Jill Farren Phelps Podcast Interview

[Aback]

That’s a very good point. Besides, I thought that LML’s very early tenure did energize the show. I liked it. 
 

And I find it tragically funny that these people supposedly want to ‘modernize’ the shows yet they hire 60+ year olds who have been in the business for ages. Nothing against them but it would be great to introduce new blood with people who actually don’t harbor contempt for the genre. 

[mikelyons]

I listened to the whole wretched hour. Wow. The host spent ALL of her time boot licking, praising, and bowing to JFP. I've never been so incensed while listening to a freaking podcast. If you're too lazy or incompetent to ask your subject real, substantive questions, get drunk on your podcast with your friends.

JFP did give some insight into her career, but, man, NOTHING is her fault. NOTHING. This is an EP with no taste or writing talent, yet insists on interfering with writing and forcing her "taste" on every show she's on. How many heroines has she had raped? How many vets has she fired? How many stunts has she done? How much history has she pissed on and flushed down the toilet? How many children of legacy character/families has she murdered? How many leading men has she elevated and feted while denigrating their female counterparts? Yeah, she may be able to manage a budget, but her contempt for daytime has shone through her entire career. She would have been better suited on a few seasons of a primetime show before going on to the next. She's the Ryan Murphy of daytime and (from me) that is NOT a compliment. 

[DaytimeFan]

 

It's interesting that the CBS/Sony mandate was to bring Y&R into this century when they'd been attempting to do that since 2005 with that hack bitch from the depths of hell LML. They didn't quite realize that their attempts kept failing because Y&R's production formula wasn't wrong. And now that we've had the ability to watch weeks of vintage episodes, we see how very little needed changing at all and that the vintage episodes stand up because their production value was timeless. 

 

The set changes JFP did at Y&R were bad ideas and poorly executed, but her casting decisions (particularly in regards to Jess Walton) and overall treatment of the show was good because she had little, if anything, to do with the actual creative side with the writing (those problems are not her cross to bear) but got to focus on production. 

 

And lord knows, she probably reigned in quite a few egos. 

[Faulkner]

Her OLTL was awful. I fell out of love with the show and lost all hope for its recovery.

 

LML’s Y&R might have been tolerable had she not been given the keys to the entire kingdom. When Alden and Smith were still around, the show still felt recognizably Y&R but with a shot of adrenaline. When she became EP/HW and started hiring her friends as cast and crew, it was a wrap. Again, the show never recovered.

[soapfan770]

Getting rid of Ashley Abbott pretty much got Latham, MAB, and Young fired lol. That seems to be the common dealbreaker. I didn’t really have any problems with JFP’s 2012-2014 Y&R aside from the fact it could be very boring at times. I suppose maybe that’s why Pratt was hired but Pratt obviously seemed to take full complete control so I don’t think her last year counts, aside from the top brass being extremely outraged by what happened to the Chancellor mansion set. 
 

I never watched ABC soaps so I don’t know all what Phelps did there but it seems to me that aside from Santa Barbara and GL she became the go to being a “fixer” for soaps that were broken yet ended up also angering the loyal fan base.

 

Killing off Maureen was probably very short sighted, I loved all of 1993 for GL from top to finish, but once the writing team disbanded it came crashing down.
 

Did Phelps ever work with strong decent writers again? Even if she made boneheaded decisions it might have been had she found a great HW to help her along. She had washed up hacks at AW. And try as they did Altman, Boyd, and Thomson couldn’t seem to breakthrough Griffith and Passanante’s lousy choices. I wonder what would have happened if Phelps had taken up Thudley’s offer to write for Y&R. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DaytimeFan]

 

I think that's the experiment they should have tried. Quite honestly, after everything that's happened to Y&R, would it have been worse than what's been done? I doubt it. And perhaps Brad would have brought on some of his loyal team members, who would have been able to work well with the likes of Janice Ferri Esser and Natalie Minardi Slater. 

[Faulkner]

In the early 2000s, there were several weeks when Y&R was behind the entire ABC lineup and DAYS in the demos, so I’m sure they had the fear of God put into them. They were playing catch-up.

[soapfan770]

Haha it did strike me as odd that she turned Thudley down for Pratt. At least with Thudley we could definitely indeed get a hot period where we could all enjoy, as opposed to big stunts like the tower fire where nothing ended up happening at all. Ironically she also turned down SSM’s offer to write the show when looking to replace HW’s in late 2014, seems to me that Phelps probably should have just stepped back to just the production side inside of getting Pratt aboard. She should have done that from the get go, not even having to deal with Griffith’s epic meltdown either.

 

But yes I do believe Phelps probably did reign in a few egos. For every Ellen Parker there is a Michelle Stafford.

[BetterForgotten]

The production team at Y&R was very happy when JFP came along after MAB’s gross mismanagement of the show.

 

Remember how MAB tried for years to have her faux-journalist friend wage a smear campaign against JFP? Lol 

[lucaslesann23]

Reported :)

[Aback]

 

Maybe she was afraid Bradley would have too much respect and clout (from the cast and crew) over her.

 

As much as Bradley's B&B has sucked for 20 years (though it's had its moments), I think head-writing his father's gem is the adrenaline shot he needs as a writer.

[Mona Kane Croft]

On Y&R, I remember JFP was the one who changed Kathryn Chancellor's living-room set and turned it sideways.  Unfortunately, no one has ever changed it back.  We are still looking at the Chancellor living-room from the wrong angle.  I hate it.  Will somebody please change the angle back to the original view?   

[lucaslesann23]

delete

Edited May 17, 2020 by AdamNewmanFan

[soapfan770]

Haha I have assume so yet it also probably would have allowed Phelps to retire with dignity instead having CBS & Sony execs get triggered by seeing that awful Chancellor set makeover when looking over fan complaints. But I do agree at least writing for Y&R probably would have given Thudley a good challenge at least in the short term of things.

 

 

 

[titan1978]

I’ve spent years complaining about JFP.  She may not have killed Frankie on AW, but didn’t the murder mystery start under her watch?  And knowing her track record, a vet was not walking out of that.

 

She admits killing Maureen off was a mistake.  But claims the mistake was they made the audience love her shortly before doing it. That is a lot of tap dancing.

 

 The writers and the actors would have accomplished that, not her.  They did their job, create story out of things like this. If anything, it seems like she wished they had just had her hit by a car or something out of the blue with no affair etc, so the audience would have been shocked but not mad at her.  Or just killed someone else?  If the budget wasn’t an issue, then why did they need to kill anybody?

 

The truth is, the audience found out why the death happened.  A focus group.  And that Jill chose to agree with the data she was presented with.  And decided Ellen Parker had to go.

Superficially, she seemed to not enjoy women characters that were just close to ordinary in her shows, unless they were an ingenue.  Cassie, Maureen, Laura, Bobbie, Georgie.  She told Jacklyn Zeman and Kin Shriner the audience didn’t want to see characters their age kissing.  She said that, not Frons.  Cut the scene before filming it then.  Why the added cruelty?  

 

I still miss Alan on GH to this day.

 

I always thought she went after Pratt because it was adding an ally.  I assume she saw putting Brad in charge as ending her tenure.