He Said, She Said
By Anne Marie Allocca
AW's Victoria Wyndham and Charles Keating shed surprising light on where Rachel and Carl have been--and where they may go
Three years ago, AW's Carl and Rachel were embarking on a romantic relationship. Now, Carl and Rachel's marriage has deteriorated because of Carl's obsession with Grant Harrison, the man who murdered Carl's son Ryan. Charles Keating and Victoria Wyndham sat down with SOAP OPERA MAGAZINE to talk-- in their unique, witty way-- about Carl and Rachel and whether this marriage can be saved.
SOM: Was Rachel wrong for throwing Carl out of the house?
VW: I don't think she was.
CK: Rachel was. All the fans know it. Wyndham doesn't even agree with it: she just had to do what the bloody writers who've been fired wrote.
VW: Not at all. I think she was right. That was the only way she could make Carl --
CK: That's the only way they could separate us. That was all they could come up with.
VW: Yes, that's very true. I think in an adult relationship you don't throw out the person you've pledged your troth to. You work with them and try to overcome it. In this case she was frightened for his safety and his sanity. She certainly doesn't want to be married to somebody who's in the slammer for killing Grant. And she doesn't want to marry somebody who's dead because he fought this vendetta and got killed by Grant.
CK: It makes a very good delineation for vengeance, which Carl carries, and the desire for retribution and also the much more Christian attitude of somehow or another you've got to forgive and move on with your life. That polarity was explored. Unfortunately it could have been explored in maybe a little more depth.
SOM: Why didn't Rachel understand that Carl's obsession with Grant is because he's still mourning his son?
VW: We've had a year of seeing her try to get him over it by feeding that mourning.
SOM: If she loves him, shouldn't she be willing to understand thats an aspect of his personality?
VW: She does understand that, but she can't live with the fear of something terrible happening to him because of this obsession. I don't know of anybody who would want to live with somebody who's in danger of killing himself for somebody else. At that point you go, "Excuse me, if that's what you want to do, you must leave."
CK: Why didn't you tell him to go get therapy? You didn't say any of the obvious things. You just said, "Get out!" That's all you
said. You could have said, "Darling we've got to go into a 12-step program."
VW: He never would have done it
CK: She could have offered.
SOM: Can you explain Carl's obsession with Grant?
CK: What's there to explain?
SOM: Do you think any seemingly normal person would be as obsessed?
CK: Ask Ron Goldman's father. Ask him and you answer your own question. I would have no peace. Would you? I don't know what I'd do about it but I would have no peace. And I would have no peace no matter what I did about it; there's the rub.
VW: Nothing is going to bring Ryan back.
CK: Bingo. I thought of Goldman a fair bit.
SOM: Can this marriage be saved?
VW: Yes it can. Through love. That's how you save anything worthwhile.
CK: And a good vacation. To Rome for dispensation, a good cleansing, we'll be back in form. What else is going to happen, or could happen? I can't shack up with Donna again, can I? Since the very beginning the character has been obsessed in one way or another He went away, then came back and wooed Rachel and they've had some good times together They're certainly connected together.
VW: When you find a couple who have inspired the imagination of an audience to the extent that these two do, it would be suicide to keep them apart forever. It wouldn't ring true to the audience. No matter how long the show execs kept them apart, the audience would be writing letters saying you have to get these two back together. When you work that hard to make a relationship really fly - and we like this idea of this relationship - it doesn't make any sense and it wouldn't be satisfying to anyone, least of all us, to split them up.
SOM: Do you miss the romance?
VW: Yes, terribly.
CK: It's been three years. It's been so long, darling I don't even know what it is.
VW: He can't even find his way up to the bedroom.
SOM: Who could make Carl jealous?
VW: Who on earth could possibly make him jealous? I can't think of anyone.
CK: I personally think she has a very unhealthy relationship with Matthew.
SOM: Who could make Rachel green with envy?
VW: Whatever woman he fancied and went after. If Rachel picked any other man, it wouldn't make him jealous.
CK: Rachel, let me pick up a woman. It won't be for long.
VW: Put her down -- you don't know where she's been.
CK: I'll approach her completely clad in plastic.
VW: I also think that would be very annoying to the audience and somewhat trite and young. I think it would be interesting to explore this estrangement without doing that. It would be more adult to explore it without that. When you're unhappy with the person you've committed to, the first thing a woman thinks of is not jumping into bed with another man. She wants the man she just lost.
CK: That she just kicked out
VW: So the man she wants back is Carl. I really don't think she has anything else in mind. Also, a women of this age, she's done it been there and done that You think of that and you think, "God, what would I do if this had happened to Vicky Wyndham." I'd say, "You know what, that's it. She doesn't need a man."
SOM: Where would you like to see the characters go?
CK: We want to be in the story. And I don't want to be in a dark, miserable, painful story the darkness Maggie De Priest (AW's former head writer) was deploying over all of us.
VW: If I were watching a soap, I would not be watching it for the gloom and doom aspect. I would be watching it because of the family scenes.
CK: Yes, that overall impression of life as we must live it.
VW: That love conquers all. How we do it will be interesting. They tell us we're going to have a story -- but we're still waiting.
CK: We have a new boss and a new head writer and we're very optimistic. It's a brand new take, I don't think it's ever been done in soaps before, this story. It's a sex change. Carl is going to have a sex change. That's what' s happening. I'll be away for a few months while I get fixed up. Then I'll come back and it will be revelatory. Rachel will wake up one morning and find she's in bed with a woman. Ms. Wyndham will start growing hair and we'll switch. She'll have a ponytail and I'm going to get those pretty clothes she has.
VW: Which is what he's been coveting all along. He really coveted that nun outfit.
Soap Opera Magazine
February 11, 1997
Reprinted without Permission