SOD 12-31-1985
Still Rachel After All These Years
The Ups and Downs of Staying on Soaps
By Joanna Coons
Imagine working the same job for twenty-five years or thirteen or ten. It's almost unheard of in today's career supermarket, where people switch jobs five times in that amount of time, but some actors on daytime soaps have spent the better part of their working lives on one show. Even as their characters changed places on the soap opera stove from front to back burner. Even when the going went form tedious to downright dull. Why do they stick it out when the rewards - steady employment in a field whose practitioners rarely work - don't always add up? Here, in their own words, is what some of daytimes most durable and prominent stars had to say on the subject.
VICTORIA WYNDHAM
Victoria Wyndham stepped into the role of Rachel Davis thirteen years ago. For half that time, Rachel was all the producer and writer promised she'd be: multidimensional and compelling. For years the love story of Mac and Rachel Cory occupied center stage. Many think those days were the best days of ANOTHER WORLD. Then, Victoria Wyndham observes, things began to change.
"We were going through producer problems. NBC had been messing around with our time slot. We were going through a revolving door of writers. It's always difficult to maintain a thread for a long-running character when one writer who carried her throughout as interesting story leaves and someone else comes in. Now writers don't have the same empathy for characters, created by other writers. Pete Lemay and I had a close collaboration in that sense. I haven't found that collaboration with a writer since.
"With this new producer there's been a concerted effort to make sure Mac and Rachel are very, very much in the background of the stories. That's very disappointing because when you're an actor you want to work. One doesn't want to come in and not do anything. (That's when) acting becomes like an office job, like a steno job. Most of the time I go into the studio not feeling like working because the material isn't feeding me. You might as well be at a Xerox machine all day.
"There's no question that you can't be a front burner storyline all the time and I was grateful when they finally developed other stories, because, for many years, it was Mac and Rachel and that was it. That's very arduous.
"One wants balance. But for the last three years, we've been used almost exclusively to hype the ratings. Every ratings sweep period, they throw us a crisis, like a bone to a dog. They're not very well written and not very well thought out, rather arbitrary and not based on character. And that's supposed to help the ratings go up. Incredibly enough, all the run-down crises they've been throwing us every sweeps period do help the ratings up just a bit. But I think that's a tribute to the loyalty of the fans because God knows, they're not being given anything. They're the dog being thrown the bone and it's a pretty meatless bone at this point. The loyalty of the fans is what makes the show run and it's embarrassing to give them such a paltry reward for their diligence.
"I've thought about leaving, but I don't think the situation for actors in my age range is very different on any other show. Look at the most successful nighttime shows: CAGNEY AND LACEY, HILL STREET BLUES, MIAMI VICE - what are the ages of those guys? They're not eighteen! Look at DYNASTY - Forsythe and a forty-year-old blonde!"
"I would like to think this problem can be corrected, but I'm pretty pessimistic at the moment. There's no question the demographics have changed. The woman of my generation is not home to watch anymore. However, she is video-taping the show now and I don't think producers take that into account. They throw out storylines for the grown-ups. I don't know what consultant from where has passed down the edict that the way they're writing my show now is the way it should be, and the ratings do not reflect that they're being very successful doing it. So, why do they continue? I think that the young people we have on our show are wonderful and I think young stories will always be needed. I just think you don't turn your back on the majority of your viewers in an attempt to catch a new demographic. Somehow daytime is appealing to some kind of moronic six-year-old. My kids at ten and twelve were smarter than these storylines. It's very frustrating. I don't understand why the people who sponsor our show let it get jerked around the way the do.
"I don't wish for the old days. I wish for the best product we can give the audience. I know wonderful writers who've had wonderful ideas and who have not been allowed to write them. I don't understand that. Writers are writers because they know something. Let them do their job! Consultants should only consult."
Part 1 of a 5-part article including Colleen Zink, Nancy Addison, Patricia Bruder and Rick Porter