As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[FrenchBug82]

Meg Ryan very infamously banned any interviewer from ever mentioning her time on ATWT so I think she can be fairly counted as those who are very much ashamed or resentful of their soap past.

Robin Wright deserved a lot of flack because she said some very nasty things about the show. She was young indeed and she did get screwed over by show runners many times in way that understandably made her very bitter but she nevertheless was unnecessarily condescending about soaps and sneering at the material even when she was still ON the show.
That being said, she has considerably softened on the subject now so, since as I said TPTB at SB kind of made things difficult for her as well, most fans now give her a pass.

I suspect that a lot of "more famous" actors' reluctance to invoke their soap past - or do it mockingly - is more due to the Hollywood stigma for that kind of work than necessarily them internalizing that stigma.
Meaning, even if you had fond memories, it is better to mock it than to try to defend it to the cool kids. Or pretend it didn't happen because a soap past can hurt your image when auditioning for roles.
It sucks but it has more to do with the cultural condescension for soaps than necessarily actors having had a bad experience.

[Soapsuds]

As good as the Craig/Betsy/Steve storyline was I preferred Lindsay Frost in the role. To me she was Betsy. I would've said the same about Heather had she stayed till the end of ATWT as Lily.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

That was March 20, 1987. I'm taking about the 23rd if March, which is a Monday. That episode is not on YouTube. The 23rd is when B&B debuted, isn't it? That would be the same day ATWT debuted in its new timeslots on the East Coast.

[Soaplovers]

Marisa always seemed like she was embarrassed by how bad she was on the show, not about doing the show.  Plus, she and Julianne have kept in contact to some degree.

 

Meg Ryan did talk about ATWT some in the 80s and 90s... describing her experience auditioning.. and how she viewed Betsy as the most gullible character known to man LOL   And she did talk about Paul Schaeffer (of Letterman) and how he was in the band playing during her wedding to Craig.  

 

And Robin Wright in recent years has talked about how the technical aspects of soaps trained well (i.e. blocking, pacing, going by instinct when acting since it was only 1 take, and memorization).  I wish I could find the episode where Chelsea handler was fan-girling Robin Wright based on being on Santa Barbara (even calling Santa Barbara to find Kelly Capwell in real life).

[Soapsuds]

Marisa was bad on A Different World too. That's probably why she lasted one year.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Neither have I. 

 

All I'm saying is that, why should it matter so much to fans whether actors who used to be on soaps talk about their time on them at all?  Why does their approval even matter? Fans of horror and sci-fi never seem to care about this, no matter how many "Trekkie" jokes were made over decades. Now, you have a mainstream culture that can't get enough iterations of Star Trek, Candyman and other sci-fi, fantasy and horror. Get Out won Academy awards and inspired a ton of not-so-good imitations. No because Morgan Freeman talked up those genres, but because fans themselves supported the genre, criticized it and inspired filmmakers that would come along and make it even more relevant, to the point of attracting others.

 

By the way, in between those years, the Evil Dead and Candyman, etc. movies sold a lot on VHS and DVD, which likely sustained interest until that next generation of filmmaker, like a Jordan Peele to elevate the material.

 

I have never understood why soap fans don't target the folks who actually to devalue and denigrate soaps. A lot of them are still around, they block the remaining soaps from being good.

Isn't Steve Kent still out there making a mockery of the daytime drama? 

Isn't P&G still letting thousands of hours of classic daytime drama rot in storage?

Who deserves more ire? Who is actually showing the most disrespect for the genre? 

 

 

 

If anybody here has ever worked in television, you'd know some of the denigrating things many of the executives behind some of these television shows say about many of the fans. It just doesn't seem worth it to focus on the actors. 

 

Edited June 27, 2021 by DramatistDreamer

[P.J.]

Because the fans feel a personal connection to soap actors. However rightly or wrongly, you feel you "know" them. Intellectually, you may know that they're on Infotainment shows to promote their latest movie/book/show, but you want to make the "hey, yeah, I knew you when..." moment.

 

We don't even know the names of the executives who make the decisions or denigrate us.

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by P.J.

[DRW50]

 

Emotional connection is the main reason, yes. People see these characters day after day for years and go through all sorts of highs and lows with them. We could say fans are irrational for thinking about the responses of the actors, but then, I'm sure someone would say we're all irrational for talking about a TV show that ended a decade ago and was last good about 10-15 years before it ended. 

 

I do think that sometimes fans can be too hard on actors who sneer at their past soap work. I've been guilty of that myself. In some cases like Meg Ryan, where I'd say she mostly just managed to do decent work for about 5 years of her career at most, the snobbery baffled me, but I suppose beyond the workload she may have had other bad experiences as I think the show was hellish backstage in those years. 

Edited June 28, 2021 by DRW50

[P.J.]

 

Honestly, I don't think I even realized Meg Ryan had "sneered" about her soap time until I started reading message boards, which was around the time Ryan was fading into the background of Hollywood. And I agree about her work. I've liked some of her movies, but not many, and she's basically used the same "quirky" energy she had on the show.

[Liberty City]

 

As lovingly as Julianne Moore talks about her time on As the World Turns, I feel like Robin Wright is the opposite and tries to forget she ever played the role of Kelly Capwell on Santa Barbara.

I always admire when the so-called "big stars" talk positively about their daytime beginnings.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Same.

 

The writing that first season was bad. Debbie Allen wanted to keep Marisa/Maggie but Cosby said no.

[FrenchBug82]

Actually she has done a few interviews in recent years (discussed in the SB thread) where she talks about her work there.
She is still honest that she was unhappy at the time - and to be fair, she had reasons to be considering the way the producers did her wrong and the show had problems - but she has stopped dissing the material and has actually said a nice thing here and there about what she learned there.

So you know, as they get older, they soften.

[jam6242]

Wrong thread.

Edited June 28, 2021 by jam6242

[Liberty City]

 

I know I saw one interview about a month ago where Wright talked about her time on Santa Barbara, and it made me quite happy.

Had the Dobsons not insisted on keeping Kelly a pseudo ingenue, I think Wright might've stayed longer.

[dragonflies]

It's like when Nolan North from Port Charles basically looked down on his time on soaps. It really angered a lot of us. Don't look down on what gave you your start