James Lipton Chapter 8 Interviews with Soap Actors

[Contessa Donatella]

All of the appearances on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” are the subject of James Lipton’s book INSIDE INSIDE. He was eager to speak with all of the actors in Chapter 8 about their time working on soap operas.

Christopher Reeve, LOL

Christopher Reeve, in his wheelchair, LOVE OF LIFE, Dan Harper, “taking us back to the old touring companies” “I was in a restaurant and this woman came up to me, took a vicious swipe at me with her handbag and said, ‘How dare you treat your mother that way!'” Lipton 170.

Tommy Lee Jones, OLTL

“It was wonderful! Yeah, it was wonderful because I was able to pay rent & I could not have done those 14 plays that I did in the 7 years I lived here if I had not been on the soap.” “What else did it do?” he mused. “You know, I’d never performed for over 500 people in my life. And I remember on the first day, looking at one of the producers & saying, ‘How many people do you think will be watching us on TV today? She said about 13 and a half million. I thought WHOA! It was really hard to get your mind around that idea. It was a good way to learn to not ‘pressure up’.” “It’s kept a lot of us going, kept a lot of us alive & thank god for them. And, it’s something that happens every day, which is really really good for actors. If you believe in theatre, and you believe in acting, it’s important to the quality of cultural life that our actors stay busy. I kept auditioning for plays & the casting directors would say ‘We think you’re a really good actor, but we need more of a box office name.’ The message was ‘You’re not famous enough to get this role.’ So, my question was, ‘How do you get famous?’ And they would point to the soap opera stars who were getting jobs on Broadway.”

Lawrence Fishburne, OLTL

Lawrence Fishburne made his soap opera debut – and TV history – at the age of 11, as a member of one of daytime’s first black families. “It was incredible for me for a couple of reasons. First, because I was suddenly in the presence of real actors. Al Freeman, Jr. used to come up to me every day & go, ‘Concentrate, kid!’ Because I was goofing around. But what really impressed me was watching Tommy Lee Jones work, because Tommy Lee & I were on the same show. You’d come in, in the morning, it’d be 7 o’clock & we’d have the read-through and Tommy would just be beside himself, ripping through the pages, going ‘I can’t possibly say this!’ And he’d rewrite the things that didn’t make sense & demand that things be made clearer & that his character have proper motivation. It was something that stuck with me, that I wound up doing later on, without ever realizing that I had learned to do it there.”

Kevin Kline, SFT

Kevin Kline recalled vowing when he got to New York never ever to do either a commercial or a soap opera because they demeaned the art of acting & great acting came from playing great parts in great dramatic literature. After about 6 months of unemployment, someone said to me, ‘You know actors have to eat. That’s one of their first duties: to eat.’ I was offered a recurring role on a little thing called Search For Tomorrow at 800 dollars an episode! And it was a 6-block walk from my house. I went in at 8 in the morning, got out at 3, and then as my agent said, ‘You know you can work now, off-Broadway or on-Broadway. You can be an artist. You can support that habit by doing this work which you think is so demeaning.'”

Julianne Moore, EON, ATWT

Julianne Moore appeared on EON playing Carmen Engler, a Swiss-French girl. She was Swiss-French because they couldn’t decide where she was from. First I was French. Then they said, “Well, if her father is Swiss, maybe she’s Swiss.” So, the accent would kind of go back & forth. But it was so exciting. I was so happy. It was a job! ATWT offered Julianne an even greater challenge, “playing Franny Hughes, who was the daughter of the chief of staff of the hospital. The chief of staff always has a daughter. And she’s always in trouble.” “And on that show somebody’s always named Hughes. That was the family –.” “Yeah, that character had been born on the show. And they wanted to bring me on & make Franny Hughes bad for the first time. And it didn’t fly! People got really upset & they had to do a major character shift. For two months I was snapping at people & wearing sexy clothes & then one day I came in and all my clothes were pink & white & very demure. They just changed it. And then they spun her off into her half-sister Sabrina, who was English & wore a wig & glasses & contact lenses & all that kind of thing & I was kidnapped …” The students were laughing by now & had a profound understanding. “I had amnesia. I slept with my own boyfriend. Because he said it was dark & he couldn’t tell the difference. That was my favorite line. Yeah, the lights are off, how can you tell?” For this miraculous double role, she won an award. “I did, I won a Daytime Emmy. It was nice.”

Morgan Freeman, AW

Perhaps the last name one would associate with soap opera is the august Morgan Freeman, but he, too, put in his time, as the architect Roy Bingham on Another World, who, as Morgan recalled, “eventually got married & went off to Europeon a honeymoon & never came back.”

Salma Hayek

Salma Hayek occupied a prominent place as the eponymous Teresa in the torrid world of the telenovela in Mexico. If American audiencescome to feel they own their own soap opera characters body & soul, the Latin American audiences take it even further. “Teresa was a schemer & she was also a social climber. I was living in this house with a Professor & his sister. I had lied about my background. My mother came to visit me. I pretended she was my maid. So, I was in a restaurant with my real mother & & my family when this woman comes over to our table & takes her purse, clearly her weapon of choice, & begins to hit me with it. She’s saying, “Bad daughter! Bad daughter! You’re going to hell! It is terrible what you did to your mother–because of her background! And my mother says to this woman, “What did she do? What did she do?!” And the woman is too busy hitting me to reply. So, I said, “Wait a minute! Get a hold of yourself!” Salma described the furor when she left that adulation to begin at the bottom in Hollywood. “Why would I leave Mexico if I was doing so well?! They just couldn’t understand that I would leave a successful career in Mexico, to work in the United States as an extra. And, so, they started making up all kinds of theories: I was having an affair with the president of Mexico & we had a fight & I had to leave the country.”

Susan Sarandon, A World Apart, SFT

Susan Sarandon valued her time on a short-lived serial called A World Apart. “I thought it was great because I hadn’t studied acting & this was kind of a combination of theatre & film, because basically you’re performing live, but you’re dealing with all this equipment. On World Apart I was the one that everything happened to. I can’t even begin to tell you the things that happened to me as the character, but I learned alot & I worked with good people. Then when asked if she also was on SFT: “I did. Yeah, that was a really good one because the main characters, who’d been on for about 50 years, was being held captive in a cabin & she’d lost her sight. I was always at the Laundromat. I was always calling my mom at the Laundromat. Mostly my boy friend was the bad one. My boy friend & I were brought in to kill the guy that was keeping her captive in this cabin. And then she ran out to get help & fell off the cliff & got her sight back.” (Lipton’s suspension of disbelief is at a high level. She went on, as caught up in her narrative as we were.) “It didn’t end there. We went into town & my boyfriend became her gardener. Now there was something vaguely familiar about this guy to this woman but of course she couldn’t recognize him because she’d been blind. It ended with a big shoot-out in a kiddie park. They made the whole set. Now, the only problem was that the guy who played my boyfriend was not used to doing soaps. He was a theatre actor & it was very stressful to him to learn all these lines, you know, every day. So, in the last episode he had everyone at gunpoint. He wept throughout the entire show. And everyone thought it was brilliant. That’s when I learned about tears because it had nothing to do with what was going on. He was actually having a nervous breakdown. But they thought it was brilliant.”

Teri Hatcher, Capitol

(My exchange with Teri Hatcher on the subject of soap operas was the briefest in the show’s 12-year history.)

“You ever do a soap opera?”

“For about 2 minutes.”

“Why only 2 minutes?”

“I was fired.”

“What was the soap opera?”

“Capitol.”

“I was writing it.”

Meg Ryan, ATWT

Meg Ryan was a soap opera star of the firt magnitude on As the World Turns. When I asked her character’s name her dazzling smile appeared & she pronounced every syllable with evident pride. “I was Betsy Stewart Montgomery Andropoulos. That’s everyone I was ever married to.” (When asked to tell us about Betsy …) Meg settled into her chair, clasping her hands as she warmed to her subject. “Well–they got me on the show & they gave me like this little family tree, which is a very complicated kind of diagram of how everyone was related to everybody. It was insane. And then they said to me, in kind of hushed tones, ‘You know your mother, your real mother, died falling up the stairs.’ And I thought, ‘That’s it. She’s a complicated babe, honey.’ I mean she went up … ? (Did they ever explain it?)

“No, it was left for me to think about–for a long time. But then every time Betsy would do something totally out of character, which happened often during the writers’ strikes, I’d go up the stairs. Up, that’s right, because her mother died going up the stairs. It explained a lot, it was useful.” (Were you ever kidnapped?) “I have to defer to you. Was I?” (Well, everybody was. On a soap opera, you’re alway kidnapped eventually.”) “That’s true. True.” (And you were pregnant.) “Yes! But not by my husband!” Gripping the armrests & coming half out of the chair. “No, because he was both sterile & impotent. But he thought I wouldn’t get it, you know? Like he thought I could just …” Meg sprawled back in her chair, overwhelmed by Andropoulos’s presumption. “It was unbelievable!” (Wasn’t he also psychotic & a paraplegic?) “Yes! he was faking the paraplegia!” (Oh.) “And I was pregnant!” (Was he faking the impotence?) “I don’t think he was faking the impotence,” Meg said, with her brow knotted in serious reflection. (But then you got pregnant.) “Yes, by my Greek construction worker lover. In Spain.” (You got pregnant in Spain.) “In Spain, that’s where it happened.” (Didn’t Mr. Andropoulos end up in a jail in Greece?) “Eventually, on another remote trip. You know, the other thing that happened on the soap opera … I really fell in love with actors. It was so much fun to be around these people because everyone was so out front with all their stuff. There was such a soap opera in this studio on East Seventy-sixth Street.”

(On The Guiding Light I romanced or married everybody on the show but my mother.)

Blog 44 v2.0 Published 10-12-23

 

From <https://shallotpeelblog.org/2023/10/12/blog-44-famous-graduates-of-daytime-3/>

[Contessa Donatella]

"As long as I was on that show, I could continue to study. It was the perfect subsidy. So, why wouldn't I stay with it?" - James Lipton

"When Irna created ANOTHER WORLD, P&G said to her, 'You can't write 3 shows.' So she decided the person she trusted was me. She had 3 people she was developing -- Bill Bell, Agnes Nixon & me." - James Lipton

"By the time I began writing soap operas, I was doing another thing. It was the perfect subsidy for me. P&G was wonderful to me. They knew I was doing a musical." - James Lipton

"I did CAPITOL as a favor to John Conboy." - James Lipton

"Irna couldn't write dialogue to save her life. She had these squares. Days of the week down one side. Characters down the other side. But, boy, could she plot." - James Lipton

"You're asking too many questions about soap operas." - James Lipton

These quotes come from an Interview site, with different video clips. Unfortunately, the link & I have become separated from each other. If I find it later I will add it.

 

For some reason this offends me. I suppose it's two things. 1. Comparing Lipton to Bell & Nixon is absurd. 2. The idea that of all the people in the world Irna would've trusted HIM. 

 

[cody_1990]

I remember watching his Archive of American television interview that you quoted above specifically to hear about his time on soaps and was quite annoyed how dismissive he was about them. Soaps were part of his career for over 30 years. He worked with Irna Phillips, wrote for 7 different soaps and starred on Guiding Light for many years. In his defence, it did seem like he had a very limited time for that interview, but why give it at all if you can't deep dive into your career properly. He really wanted to focus on the TV specials he wrote and of course the actors studio. Interesting note, the acting school which he was dean of at Pace University recently announced it would be closing down due to low enrolment. Guess they aren't able to compete with other institutions.

And yes I agree, it is offensive for him to put himself in the same league as Irna, Agnes and Bill. His soap writing was subpar at best. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Wow!!! When you get going you can really sling some words! And, please know that is a compliment. In short, I totally agree. He told the interviewer at least 3 times that he was spending too much time on soaps. Yes, that was offensive!!! How could it not be? I should admit that I went into this interview site with a low opinion of him as far as being a soap writer and he said nothing to improve that opinion. If asked, I will continue to say what a good job he did as the host of Inside the Actors Studio. But, that's as far as I can go.

Also, interesting news about his educational "shop" going under.

I meant to say the reason I posted this is because I imagine not many soap fans will have bought this book & all that is contained in the whole of Chapter 8 is soap alums.

I wonder, do you think I should have included the famous questions?

 

Edited January 24 by Contessa Donatella
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