Jill Farren Phelps Podcast Interview

[Darn]

 

Yeah I don't recall it coming up with Daphnée Duplaix's Rachel. But maybe it did, I wasn't watching much at all around that time.

[KMan101]

I don't recall it coming up much either but like others I wasn't always 100% paying attention during the last few years. 

 

It was so stupid and all for shock value. I'm not upset when things I don't like aren't mentioned again so, LOL ...

[Vee]

IIRC JFP had Ellen back for much of the summer of 2000 on recurring. She tested Rachel with Jared Hall, Ed and Carla's ADA grandson(??), but Herve Clermont couldn't act so both got dropped separately. Ellen remained the incumbent Rachel on guest spots until the pretty good Daphnee Duplaix took over in 2009. I think I recall HBS said only DD captured what Bethea brought to the role. I'd still have Duplaix on an OLTL today married to Dan Gauthier's Kevin as a tentpole family couple.

 

@Darn Rachel’s past was addressed in ‘09, I think during a court case - maybe Matthew fighting Bo and Nora for his right to the operation for his legs? I believe it was Tea, still ostensibly her friend, who grilled Rachel on the stand on cross-examination on what she’d done to Georgie Phillips and serving time. They patched it up later. 

[DRW50]

Ugh, no wonder I'd blocked that out - more Tea propping.

 

Sandra P Grant was poor in the role but the material she and Mari Morrow (who was just awful - one of the worst recasts I can remember) had felt degrading and racist. The sad thing is Malone wrote all of Morrow's material yet he still did nothing to give Rachel any layers. 

[Vee]

IIRC Malone's latter-years story plans involved Rachel and Drew having an interracial romance, then having Becky Lee turn up as a bigot opposed to the relationship. He got canned before that could go.

[Khan]

 

Thank God.  It was bad enough when Leah Laiman brought back Becky Lee as a schemer, which she never was.

[Darn]

 

Thanks friend!

[EricMontreal22]

I remember the primetime OLTL had that film look (that The City used and AMC used on and off--didn't Sunset Beach at first as well?) which I hated.  And that it was particularly dreary and surely wouldn't gain new viewers.  Was that the same time that Bo was boating around with the corpse of Drew??  For some reason I have it connected in my head...

[Vee]

Nah, IIRC Drew bought it in November sweeps.

 

ETA: September, apparently. I haven't seen those eps in forever.

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks!  In my head, that stuff was *endless*

[VanessaReardon]

The Posters on here are intelligent enough to decide for themselves who to respond to. They don’t need you to dictate. 

[ghfan89]

Tina Sloan (Lillian) said that GL actually planned to put Ed/Lillian together and only the tsunami-sized backlash after Mo's death changed their minds. I can see arrogant JFP smirking and rubbing her hands and putting all this together, then cursing the fans when her ideas went up in ashes. The network or P&G must have stepped in.

[Vee]

It was obvious they had planned to put them together just in the eps I've seen surrounding the reveal. And it's obvious to anyone with a brain it would've been radioactive. How JFP didn't understand that is beyond me.

[Khan]

JFP is all about toxic and radioactive relationships.

[Skin]

 

It always shocks me how mean and punishing the deaths of Georgie and Emily are, and it feels really symbolic because of what Georgie and Emily represented to the audience, these Fairytale Princesses who were more or less ingenues that defined their time periods of the show. It still hurts and you see the impact it has even to this day. They weren't huge characters but they represented something good. Her events were good in the beginning, but those events should have been accelerants to larger story elements, not the stories in and of themselves. The thing about JFP and GH is that she slowly destroyed everything to the point where there was pretty much no show at the end of Guza and Pratt's tenure. I know Carlivati gets a lot of flack, but I actually praise him for bring back GH to a more balanced soap that actually has multitudes and dimensions of story to tell. Yes - much of his stories are questionable, but at least the canvas has been regrown from the husk that Guza and Pratt ended up with. 

 

 

I saw it as a needed sacrifice. Guza had salted and burned the entire playing field so that nothing could grow. Carlivati inherited a show that was so hollowed out that I don't think any writer could really get out of the chasm that was created by Guza. Carlivati's GH was not high art by any means, but it was a necessary evil in order to get GH to be something other than Mob Central 24/7.