Fiona Hutchison Fans Discussion: Gabrielle or Jenna????

[DRW50]

This is the type of insanity viewers were treated to on a frequent basis with Gabrielle. I'm not sure if any soap heroine or anti-heroine was ever this extreme so often, and it was such a blast to watch. Yet somehow (!) she never seemed like a caricature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KaVh2ntVnQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjAXAHr0cF0

[DRW50]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTFZTBm0Xbs&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlJUDarJU9c&feature=relmfu

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I will say that Fiona is one of the few women who was always dressed to perfection on soaps.

I thought both Gabrielle and Jenna always looked sharp and sexy.

[DRW50]

I just wish she had kept that beautiful hair when she was back on OLTL - she had it up to the late 90's, and even in some of her many GL returns in the 00's. On OLTL, in the 00's, it always looked kind of dry or bad.

[MissLlanviewPA]

Gabrielle was always a fashionista, so it's only fitting that her wardrobe was impeccable.

I could see how Gabrielle's hair was shorter in 2001--perhaps it was cut either when she went to prison or after as a symbol of rebirth?--but I actually LOVED her flip style hairdo in about 2002/into 2003. The more it grew out, the better it looked.

[Cheap21]

Gabrielle by far

[Popstarboy]

Thanks Thanks & Thanks!!!! Everyone's Comments & insight & personal feelings on Fiona and her roles & contributions has been a great treat to read & read again!!!!! I am loving the Gabby Links as well that highlight her on YouTube. I love the comment above re: Gabrielle being a fashionista!!! I loved how when she returned to OLTL she did eventually get a great job as the Style Editor of The Banner!!! So fitting, no pun intended. I did want to ask further, is it true that Fiona did leave OLTL in 1991 primarily due to a $$$$$ Issue? I always thought that I read that she was just 100% exhausted after 4 years of 'marathon emotions' daily in storylines.

I also wonder if Fiona and Maeve Kincaid are pals in real life? Their friendship on GL surely did seem so genuine.

[MissLlanviewPA]

I think she left both because she wanted to try her luck at other things (she said this in an exit article Carl posted in the OLTL Tribute Thread sometime ago), and because ABC/Capital Cities wouldn't give her the pay increase she wanted. Someone here said before that they felt she might take anything they offered her because she was going through a difficult divorce at the time (her first husband allegedly abused her), but she just wouldn't accept anything less than that. Linda Gottlieb apparently wanted to bring her back in late 1991 when she came on board and brought back JDP but the president of ABC Daytime at the time apparently wouldn't hear of it.

No idea about her and MK being friends, but this picture from OLTL's wrap party (from her FB page) makes me happy as a Max/Gabby fan AND a Blair fan:

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Fiona talked about being surprised when Jill Farren Phelps reached out to her to offer her the role of Jenna.

According to Fiona, ABC was trying to damage her reputation in the industry so that she couldn't find work again. Fiona and Jill were very close at GL, which always surprised me that Jill never brought Gabrielle back to OLTL (though judging by that happened to the show during that era, it was probably for the best).

[MissLlanviewPA]

Was there any particular reason they were trying to damage her reputation, though? Did it just boil down to her not accepting their salary offer, thinking she was being too difficult with them?

When she came back in 2001, she said in an interview with SOD that literally every single OLTL regime that came after she was gone the first time around spoke to her about coming back. ALL of them, perhaps even when she was at GL (and there WAS about a year and a half between her two GL stints when she would've been available, too, although she did get pregnant with her first son during that time). Gary Tomlin, however, was the only one who actually had a story in mind for her when he approached her, which is the main reason why she came back when she did.

I do wonder if they intended on bringing her back in 1997 when Gabby was released from prison, even though Fiona was on GL at the time. Carlo had just been "killed off" though, so this may have just been a way to finally get her out of prison for something she didn't even do, because Carlo had blackmailed her, even if it had to occur offscreen.

[DRW50]

Supposedly they were trying to make an example of her, so that other actors would stay in their place.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Yeah, that's what I've heard too.

Ironically, she only came back to GL because of Paul Rauch, but he ended up firing her (and many claim it was because she spoke out against the treatment Michael Zaslow received).

[MissLlanviewPA]

I just remembered that I read a story from a poster here that Fiona was supposedly going to come back to OLTL when Maxine Levinson was EP, but for some reason I don't remember now, Paul Rauch basically strong armed her to return to GL, even if he did very little to showcase her once she was back. It's very interesting to see how things turned out between the two of them, considering the fact that he's the reason she wound up on OLTL in the first place (and therefore the reason any of us wound up knowing who she was at all).

[Y&RWorldTurner]

When Fiona left GL in '94, she talked in her exit interview that she was moving to LA to try her hand at primetime roles and even mentioned that she had been in contact with Y&R about a possible role (which never came into fruition).

I believe in her second exit interview in 1999 she still praised Rauch, but I didn't buy it. I completely buy that she was punished for speaking out about the Michael Zaslow situation.

Even though I didn't like Jenna and Buzz, their final scenes as Jenna died in Buzz's arms were really well-done and heartbreaking.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I guess I'm in the minority, because from what I've seen of FH's work, first-run Jenna was my favorite. I was a tween at the time, but I've rewatched many of those scenes and my opinion hasn't changed much: To me, FH's first run on GL as Jenna epitomized my earliest exposure to the idea that soaps could be sophisticated and intelligent. I would include her early material with Buzz (I have seen very little of the show from the 5th Street Fire era that most people seemed to detest) in that, but also - as mentioned - her rapport with Henry, Michelle, and other characters that most soaps in the past 15-20 years would never have bothered to write interesting material for. And the initial Harley/Mallet/Jenna short-arc story is one of the few soap "caper" stories that actually was fun and interesting for what it was and didn't turn the entire show into a convoluted mess.

As for Jenna vs. Nadine, I'm only familiar with the beginning of that triangle over Buzz. To me, Nadine was a heinous character at that point for hiding a confused, pregnant teen in her attic when what she desperately needed was a referral to Planned Parenthood (withholding from her the fact that Maureen had died until after the funeral was particularly low) so that Nadine could pass the baby off as her own. I had no sympathy for her, and I actually was turned off by the way the Coopers were so nasty to Jenna (I remember wondering who Lucy was and why we were supposed to care that she was angry that Jenna was involved with her father). And now that I know some of the dirt on the various people behind the scenes, I tend to think of Nadine circa that era as a precursor for James Reilly's misogynistic, campy work, whereas I associate Jenna more with Curlee, Demorest, Broderick, et al.

I also agree that FH's work with Michael Zaslow was amazing ("there is nowhere on this earth that you can run that I won't find you"). The fact that IRL Fiona later spoke out about the way he was treated by P&G in the end - at great cost to herself, ultimately - always makes it kind of touching to revisit the great work they did together.

I also found it fascinating how FH's Jenna sort of stepped into Beverlee McKinsey's shoes during that period before they recast Alex. Dare I say part of the reason viewers were willing to accept Marj Dusay to the extent that they did was because the show paid homage to the fact that Jenna was a poor substitute for BM's Alex as the Spaulding grandame? I think people were ready for Alex to come back and reclaim the family heirlooms, but I would argue it was intentional...I don't think Jenna was ever being "propped" as an Alex replacement. Not to take away from MD, whom I also adore and am amazed at what she did with some truly dreadful writing in the twilight years of soaps. I just think that the fact that the characters gave voice to the void left by Bev's Alex garnered some rooting value for her eventual replacement.

It's unfortunate that this played out at the same time Maureen was killed off, so in hindsight the recurring theme of the whole show at the time was that the core families were shells of their former selves. It's interesting that TPTB actively decided to get rid of Maureen and spent all that time planning, but in some ways they did a more consistent job showing the Spauldings in crisis mode and "vultures" like Jenna and Roger circling while the matriarch wasn't around to protect the fold, when BM was the one who left unexpectedly and the writers had to scramble.

Anyway, I did love what I saw of Jenna in her return, but between Rauch as producer and Esensten and Brown writing the show and MADD running P&G, nobody seemed to know what to do with her. Jenna really didn't fit either of the two archetypes that permeated the show at that time: the needy, pathetic "vixen" or the self-righteous heroine. Of course, it could be argued that Jenna would have fit the crazy bitch role better than a character like Beth, for instance, and I'm sure FH could have played the hell out of it. But I'm sort of glad Jenna remained in tact as a character...and even evolved a little. They even respected her interesting friend/frenemy relationships with characters like Vanessa and Harley, who also were square pegs in round holes for the increasingly dumbed down version of the show. But their scenes together made for good filler, if nothing else.

On the other hand, most of what I've seen of Gabrielle was from her return. Although her original story with Asa was botched and didn't do her any favors, I grew to like the character a lot in her later relationship with Bo and the work around Al's death was indeed a tour de force. It's ridiculous that they killed her off. I am not a fan of Paul Rauch's work (and unlike with JFP and her time at GL, I only know of Rauch's more popular outings from YouTube, after seeing his later attempts), so it's hard for me even to watch very much of early Gabrielle in one sitting, because the writing/producing just rubs me the wrong way. But there's no doubt Fiona committed to the material 100%, and if I were seeing it without preconceived notions, who's to say how I would react.

Basically, I have the utmost respect for Fiona, and although she didn't always get the credit she deserved, it's fun to look back at the phases of her career...at least the soap genre had the privilege of having her on-screen and front and center for the most part for nearly 20 years, so it's not a complete tragedy.

That is surprising. I watched very little of JFP's OLTL, but from what I did see and what I know of the character of Gabrielle now, I think Gabrielle would have been a much more logical ally to Max when he was pretending to be Asa's son in order to con him than Skye seemed to be. I know JFP - and Angela Shapiro, if I'm remembering the chronology correctly - were trying to break soap records by having Skye and Linda Dano's character appear on three (or was it all four?) soaps. I also know Robin Christopher was already a Friend of Jill. But if Fiona was, too, it could just have easily been Gabrielle filling that role. She could have thought Lila Quartermaine was her long-lost mother, etc.

Really? I wouldn't have thought anyone would have made more on GL than on an ABC soap, even at that time when GL was having somewhat of a ratings resurgence in the early part of JFP's tenure, when the writers were good and before she killed off Maureen and drove off Beverlee McKinsey. Or was it that she burnt her bridges at ABC, and then after a year or so to cool off, she took what she could get from GL?