Article: Soap Opera Actors & Actresses Who Simply Cannot Be Recast

[Contessa Donatella]

Well, soaps do have an absolute reputation for being able to do successful recasts. And it comes of necessity since they go on & on & on, having beginnings & having middles but for most of the time not having endings. So we have 15 Tom Hugheses, 3 adult Amanda Corys, and it is only in soaps where you have the first successful Julie Olsen be #4. I think soap Casting Directors are renowned because it's so important, happens so often & the audience has such high expectations. Soap fan reactions to recasts come in 2 speeds - racing stripe ready to go or don't even get out of the gate. And, there's lot of little twists & turns to it, too. Apparently Anne Heche almost came back & played Vicky & Marley again & only  scheduling conflicts kept it from happening. And Ellen Wheeler did come back & play Marley again. When someone got it in their head to fire Charles Keating in '98, Victoria tried to quit. NBC said fine that Robin Strasser was free & they were sure they could being her back. (So they say, anyway.)

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To be fair, I always got the impression that Charla Doherty was popular/like by viewers - she just didn't want to be there after a year. If DAYS had lasted five years and gotten released like Dark Shadows, I'm sure there are people who would've defended Julie #1 to death.

[Contessa Donatella]

Okay. Well, I'm for being fair. I didn't know that about those "other Julies"!

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Good to know. In the vintage shows I've seen again this year, August '66 I think, which are the first I ever saw of the show, when Julie was telling David to go & be a husband & a father for a yr or two & then divorce Susan & Susan was being really b*tchy, when little Dickie was still the size of a dill pickle inside her, *that* Julie was very good ... and the writing, oh, so good.

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