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

[~bl~]

Basically what happened with ABC and Fiona all those years ago, was when they started she was on a very low salary. And they played her a lot for all those years, and basically didn't have to give her much money even though she was going over her guarantees and getting little or nothing for it. When she was up for renewal, ABC said that she could only get a certain percentage more for her OLTL work based upon her base salary (not the extra episodes) and there would be no negotiation. And if they were going over her guarantee she still wouldn't be getting that much. I'd have to search for the SOD or SOW which went into exact detail over what happened, but when I read the article I was upset on her behalf and understood why she left.

While P&G shows traditionally don't pay as much, back in 1993 the highest paid GL star was Zaslow who made in the neighborhood of 750,000 a year. He had favored nation status, so no one made as much. The reason I know the figure is based upon an interview that was done when Joe Lando was hired for MacCauley West, but I digress.

Years ago, I was at the bowling event when Fiona showed up and told everyone that she was fired from GL. The other actors had not been informed yet, so I was seeing real reactions. It was extremely intense, but she said at that point that if OLTL called her and offered her a dollar she'd go back.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Did she really go back to poverty? The way I remember it was that she moved in with Frank and Eleni and had to work at the diner or something. Which was probably a station in life (living with extended family and working a blue collar job) that a lot of viewers could relate to... If the point was that Nadine was being punished, that sort of encapsulates a lot of what drove soaps into the ground in the last couple of decades: the assumption on the part of people behind the scenes that the existences of many viewers were tantamount to bad kharma. ]I just remember Nadine having her family rallying around her against awful Jenna...

And don't get me wrong, I thought Jean Carol was great, I just didn't see Nadine as being redeemed or especially rootable. When Jenna was having her miscarriage, wasn't there even one of those stock soap scenes where she called Buzz and Nadine answered and hung up on her? That was especially ugly because of her recent history with Bridget.

I wasn't watching at that point and I don't recall a face cream story at all. What I've seen of the post-Curlee era on YouTube was a mess for most of the characters. To me, the logical thing to keep Jenna relevant after she lost Spaulding would have been for her not to have lost the baby and then have Henry step up and offer to marry her to give her clout and power to fight Roger for custody. It would have been a great swan song for William Roerick, who passed on a year or two later, and it would have been shades of Reva and HB's marriage of convenience (with better diction).

[DRW50]

Not poverty in real life terms, but I'd say in soap terms. (I think at one point she and Buzz were living in some hovel with nothing but old beat up mattresses on the floor).

They didn't really care about punishing Nadine, because she was there mostly to be a third wheel for Buzz, but I do think that Nadine losing everything and going back to Fifth Street was supposed to be a rebuke, or a wakeup call. I don't think it encapsulated what killed soaps, because Nadine was never a character who was treated like a saint. She was always on the outside. Even when she lived with her family again and they were close to her, it was never the same as a close relationship, because Nadine had never been there for Frank and Harley when they needed her most. It was a much more honest relationship than most of what happened on soaps, then or now.

I mostly remember Frank and Eleni having too many problems of their own to start big witch hunts against Jenna, but then I couldn't stomach most of GL at that time, so I can't tell you.

I would have had Henry legally adopt her (if he already hadn't - I can't remember) and fight that way. He loved her too much like a daughter to ever be more than that. A custody battle would have been great viewing, especially since Vanessa was fighting for custody of Peter around the same time. If she felt like Henry was more interested in Jenna's problems, that would have been good character conflict.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Oh, I agree, Nadine's relationship with her family was very truthful. I just think "poverty = punishment" is a problematic message, whether we're supposed to root for the character or not. And especially offensive in a genre with such a large audience of working class women. Before daytime soaps tried to become Dallas/Dynasty clones, I think there was a realization that characters like Rachel and Delia struck a cord with some viewers because they came from nothing. Both of them actually moved up in socioeconomic status soon after their schemes fell through, but they paid in other ways that were more fitting/creative. Delia was cut off from the Ryans (for a little while, at least) and Rachel got a taste of her own medicine when Iris went after her. Reilly was gone by the time Nadine lost Billy, right? Otherwise I would think the mattress scenario (which I don't recall) was a prelude to Vivian having to work as a hot dog vendor, etc. Not that it's necessarily better or worse than the rape redemption stories that have been the norm since...

Either way, I just think keeping her in Henry's orbit in a meaningful way would have been a goldmine, and why they missed an opportunity to give Roger another heir (wasn't this right after Leonard Stabb's accident?) is beyond me. And yes, although I don't understand how Jenna and Vanessa became friends, I agree that a conflict over Henry's attention when they both stood to lose their children would have been more organic (they still could have reached an understanding, but whatever the face cream story was, I don't think that would have been the way to go about it). They could have even had Henry express sympathy for Bridget because she reminded him of her Aunt Nola...

[DRW50]

I agree with you, but I don't think it was a punishment as much as just a restart. The real punishment for Nadine was that Buzz would never truly love her.

I think Reilly was gone by then.

She and Buzz were living in a hovel around the time of that Pauly story, which I only saw a little of, and that was enough for me. He had played Bunny on SB, so he was another friend of Jill's. He was a mobster and his money was hidden in a mattress, and Nadine flushed it down a toilet, or something.