Jill Farren Phelps interview 1996

[soapfan770]

She does sound quite human in this interview as she was one of the many let go during the P&G shakeup when Fitts was fired and replaced by MADD. Yes the show did look a whole lot better than it had done but as Carl mentioned the writing and casting had a lot left desired. Justin Chambers seems to have had the last laugh when replace by JFP regular Kevin McClatchy. Funny that Tom King was pretty much Lemay's hand picked successor yet never had a successful stint because he's not a solid writer. It was under King and Carlson that we got stuff like Felicia/John/Sharlene, the botched returns of Michael and Jake, the destruction of Donna etc. Not to mentioned Phelps let go of all the older cast members. The show became a very dark and depressing place. Then Margret De Priest was wheeled out of the nursing home to write her umpteenth serial killer story and second one on AW which of course ended in disaster.

Phelps was only at AW for a year but it was under her watch that a lot of unnecessary and unrepairable damage was done, and that's why so many AW fans despise her. Her tenure was the death knell for the show.

[DRW50]

He may have lost a lot of interest in the real goings on at AW after he was burned the first time around, and again on his 1988 return. Or he may have thought NBC/P&G would not let any major positive change be made anyway. So if he saw it that way, then he might have just enjoyed getting to know Jill Farren Phelps on a personal level. I'm sure she can be charming.

[DRW50]

That was the storyline DePriest supposedly wanted so Cass could be a playboy again (a 50 year old playboy -- what fun). That didn't exactly work out well for Cass; he became all but invisible and reportedly he would not even have been kept around if not for Linda Dano.

I remember JFP saying AW would be "Cheers meets NYPD Blue meets ER." I think she would have been better off being given a new soap to create, instead of one with a history.

I can't remember if any characters of value were brought in during that time. Everyone seemed very vacuous. I do remember the Maggie recasts (the boring one in the middle went on to Nash Bridges, then the last one, who always sounded like she had a cold, I think she was in something else), and awful Sofia Carlino.

[bellcurve]

I recall even hearing that JFP said to a magazine, "When are we gonna cancel this show, so we can get on with my project?" LOL.

Jodi Lyn and especially Lisa D. Brenner were both awful. And Sofia Carlino ate the show alive.

[soapfan770]

Indeed JFP did say that but of course that wasn't what AW was about, even as the show started losing ground after Swajeski and O'Shea left. Funny I'd forgotten about that anecdote about DePriest. Cass really did have nothing to do those final years aside from his story with Lila and Frankie's doppelganger. As for DePriest she didn't last too long in the HW seat. I recall she wrote for Sunset Beach for awhile before being wheeled back to the nursing home.

Most of JFP-era characters were quickly dropped and castings were recasted. I think Cindy was the only one to make it to the finale. Of course in '98 JFP allegedly stole Timothy Gibbs and Kale Browne for roles on OLTL.

[DRW50]

I do think JFP could have done well with a soap she started from scratch. She liked to reinvent the shows she worked on, which always caused friction with some fans, but that wouldn't have been a problem if she was starting with a blank slate.

I was just thinking about that boring woman Matt dated, who was offed by the serial killer. Then she went to OLTL not long after that as the naked woman in the woods who was hired by Dorian to tempt the Buchanan men. At the time I thought that woman had been hired to bore the hell out of soap viewers for all of 1996.

[Vee]

I think the little JFP gets to put a hand in with at GH is because she and Guza are not, and have never been, that different. Her OLTL and AW were sort of cut-rate takes on Guza's GH; Guza, however, is, even at his worst, a better writer (and he's a hack now).

My understanding is that when JFP and Megan McTavish took their "well-oiled [OLTL] machine" over to GH to "shine" in 2001 after the collapse of the Guza/Riche regime, they completely tanked offscreen as well as on. The show was laughable to watch; it was everything horribly wrong about their OLTL magnified a thousandfold because of GH's stature, because of its relatively steady hand that had guided the ship in years past, because of how strong GH had been just before the two women arrived, even in a somewhat weakened state - overnight, it became something totally different, totally JFP, totally unrecognizable as Guza/Riche GH. Characters who never spent ANY time together (Felicia and Alexis?) suddenly got together to eat ice cream, listen to oldies and shoot hoops together based solely on their gender (Mac and Roy?). A Martinez and Jensen Buchanan took over the show while JFP schemed to repeat the fall of Laura Koffman by sending Bobbie Spencer to Ferncliff, a fate only averted by the hand of Tony Geary. Sarah Brown quit over a screaming match with JFP, who, eager to flex her muscles, recast with a "nobody" hoping to write Carly out later in the year after a brutal rape and possibly death by cancer. Robert Kelker-Kelly's "Frozen Stavros" destroyed the Cassadine storyline and made a laughable farce of Jacob Young's Lucky, sending Constance Towers and Stephen Nichols packing from their previously-safe perch. And then there was the Angel story, which Maurice Benard and the audience collaborated to destroy.

JFP could get away with her [!@#$%^&*] at OLTL where people didn't really care what she did as long as she brought in demos. GH was a whole new ballgame and she couldn't hack it. She made a hash of the show which is why, as I understand it, Guza was begged to come back and save the day, leaving Jill shut up in a cupboard...forever. I'm sure she has some help with casting and minor creative points, but this show is Guza's. Seems to me the only things Jill and Guza collaborate on are their shared enjoyment of misogynistic story beats, violence against women, and overstaged production numbers. And most of that Guza can do on his own.

Incidentally, "Courtney" is a name and/or character type JFP seemed to revel in at many shows. Aside from GH's infamous Courtney Matthews, JFP had also hoped to introduce a "Courtney" at OLTL; maybe that character became Jen Rappaport or someone else. There was also AW's Courtney. Isn't it her daughter's name?

[DRW50]

Didn't they also run Amber Tamblyn off? Or was she going anyway?

Is it true Maurice Benard is the one who stopped them from firing Tamara Braun?

[Vee]

I believe they ran Amber off, yes. And yes, Benard saved Braun by rallying the fans. I freely admit I was one of them back then. I loved the original Sonny and Carly, and I could see what JFP had in mind, though some of the buzz about her plans for "Temp Carly" trickled down later and it took a long time for Tamara Braun to improve. On her worst day she was better than Angel Boris - but wow, they dressed, lit and did her hair terribly at first.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Her AW seemed like a very deliberate attempt to make the show as generic as possible. I imagine some of that was an NBC mandate, but it's also her production style -- make the characters generic so that you can put more focus on the production values.

But that's just it. JFP's Santa Barbara was supposedly known for its quirky sense of humor. I never watched, but I did watch GL, and the care that was taken in the early 90s with things like Ross and Ed's friendship - which on most shows would have been treated as an afterthought - was the kind of thing that sustained AW through the worst of stories up until that time. JFP's prior shows had unique identities, for all of her missteps. AW was just such a departure from that, it seems to me.

[DRW50]

Was JFP's SB known as much for the sense of humor? I thought that was more the Dobsons. When JFP took over didn't the show become much more serious? It seemed like as she got more control at GL, that show also became more and more dour, and OLTL and GH were the same.

I think the Ross/Ed friendship was mainly sustained because JFP seemed to like Ed and Ross. She also liked the male bonding, buddy vibe. She tried to duplicate some of that at AW (the basketball game for Joe's bachelor party).

[DeliaIrisFan]

That could be about SB - I never watched]. I just remember Patrick Mulcahey saying in an interview that after the Dobsons the revolving door of head writers at that show didn't realize that the script writers all thought that their stories were sh!t and were continually mocking the plots in the dialogue, apparently with JFP's blessing.

You have a point about male bonding, but Ross and Ed were just the first friendship I thought of at GL. In general, I think various kinds of character relationships were nurtured on GL in the early 90s, which gave the stories more layers. I get that that was probably more the writers' doing, but AW and everything since has been just such a stark contrast to that.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Nancy Curlee being a strong visionary-type of a writer had to help a lot during Jill's early GL tenure.

AW wasn't so fortunate with the writers at the helm when Jill was there.

I think if paired with a good, strong Curlee-type writer, Jill can produce some amazing things.

[Paul Raven]

The trouble with AW for many years was that everybody who came in thought the fix was new characters and stories.Then when the next producer/writers arrived,they tossed out a few of the previous regimes characters and added some more,and so it went.

Maybe if someone had taken stock and gone back to the core,things might have been different.

Where was Nancy,Rachel's sister?

Lorna and Jenna never returned.

Peter&Nicole Love,MJ,Ben & Cheryl McKinnon...the list goes on.

Soap 101 tells you it's easier to write a show when everyone linked,rather than trying to tie together 30 disparate characters.

Instead of Cheers meets NYPDER Blue JFP should have tried for Another World.

[DaytimeFan]

Iris wasn't foolishly written off by the previous regime, they had no choice because Carmen Duncan decided to not renew her contract and went to live with a longtime boyfriend in Europe. Recasting would have been a mistake since Duncan was already a recast (though I LOVED her) and McKinsey had no interest in returning to daytime.