresses."

An ET piece on GL's 50th anniversary. I'd never seen a few of the black and white clips (not sure who those two men are at the start, is one of them Papa Bauer).

It's great seeing Chris Bernau looking so chipper in the interview(he had to know he was gravely ill at this point).

A big "ouch" for John Tesh's closing comments, something that didn't need to be said during a supposed celebration of the show.

From the August 29, 1995 Weekly (K-III Magazines).

Edited December 25, 201014 yr by CarlD2

From the August 29, 1995 Weekly (K-III Magazines).

McTavish's GL was so weird..on one hand really exciting (LOVED Brent/Marion) but disjointed and really, really weird (HATED Folly as they used to call them but I really hated Jay Hammer as Fletch...that pic is so him, starring straight at the camera he used to walk over Garret's lines all the time.)

That was really the make or break of GL and point of no return to its eventual cancellation. If MCtrash had gotten someone like Aunt Meta in earlier to consolidate the show again, got us out of 7th Street and Buzz mania and not cartooned everyone out we could have repaired the damage that JFP's later years and ego did to the show.

I'd love to see more of the Jennifer Richards stuff from 1980. When she was on trial for killing Lucille Wexler and it came out that Alan Spaulding was Amanda's father and Jennifer was her mother. The best I could find on youtube was an Emmy Awards clip when Doug Marland won the Emmy for Best Writing based on the episode submission where Jennifer admits to killing Lucille instead of the secret of Amanda's parentage coming out. Great stuff.

I'd like to see more of that too. It's probably the story which is available that I'd want to see the most, along with the full Carrie storyline. I have an interview with Rita Lloyd from around this time I will post sometime.

Mitch, I agree with you that McTavish was probably make or break for GL -- on the one hand, the ratings did go up for a while, and if that hadn't happened then there's a good chance GL would have been canceled. But by the time she was fired the show was a living hell. Looking back it's actually surprising GL managed to survive that...I guess this was when CBS/P&G still cared. Then Rauch revived the show before the long, slide downward.

I do wonder if McTavish helped create the initial plans for Meta. She had already come in by the time Laibson was going.

I'd like to see more of that too. It's probably the story which is available that I'd want to see the most, along with the full Carrie storyline. I have an interview with Rita Lloyd from around this time I will post sometime.

Mitch, I agree with you that McTavish was probably make or break for GL -- on the one hand, the ratings did go up for a while, and if that hadn't happened then there's a good chance GL would have been canceled. But by the time she was fired the show was a living hell. Looking back it's actually surprising GL managed to survive that...I guess this was when CBS/P&G still cared. Then Rauch revived the show before the long, slide downward.

I do wonder if McTavish helped create the initial plans for Meta. She had already come in by the time Laibson was going.

The ratings probably went up as the last few months of JFP were total [!@#$%^&*] so anything looked better. Also, those last months had the show staggering and it had no energy. McT did bring a great deal of energy to the show, and there was always something happening. I suppose if she had a stronger producer she could have been kept reigned in. Brent was a great "umbrella," story, but as soon as that was over the show lost all its energy. She had extremely bad judgement (the Downs story going to Folly, it would have worked with Frank and Eleni, who had nothing to do..) the reversal of Roger to a maniac, the reversal of Holly having any feeling for Rog, Reva chasing after Buzzard begging him to schtump her, Alan and Alex having an almost incestual weird thing going, Michelle chasing after her own cousin, (by adoption) Michelle forgetting that Nola was her aunt (calling her Mrs. Chamberlin) or that Vanessa was her mom;s best friend and married to her cousin (calling Van"Mrs. Reardon," ) and of course, the black incest plot which ended with one of the few strong male black characters shooting himself to frame Alan. After Brent all we had was the battle for Reva and 5th Street (BORING) and Lonatrat...