One On One
With AW's Victoria Wyndham (Rachel) and Charles Keating (Carl)
Carl Hutchins and Rachel Cory aren't exactly a match made in heaven. He's a dastardly creature, a man whose reputatuion for villainy is exceeded only by modern crimelords like John Gotti. Rachel, on the other hand, is known in all the proper social circles. She's an iron-willed family matriarch who wouldn't be caught dead on the arm of a character like Carl! Of course, things change. As ANOTHER WORLD fans know, these two interesting and rich characters are slowly moving towards an unseemly romantic liason. And wouldn't you know that actors Charles Keating (Carl) and Victoria Wyndham (Rachel) are having a ball watching this exciting love story unfold!
VICTORIA: I'm thrilled about (the pairing). Poor Rachel. She's been terribly lonely.
CHARLES: I couldn't agree more. He's been after her one way or another for 10 years. It all counts. I love contradictions like that; the whole idea of creating a situation where it is all possible. It's also a very exciting choice
for the audience. It's not a predictable choice; it's not a safe choice. It allows for a different kind of creativity on the show.
VICTORIA: What I love about it is how quickly the press and the fans have supported it. That made me feel very relieved because I was worried that everybody would say, "You can't do that. He's been after her all those years."
I was afraid the logic would be too much for people.
CHARLES: I try never to think about our "chemistry" together. I'm just glad it works on-screen. I also like the fact that we will be able to watch these two develop a mature love story.
Victoria's other "job" is writing screenplays, Broadway musicals and television projects...
CHARLES: They're bloody good, I'll tell you that...We had a read-through of one script; it was really exciting. I would love to get a chance to do it.
VICTORIA: You know that everything I write always has a part for you.
CHARLES: Writers! Invariably they color their characters to one degree or another with their workmates, real people, or other aspects of their lives. Writers do that a lot. That's why it's always fun to be around them, especially when you get a chance to read or participate in something they've created.
VICTORIA: And it's fabulous for the writer to actually hear the words. sometimes my collaborator (he's a dancer) doesn't understand the things I write--I tend to write very sparsely. He tells me, "Nobody is going to get
it." And I have to say, "Wait for the reading."
CHARLES: Bloody dancers!
VICTORIA: Luckily, with you I can always count on having a wonderful reading...In fact, after you read for the role, he said he couldn't imagine anyone else doing the part.
CHARLES: It's amazing what a reading can do! I remember one time I was sitting in the center aisle of the BBC rehearsal hall and everyone had been sent out for coffee. We were doing a production of "Richard III" and Gielgud (as in Sir John) was about to rehearse it for the very first time. (He pauses dramatically.) I'd never heard anything like it! To see this old man open the world up with the power of words was remarkable!
VICTORIA: You're a writer also...
CHARLES: No, I scribble. You write. You have a beginning, the middle and the end. I have fragments of little columns scattered through books that I look at and say, "Who wrote that?" Occasionally I say, "That's not bad."
VICTORIA: Poems are the hardest...
CHARLES: Oh, it's the worst, the worst. I'm a bloody poet with a broken tongue. I'm quite happy to deliver other people's poem and do them as well...
VICTORIA: That's just such an incredible gift.
CHARLES: I don't mind being the singer.
VICTORIA: It's the most wonderful high to have a good actor reading your stuff. I mean, it's up there. When I was a kid, I used to think that there was no greater high than doing a good job as an actor and knowing it, and knowing the audience got it. And you know, the audience is extraordinarily intelligent. I'm one of these who will go to my deathbed saying I don't care if the audience cannot write the English language, they are very savvy and very intelligent. Everyone knows what human beings are about. That's the only common denominator you need to have a good audience. Everyone is human and everyone knows what really motivates people. That's what makes them really intelligent. That's why it gets me so cross when the great "they" -- whoever they are -- decide that you have to write for the lowest common denominator.
CHARLES: There is an attitude across the board, which is play it down instead of up!
VICTORIA: It's not just up and down. People understand people. We're all human beings; and don't think you have to spell it out, because the audience is so much smarter than you give them credit for. I've done such obscure things on this show during the years -- things that I thought only I and my most intimate friend might understand. And I am always amazed that I get letters from people who will pick out that particular bit, something I thought nobody was going to understand. You cannot fool them.
Charles: "Our species loves stories. We're all raised on 'once upon a time.' We're more passionate about our stories than we are about sex or our children or politics or religion. We want more stories."
CHARLES: That's my reading also. Of course, there are always letters from the dear, sweet souls who all they want is an autograph and a picture. But some are so articulate, and their observations of what they saw are so on the mark.
VICTORIA: Even if they can't write the language...
CHARLES: You don't have to be a writer to understand. Back to Shakespeare for just a moment. The audience of 3,000 people who sat in the Globe Theater, they couldn't read or write; but they went out of there remembering chunks of the words and being moved by the experience.
VICTORIA: And they knew it was authentic. They knew they were seeing something that spoke to them. That's why entertainment is so old. You don't have to talk to them. That's what's so thrilling, when you make that connection with the audience. When you go into television and you lose that direct audience bond, and you have to wait for some sort of response to come in the mail, it's removing. So for me, the writing puts me back in touch with that great unknown audience. Because when you write, there's no audience. And the real reward is hearing the actors read it, and knowing that they have understood you.
CHARLES: That's the greatest need we all have: "Please understand me." In our case, it is really important to be understood, because you don't want to get in the way of the story. I was once told by my mother -- this was a couple of years ago when I was being awful to you...
VICTORIA: It was only because you really loved me...
CHARLES: My mother said to me, "Charles, I was watching television the other day and I was watching a scene with you and I suddenly said to the television set, 'Oh! You bastard!'" I thought that was amazing. She understood the story. Our species loves stories. We're all raised on "once upon a time." We're more passionate about our stories than we are about sex or our children or politics or religion. We want more stories.
VICTORIA: My theory is, we need stories to make some sort of sense out of everything. We are so bombarded with so much information, and I think that's where that childlike need comes out. That's what alarms me about
children these days, in wanting to watch these trememdously violent stories. It alarms me because they need to make sense of the uncertainty of their world, so therefore they gravitate to it.
CHARLES: I'd like to know where the demand comes from. Does it come from children or some other place?
VICTORIA: One wonders if it isn't coming from from very jaded, cynical, older people who have lost their ability to feel anything except if it's so raw and raunchy and violent; that's the only way that they can feel alive. In which case it's very dangerous, and we must stop it because the young people are killing themselves.
CHARLES: Well, there's been voices in the wilderness for 30, 40 years saying, "Hey, guys, I think television has an effect on the kids." And now more and more of those voices are bing heard. I remember when my kids were young, they would watch something on the box. Then they would act it out, like little copy cats.
VICTORIA: My children did the same thing. When they were growing up during the Vietnam war -- and they couldn't have grown up in a more pacifistic enviornment than our house -- this war fascinated them.
CHARLES: I wouldn't allow my children to have guns, having gone throught that same period...
VICTORIA: No, neither did I, and yet I finally had to give in to the guns because they were going to their friend's houses. Well, let me put it this way, they were picking their friends because they had guns, not for who the kids were. So I went out and bought all the military equipment there was. I bought real standard-issue guns -- they were plugged up -- and the kids could take them apart; they could learn how to put a gun together. But the stipulation was that they learn about the Vietnam War, and I suggested that they make their own war movie. I gave them a super 8 and a tripod and we made this epic. It went on for four or five years.
CHARLES: That's where violence belongs, on the screen. In fiction, it does not belong in our lives. We should be looking at it as we do with Robin Hood and his bunch of guys...
VICTORIA: My children didn't know how to "let's pretend." I think I knew how to pretend before I could do anything.
CHARLES: Yes, that was my first game, too.
VICTORIA: I think that was my only game. I never stopped. When I was a kid I could be a horse, a dog; I could be anything I wanted to be. But I had to teach my kids how to pretend. That was stunning to me. You know why?
Because we give it to them on television and in the movies. In my day, television was just starting; there wasn't that much to watch. I was a working parent. I had rules about watching television, but I didn't know if my household help was doing that while I was gone. So my kids grew up being force fed all this stuff. Once I taught them how to pretend, it was like...
CHARLES: They really got it, didn't they.
VICTORIA: One of my sons is a now a filmmaker. I think what's happening in society is that parents aren't taking the time to teach children to pretend. If you can do "let's pretend," you won't need to take a Saturday night special
and go out and really kill somebody. It's much more fun pretending, because you won't end up in jail that way.
CHARLES: One of the great English educationalists wrote a wonderful book called "Summerhill," and he maintains that the malady of our time is that none of us are allowed to play out enough of our childhood. What we find is that children are seriously deprived of play.
VICTORIA: I think children don't know how to play.
CHARLES: In our society play is not valued.
VICTORIA: It's like "Get that kid to their lessons!" That's what parents in my area are doing. After school, if the kids has gone to practice, lessons, practice, lessons, tutoring, work and school the next day, they don't want to play.
CHARLES: Now the kids have video games, and look what's right around the corner -- and this is going to do us in --virtual reality, when each of us can go and sit in our living room at night, put on a helmet and a pair of gloves, and drive whatever we want to drive. Have the motorcycle experience of a lifetime in your living room. Tell me, what life are you going to choose?
VICTORIA: I know. We're isolating ourselves right into a corner.
CHARLES: Right into the world of the voyeur. Instead of becoming an active agent in our behalf, we'll take whatever comes in the cassette.
VICTORIA: What the kids are accepting as acceptable entertainment is getting lower and lower.
Victoria: "The audience is so much smarter than you give them credit for. I've done such obscure things on this show during the years --things that I thought only I and my most intimate friends might understand. And I am always amazed that I get letters from people who will pick out that particular bit. You cannot fool them."
CHARLES: What are they doing now? Making a feature film of the Flintstones. I loathed and despised THE FLINTSTONES as a cartoon.
VICTORIA: Well, I hate THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES. I can't believe they made a movie out of that. I'm never going to be able to sell any of my scripts if that's what they want.
CHARLES: It's ironic, because if they came over here and said, "Oh, Miss Wyndham, Mr. Keating, there are two glorious roles in 'The Beverly Hillbillies.' Will you come look?" And, of course, just like actors, we'll look at
the script and say, "Well, maybe we can make this work!" God help us, it's true.
VICTORIA: Well, I must say that's not true about me. I've turned down an awful lot...And as far as interactive soap operas go, who cares? I read a book because I want to see what the writer had in mind. I see a movie because I want to see what the filmmaker had in mind.
CHARLES: I'm a terrible one to judge because I would ban popcorn in movie houses. What the hell, you want to eat? Got to a restaurant or stay home and eat. You want to see a movie? Watch the damn movie! You sit there with a bucket the size of a pig's trough and tall drinks...
VICTORIA: But if it wasn't for them we wouldn't have movies. That's what pays for the movies. That's the trouble. What I hate even more is how they are taking the wonderful, big theaters and splitting them up into multiplexes with a thin, thin wall between them. So they have to turn down the sound because you will hear it in the other theater. I might as well have stayed at home.
Soap Opera Update Magazine
December 14, 1993