Stars Who Left Daytime & Talk Smack About It

[DRW50]

Not that it has anything to do with anything but if you want to read a fairly recent interview with the woman who played Henrietta (from what I saw of her I really liked her -- too bad she was not given more to do).

http://www.seattlepi.com/theater/310462_fanf06.html

[Dr Neil Curtis]

Thanks Carl, will this site give me a run down of Quinn and all the others?

[DRW50]

Yes.

http://www.igs.net/~awhp/1quinn.html

Quinn was the last of the great tradition of "black woman who hangs on" that AW had for about 20 years. Peggy Harris Nolan, friend to the heroines of the late 60s, and one of the first black women on a soap to have any story (her fiance was a cop and was killed). When she vanished in the early/mid 70s, her sister Linda carried the torch until the late 70s/early 80s.

Quinn was supposed to be different. Corinne Jacker brought her as an independent, strong woman, who helped run Steve Frame's construction business. She quickly fell into an affair with a married man (Henrietta's husband), as he was drawn to her because she was not submissive like his wife. The triangle ran for a few months but he was killed off. Quinn later dated a few men, like Abel Marsh (played by Joe Morton -- I think he also played Abel's twin brother...that story sounds so strange I wish I could see it).

After this, Quinn became more of a supporting character, to comic relief Lily (Jackee), to her adoptive daughter Thomasina and Thomasina having a baby when she was still in her teens. By 1987 Quinn was now another hang-on character, having outlasted every one of the many blacks who had moved in and out of Bay City in that decade.

The new producer and headwriter (Whitesell/DePriest) fired Petronia Paley and came up with an oh-so-thrilling storyline about a serial killer who punished "sinful" women. Quinn had recently started dating Zack Edwards (James Pickens Jr, now on Grey's Anatomy), and they had moved in together. The killer strangled her in a parking lot for living in sin with a man.

When the show received a lot of backlash for killing off a longstanding character played by a talented actress, their response was essentially, "Oops -- we didn't know she had any fans. Sorry!"

You can find synopses here and some screencaps in the second link.

http://www.igs.net/~awhp/synopses.html

http://www.igs.net/~awhp/vlist.html

http://www.igs.net/~awhp/dec1986.htm

Sorry, I almost forgot the full character guide.

http://www.igs.net/~awhp/majors.html

http://www.igs.net/~awhp/minor.html

Oh, and the great Ed Rollins played her brother briefly -- he was given nothing to do, of course.

[R Sinclair]

Interesting conversation.

[Khan]

Yeah, but I can't remember a time since then when she hasn't had long hair. So, lesson learned, I guess?

IMO, William Fichtner needs to have a seat (tm R Sinclair?). If not for Robert Calhoun and Douglas Marland giving him an opportunity to play an anti-hero who went against type, where the [!@#$%^&*] would he be?

[Khan]

I wonder if Martha Byrne knows he said that. ;-)

Seriously, though, I think Brian Bloom is just bitter that Robert Calhoun and Doug Marland didn't regard him as integral to the show's continued success as he would have liked. Perhaps, if Mary-Ellis Bunim had remained EP, he (and Byrne) might've been the Next Big Thing. Of course, if MEB had remained, ATWT might've crashed-and-burned long before it finally did, too.

LOL!!!

Julianne Moore has every right to distance herself, both professionally and personally, from her soap roots, but she doesn't. In one interview, in fact, she said it always annoyed how other actors would look at soaps as a stepping stone toward other, higher-profile jobs. (I can't remember her exact response, but it was along the lines of, "Soap work is a job, period.") What's more, she praised Marland's work on "Inside the Actors Studio w/ James Lipton" and even showed up @ a book-signing event for Farley Granger's autobiography, which had been co-written w/ Calhoun, whose funeral she later attended, IIRC. Pretty classy, if you ask me.

[Khan]

Honestly, I don't blame her. As valuable as Betsy was to ATWT (especially at that time), in retrospect, it's incredible how...innocent she was about a lot of things. There's a fine line between "virginal" and "country-dumb," and Meg Ryan's Betsy skirted that line more than I'd care to remember.

OTOH, Meg herself has personal problems, and I tend to think she hates on it b/c she somehow sees "When Harry Met Sally..." or "Sleepless in Seattle" as being far classier gigs.

(Ironically, though, if her ex, Dennis Quaid, had ever appeared on a soap, I've a feeling he'd be totally proud of it. Especially if he'd play a popular hunk. But that's probably just me.)

[DRW50]

The last season of Sisters. I can't blame you for forgetting that.

That's interesting about how much Moore has done to go back to her daytime roots. I didn't know she had even gone that far. It's very touching. I feel a little bad because I saw her on Ellen once and thought she looked ashamed of an ATWT clip, and then I realized that it's far from the truth.

That's one of the reasons I have respected Anne Heche even when her life was a living hell for years, because of her loyalty to soaps. I know how stupid that sounds, but that's the thing I can connect to with her -- that I can watch her astonishingly good work as Vicky/Marley over and over and not think, "This woman wants me to believe that Volcano was a more superior work to AW?"

If an actor was on soaps and had a rough time with writing and had no idea what they were doing then I can see why they might be embittered, or if it was some type of living hell backstage, but when you don't hear those stories about backstage problems and when you know that they had very strong material for years, as Fincther did, then it's tough for me to process that they'd ever see their stories as something bad.

Did Parkey Posey ever talk about her soap run?

[Khan]

Except, Sally Albright and the women she played in Nora Ephron's rom-coms were far more neurotic and annoying. Yeah, Meg. Big upgrade there.

[Khan]

No, I remember the last season of "Sisters." (Unfortunately, lol.) And yeah, her hair was styled differently to reflect the enormous changes Georgie (her character on the show) had been through. Length-wise, though, it wasn't as radical as, say, Keri Russell's between seasons one and two of "Felicity." A little shorter, yes, but not by much.

Was the clip-in-question a Frannie/Sabrina clip, or the one w/ her and Steven Weber that always gets featured?

See, I think Moore might cringe at that for two reasons: one, by her own admission, she was very "green" and nervous as an actress when she started; and two, despite her adoration for Marland's writing, she also realizes how easy it is to take soap clips out of context if you don't know the story behind them. (This is especially true for anything related to Frannie/Sabrina. "Identical cousins"? Yeah, right, Doug. But it is pretty amazing how he, Robert Calhoun and Moore pulled it off.)

Unless I'm mistaken, didn't Anne Heche once volunteer to return to ANOTHER WORLD while Jensen Buchanan was away on maternity leave?

[Khan]

Here's one for you: Victoria Wyndham (ex-Rachel, ANOTHER WORLD). Didn't she diss the show several years after the show's cancellation, saying (among other things) it was just a job to her that afforded her a life for her & her two sons and nothing more?

[All My Shadows]

I still can't find the MBJ interview. I'm really starting to think I somehow made that up in my mind or something...I swear there was at least one interview where he said good things about AMC.

I know the interview you're talking about (hell, it's probably the only one she's done in the last ten years). It was kinda contradictory because she did say stuff like that, but then she also talked about how she pitched stories, etc. And then there was an older interview where she said some of the best acting she ever saw was in daytime. I think she, probably like a lot of vets, look back on different eras with different mindsets.

But then again, you have someone like Michael Levin (Jack, RH) who didn't even wait to be off the show to say how much above it he was.

[DRW50]

Khan, the clip was Frannie/Sabrina after Sabrina slept with Seth. I can see now why Moore might have cringed a little at that.

Anne would have temped for Jensen during a medical leave but had to work, so Cynthia Watros did instead.

I haven't read that interview. The stuff when she was still on the show, I often felt like her love for her character and for AW had died, but she was staying because of the fans, and because of the history of the show. I think she said she was very close to quitting towards the end, and that she also felt like they wanted her out.

[SFK]

Charlie Rose brought it up as sort of a bullet point while interviewing her and she warmly acknowledged it. Briefly, but warmly, like, "(inimitable PP smile) Yes, I was on As the World Turns..." and that was about it. It was her first gig right out of acting school. In one of its many articles about celebs who "graduated" from the soaps, SOD used Parker as their ATWT entry. All of her quotes are from a '92 interview she did with them, but at the end of the page they note that she mentions her start at ATWT from time-to-time in interviews.

[DRW50]

Thanks. That was where I first took notice of Parker so I'm glad that she isn't negative about it. It was much better TV work for her than that flop Sherman-Palladino show, or her awful run on Boston Legal.