Let's not beat
around the bush. What the hell is the problem with The Powers That Be [TPTB] at AMC? Why
do they not want Tad and Liza together when the fans are screaming for it? At least a year
and a half ago, I was told by ABC that focus groups -- God love 'em -- did not like Liza
busting up Tad and Dixie. Do the suits still fear a Tad and Liza pairing will bring down
the ratings?
First of all, I love working with Michael
Knight. He's that safe place an actor always wishes for -- a partner you know will always
hit back the ball, a partner who will always be colorful and fun and nurturing. I look
back to the time they had us together after my return, and I remember that our ratings
were actually much better than they are now. And the feedback that I got at the time was
very positive. I really didn't think there was any big hurdle from the audience's
standpoint -- there was no "Oh, look what you've done! You've gone and messed up this
great love team!" Sure, the fans were divided. There were some who were really for
Tad and Dixie and their love of a lifetime. But there were also a lot of people saying,
"He's been with her too long. It's getting boring. Being with Liza lets him show his
other colors."
And that kind of division is what a soap
should want -- it's what makes good drama, good audience involvement, good arguments.
Yes, you'd think it's what you would want.
And I don't really know why they deviated from that path. I've always had a high regard
for writers. I like to give them credit that they know better than I do where the
characters should go. They have the big tableau in mind, while I'm just thinking about
Liza, or Tad and Liza. Anyway, long after they'd pulled us apart, I had a talk with
Michael and I told him how much I missed working with him. I missed that dynamic. And I
said, "Why don't we get to work together anymore? Why don't we even have a scene
together?" And he said he had asked [TPTB] the same thing. Michael's more the kind of
person who would get on the phone and actually talk to the executives about it. And he
said the word that came back was that they thought we were "redundant," that it
didn't work to put together two characters who were movers and shakers. So I don't
know....
As far as I can tell, the audience seemed
to enjoy watching us together. I think maybe they have their ideas about the character of
Tad -- meaning the producers, the writers and the network -- and what he should be like.
Because after they deviated from our storyline, I saw that he was becoming more the
romantic guy, more the leading man. He wasn't keeping his manipulative side alive; he
wasn't delighting in adversarial moments as much. Maybe they see him more as a comedic
hero, somebody who would not love a character like Liza. I don't know the answers.
What has happened to Knight is a sterling
example of the homogenization of daytime. Tad should be a cad -- that's the appeal.
But even when a character is deemed by the
audience to have become a good person, that shouldn't necessarily mean that he becomes a
righteous person. We look at Tad now as a good guy who's fought a lot of demons, but that
doesn't mean he doesn't still have bad thoughts or that he doesn't still have the ability
to hurt people. The other thing that flipped me out was that the audience loved Liza with
Adam, too.
There was also a lot of interest in Liza
and Jake.
I didn't even get a chance to get a feel
for that one. Michael Lowry was fresh and new here, and we were still kind of getting our
sea legs when I went to lunch with [ABC Daytime chief] Pat Fili. And she was, like,
"Oh, no, no, no. We're not going to go on with that!" [She laughs.] And, indeed,
within a week it was dissolved.
Did you feel it was working?
I felt there were times that it was
definitely working.
It's so wild that you sparked with nobody
on GL but you spark with everybody on AMC.
It all comes down to the writers, truly.
It's all about what kind of gifts they want to give you. You need the material. At GL, I
was never given anything to do. If I was in a scene, I was pouring a beer, you know? Or I
was being a good friend -- I was listening to somebody else talk about their problems.
There was a little something happening with Ron Raines, but there was no time invested in
it. And you must invest time. Even at AMC with Jake, we were given two weeks of five
scenes a day -- one-on-one -- before coming to Pine Valley, so that gave us time to get
comfortable, get established, make some choices. GL was an odd situation in that I was
playing a character that neither I nor they had a clue about. No one could explain her.
And I was working with Robert Newman, who had a character -- Josh -- who was deeply
rooted. Robert had been on for a very long time; he knew what his character would and
wouldn't do. And there I am trying to figure out how Tangie fits in. And she never fit in.
Now that you've had some distance -- and a
return to a successful character -- does that GL experience seem at all surreal?
Very. It feels like some missing page in a
photo album. I know that time passed, but there's nothing to really show for it. When
people ask, "What shows have you done?," I feel like not wanting to include GL
as part of my acting repertoire because I didn't really do anything there. I got to meet
some great people -- Jerry ver Dorn, Ron Raines, Maeve Kinkead, Peter Simon -- great
actors and great people -- and it was really fun to get to know them, but I never really
felt like I belonged. I never really felt that I fit in.
Well, it was just the damnedest thing to
happen to a superstar -- yet you were calm and professional through it all. How did you
manage that? Other stars of your caliber would have copped a "How dare you f--- with
me?" attitude -- and rightly so. How did you get through it without tearing their
heads off?
I shared a dressing room with Liz Keifer,
who would sit and talk to me sometimes and say, "Well, you really must be pissed off.
It's such a shame; it's such a waste." And I would listen to this from a variety of
GL people from the get-go -- from day one I was hearing things like, "I don't
understand what they're doing with you." From day one. But I decided on something
early on: I thought, "Now, I could get very angry about this and point the finger, or
I can try to figure out why I'm really here." I mean, there had to be something
bigger than my just being brought in to be a disaster. There had to be a bigger gift than
this. I tried to look at it as if the experience was not for naught -- that there was a
reason. And I think as time went by that helped me -- I was able to look beyond what I
wasn't given.
Well, what was the gift supposed to be?
I became a much better listener when I was
there, which was something you hope for as an actor. And being on such a back burner
required me to invest more, pay more attention, find something that was worthy in every
single day. I would listen to other people's [directorial] notes and see how they would
apply them.
Marcy, c'mon! You were a huge deal when
you went to that show. You were a highly respected Emmy Award winner. You are one of the
best listeners in the business. And one of the most giving actors. You didn't need to
learn that lesson.
I didn't need the GL experience, let me
tell ya that. Because it broke a lot of illusions that I still held dear in my heart. You
come to believe in fantasies -- you believe people when they say that they like you, that
they respect your work. You believe that people whom you once trusted would always stay
the same -- and that's not the case. Life changes people, experience changes people. A lot
of my illusions were cracked when I went through that experience. I didn't need to go
there. And I look back on it and I say it was not a good experience, but I'm grateful that
I was able to not see it as a tragedy. Listening to you say the things you're saying, I
feel embarrassed or humble by how I approached it, but it was good that I was able to do
that. Because otherwise it could have been just torture.
And things like that help you appreciate
the good times.
I saw Nancy Grahn at the recent Emmys, and
we both just stood there and looked at each other and went, "Miss it, don't
you?" -- meaning Santa Barbara. We were on cloud nine with that show. And it's only
through the experiences I had at GL that I can look at something now so far away as SB or
even so close as AMC and go, "Thank you, God." Sometimes it takes experiences
like that to bring you to your knees and make you go, "All right, maybe I wasn't as
thankful as I should have been."
I still don't understand why you even came
back to daytime to begin with. After SB -- even during it -- you had very encouraging
success in prime time. Maybe Palace Guard wasn't a hit, but it was your own series. You
did numerous pilots, many highly rated movies of the week, all in a very short period of
time. There was every indication in the world that there was a healthy future for you in
prime time -- the kind of indication other daytime refugees only dream of.
The whole nighttime thing reminded me that
I do not enjoy auditioning. I enjoy acting. I've never been a fan of dressing up in a big
black suit in 98-degree L.A. weather, going into a room and trying to strut my stuff for a
director or producer by reading a scene with somebody's assistant who could care less
about how they read the material. The whole experience rubbed me the wrong way. It's all
about the process, not the work -- it's about what you look like, it's about going to the
right cocktail parties. I don't enjoy it.
But, Marcy, the right job -- the one that
could have led you out of all that auditioning hell -- might have been just around the
corner! You might have wound up in The X-Files or something else spectacular. You even had
a CBS development deal, right?
True, and there's nothing saying that all
that's dead to me. I don't feel I've crossed over that bridge and then burned it behind
me. I would love to do those other things. But at the time of my development deal, I
remember looking at the list of CBS projects that were available to me and there was only
one -- Nick's Game, with Richard Grieco -- that had a strong woman. And I remember the
people at CBS saying to me, "If you don't take this one, there's nothing else."
And I remember thinking, "I really hate being in this position: Do the part of the
chick lawyer who chases after the cool guy -- or be paid off and do nothing at all."
Well, I don't want to be paid off, I want to do the work. And I had it much easier than
actresses without development deals -- it put me in the game without having to do a
Riverdance to be seen. But there's nothing about a development deal that says the material
is actually going to be any good.
If it was all so bad, why do you suggest
prime time is still a possibility for you? If you couldn't handle it when you were young,
why would you do it in your late 30s or your 40s or 50s? If you're happy just to be
working, why not stay on AMC for the rest of your life and be Ruth Warrick? I even read in
one of the soap magazines that you're moving from Connecticut into New York City to be
closer to work.
That's not true. I want to move closer but
not into the city -- it's an unfair thing to do to my son, Taylor, who has never
experienced the city. There are a lot of kids who are born and raised that way and do
fine, but Taylor has never been in that kind of environment. And, at 8 years old, I think
he deserves better than to be shocked by a mother who becomes an eternal nag: "Don't
point! Don't talk to that man! No, don't even look at him! Watch out for that cab! Watch
out for that bus!" Raising him in the city, I'd become this endless loop of magpie
nagging. There is no way I'd do that to him.
So it's possible AMC could be it for you
forever?
Well, I don't think so. I'm more than
happy to be here. "Happy" sounds so trite -- like something you'd say about a
mint on your pillow. I am thrilled to be here. I get to work with great people. I'd like
to work with Michael Knight more, and there are things storyline-wise I'd like to see
happen, but those are just choices. I would like to try my hand at producing and
directing. I know a lot of people say that. It's become very commonplace. But I really
think I would be good at it because I understand the machinations. I understand what needs
to be given to a crew. I know the tender things actors need, the things that'll help them
feel supported.
Are you actually talking to the suits
about this?
Actually, I haven't [agreed to] re-sign,
even though we've been talking.
You came with a two-year contract -- has
it been two years already?
It'll be two in August, if you can believe
it! The time has flown. So we've been negotiating back and forth, and one of the first
things I said was, "This doesn't have to be some big ol' deal, but during the course
of this next [contract period], I would like to be given the chance to direct -- an
episode, or some scenes or a screen test or something." And the guy in business
affairs told me that no one, to his knowledge anyway, had ever asked for that, and he
thought it would be cool and he'd go to the big suits and say, "What do you
think?" And evidently the word came back that they would love to be able to give me
that opportunity but they did not want to put it in writing because it would set
precedent. Also, they said they were afraid of what would happen if I was better at that
than at acting. They were afraid they might lose me. Well [laughs], I probably believe the
first part more than I do the second. But it's awfully nice for them to say those things.
Sounds like a bunch of hooey to me.
Well, I do know John Loprieno had a deal
with One Life to Live when they were really wooing him to stay.
What about James DePaiva? He directed,
too, didn't he?
Maybe it was DePaiva I'm thinking of. I
don't know. But maybe under our current regime, that just wouldn't be acceptable.
After that whole Guiding Light mess, how
could you possibly work for Jill Farren Phelps if she took over AMC?
I have heard from [she names source but
requests it be kept off the record] that she is definitely coming here.
Do you feel...?
[She interrupts.] A sense of fear.
I was going to say, do you feel what
happened at GL could happen here? Over there you were new; at AMC you're firmly
established. You are one of the ones who drives this show. It's hard to imagine that it
could happen again. Now, feel free to be very careful how you respond to this: Your
no-character, no-storyline situation at GL could have changed in a heartbeat if JFP had
wanted it to change. She could have very easily ordered that you be moved to the front
burner. The whole thing seemed very personal.
It was never going to be [front burner],
and I knew that soon after I got there. I was a ticket. A tactic of negotiation. I was a
game piece.
How so? So JFP could get A Martinez?
No, [so JFP could get] a new contract.
"I'll bring this gun in and it'll change everything around."
I see. In other words, bringing in a
superstar like you would help fix what was wrong with the show at the time.
But you know what? I'm not foolish to
believe that there's only one person who does that -- everybody does it [in this
business]. So I don't want to blame her for that, but I think that it was unfortunate that
it was never remedied. When I heard that she might be coming here... I still have the
greatest respect for her because I think she is one of the best, if not the best line
producers I've ever worked with. In terms of a line producer capacity, she's brilliant.
Yeah, but you can damn well bet that if
she came to this show, it wouldn't be as a line producer. She'd be the big cheese. The
exec producer, baby!
I don't know even to this day what exactly
the description of an executive producer is, but I know when I feel like somebody does it
well.
Back to my earlier question, isn't the GL
situation less likely to happen at AMC because of what you've established? You're really
entrenched here -- not just for the last two years but historically.
Some people's tactic is that they can't
work with what's on the canvas. So I can only hope that if things do change here and
somebody [new] does come in, maybe, like you said, I have rooted myself so much that they
can put me down a different path and I'll still be who I am. Maybe I won't be mutilated to
the point where I would become a nothing. Liza is too strong to become a nothing. And it
certainly would be very obvious if that started to happen. During these two years at AMC,
I've been given the chance to do what I've wanted to do all along, to work. I don't have
to be tap dancing out in front all by myself. I just want to do good work with talented
people. But if that changed because of any shift that happened here [she chooses her words
carefully]... I would just be traumatized. It would be the thing that would make me
extremely sad and angry. It would be the thing that would drive me from this medium.
Did you see yourself on A Daytime to
Remember?
Yeah, I did.
Well, for years you've told me you didn't
know what you were doing in those early days -- that you were just young and raw and
floundering. But I saw you on ADTR and said to myself, "That child knows exactly what
she's doing!"
[Laughs.] I was surprised, too!
Girl, you are foolin' nobody!
It's funny you would say that. It's hard
to view your own work. But I watched those reruns with Liza and Tad, and looked in my
18-year-old eyes and I saw truly honest work. It made me think, "OK, Marcy, don't
underestimate what God gave you. What you have didn't just spring up out of nowhere. Even
at 18, there was an honest quality to your work -- give yourself that compliment." I
look back on it, and let me tell ya, some of those scenes weren't bad. The fashion's a
little off, but...
There was also a real sense of you people
flying by the seat of your pants. There was a wild abandon to the work, an electricity
that seems to be missing today.
Yes! There was this totally crackling
energy in everything everyone did. It's missing now because we've gotten into writing 46
slow minutes of daytime every day. Back then, I don't ever remember doing six- or
eight-page scenes like we do now. You have to arc a scene much more slowly when you have
that much dialogue. You can't just hit the wall and keep screaming for eight straight
pages. You wind up having to do a slow volley. Back then, we did three-page scenes, which
meant you had to hit fast and hard. We don't do that anymore. Also, the storylines then
were very character-driven. We're now more incident-driven, and we do a lot of recapping.
Everyone becomes extremely dry. You just wind up posing an attitude. You vogue your way
through scenes. You know what you said about flying by the seat of your pants? Santa
Barbara had a lot of that. No one really knew where we were going, and there was really
nothing to lose. Your ass was always on fire. There is a stagnation, a plodding thing
about the medium now that comes from a sense of security -- a security that's also the
reason we love it. In soaps, you can play a character for seven or eight years, and if you
do it long enough, you become secure that your character -- like some astrological body --
will rise up twice a year in a big way and then disappear. And that makes you just sail --
that's the problem right there. How can you fly by the seat of your pants if you are
comfortable? It's just not gonna happen.
And you can't fly that way alone. Doesn't
it have to be a communal thing? You can't do it if your costars aren't.
I don't know about that. Justin Deas does.
He flies by the seat of his pants, and has his ass on fire every day of the week and it
doesn't matter if everyone is along for the ride.
Yeah, but that can also come off as
self-indulgence. If you're not in synch with your partner, it gets off balance. On those
Daytime to Remember episodes, everybody seemed to be in it together, everybody was carried
by the same energy -- and that's what makes you pay attention. It's like when you're
channel-surfing and you accidentally click on one of those Mexican soap operas that look
cheap and tacky and horrible but you are forced to stop and check 'em out because they are
riveting. They are wild and scary and weird and electric and you absolutely must stop and
watch!
Have you noticed that there seems to be a
lot more turnover in the higher echelons of daytime? It seems some shows change executive
producers and head writers every year or sometimes a few times a year. And there's a
trickle-down factor that creates a ripple of fear among the actors. Is the new boss going
to fire me? Will he or she find me uninteresting? But if you'll notice during those times,
everybody's work gets a lot more focused. It's a little more out there. The fear brings a
transfusion of energy.
Why didn't this industry learn a
lesson from the success of Cruz and Eden, a happy, married couple who remained interesting
for years? All too often, we hear that old "Marriage on soaps is the kiss of
death" baloney. Everybody seems to buy into it -- and it cripples the storytelling.
True, you and A Martinez did have a couple of plot twists thrown your way that kinda made
one puke, but generally speaking, you went for years as a love team with great dignity and
riveting, highly romantic story. You proved it's possible -- so why no copycats?
People want to clone the shows that have
the hot numbers. It's all about ratings. ER is hot, so we see every network try a medical
show. But they don't look beyond the ratings to identify and understand a hit show's real
appeal. They don't open it up, they don't look for the dynamics that make the audience
watch. Maybe it's not the setting. Maybe it's the actors or the relationships or the tone
and style of the writing or the lighting, or maybe it's the intimacy of the camera work. I
used to love watching thirtysomething, just because it felt like I was sitting there with
them. I know a lot of people who hated that show, but I felt it was just for me. I felt
like I was listening to private conversations. And that's what SB did with Cruz and Eden,
but I'll be damned if anybody went off and tried to replicate it -- they didn't see that
as a dynamic that people wanted, because the numbers weren't great.
What's going on romantically with you in
real life? Are you still with that guy?
Yeah, Robert Primrose. We've been together
for over four years.
What does he do again?
He's a sound man. He does Spin City. So in
a way we're both Disney employees.
So it's going good?
It's going great.
So how come you haven't gotten married?
I did. Three years ago.
You did? Three years ago? Am I out of the
loop here? How come I haven't read about this?
I haven't really talked much to [the
press] for a very, very long time. I've always found it pretty boring to see people on
talk shows or in magazines who really don't have anything to say but they keep parading
themselves anyway. I've clammed up for a very long time because, well, what am I going to
talk about -- the fact that I have nothing to say?
Did you keep a lid on this marriage
because your past marriages and romances were too heavily reported?
No. I'm OK with that. I've made my
mistakes and I've learned from them. I don't think I made good choices. I never knew what
I was doing. I didn't have a capacity for honesty or fairness or even a sense of
perspective in a relationship. I got involved with boyfriends way too early. It went too
fast. I was just too ready to dive right in. No one ever educated me to go slowly. I was
always at breakneck speed. Because I've considered myself to be one of the many
thoroughbreds in this business, I felt I had to run at that same clip in my personal life.
But you can't run when you don't know how to crawl.
On the subject of your many romances,
Bronson Pinchot recently told Movieline magazine that you broke up with him by leaving his
engagement ring on his windshield wiper. Sounded kinda cold, Miss Marcy! Will you respond
to this on the record?
Well... yeah. When I broke it off, he left
this box of clothes on my doorstep with every sock and every pair of underwear that I'd
ever bought him, every scrapbook thing, every napkin, anything that [reminded him of our
relationship] was placed in a big box with this note. He asked me to give back his ring.
But he didn't want to see me again. I didn't know where he was staying but I saw his car,
so I left the ring with a note on his car.
How do you feel about him sharing it with
the press?
Well, he never did share it with the
press. This happened in 1983, '84. He never said anything about it before. I can't believe
he'd say it all these years later. He must be pretty comfortable with his success to come
pickin' on me. Because, the fact is, I love Bronson. I think he's an incredibly talented
man. Very, very funny. And I'm very sorry if I broke his heart. [At that point] even I had
gotten to the age where I knew that some things were fantasies and some things weren't.
[Our relationship] was never to be real. And he knows that. He was living with me in L.A.
when he auditioned for Beverly Hills Cop. I'm the one who told him to use the accent of
the makeup artist we had when we made the movie Hot Resort -- Lily was her name. I just
can't believe all these years later that he came back to pick on me. I guess I'm sort of
an easy target.
You mentioned being a thoroughbred. How do
you feel when you see one come on AMC? Kim Zimmer, bless her heart, recently admitted in
one of my Q&As that she's very jealous of Cynthia Watros and all the attention she's
getting.
If you're a thoroughbred, and there are a
lot of them in this medium, and you see Secretariat come along -- someone who's gorgeous
and a great actress -- it can push a lot of buttons. But, hopefully, you can get past that
and feel lucky that you've got someone to work with who can stride at the same great
distances that you can. It's hard to get past the physical beauty sometimes, but hopefully
you have enough grace inside of you to sit back and be thrilled.
And it could be worse.
There's nothing like working with someone
who's slower than you are -- or running in the opposite direction.
Do any of the young ones in soaps remind
you of you when you were just starting out?
The young people now are not as young, as
raw, as we were back then. I was 17 when I started acting. I look at the really great
young actresses -- like the young girl from General Hospital, Kimberly McCullough -- and
see a poise, a graciousness I know I didn't have. I was very naive, very lost, and I
haven't quite found anyone in this industry that was that young, plucked out of the middle
of nowhere. Vince Poletto [AMC's Tanner] was close, because he truly was completely lost.
He was in great fear all the time. He didn't know what hit him. He was the closest I've
seen to my own situation. I really felt bad for him because I knew that fear he was
feeling, that horrible fear that will paralyze you the minute you get to the soundstage.
He had dry mouth. He was filled with questions but he could never ask them, and that's a
terrible place to be.
Nowadays, everything in the soap world is
reported to death -- and beyond. That wasn't the case when you were starting out. Would
that additional pressure have made it even more difficult for you?
I got to see that whole media thing
through the eyes of Larry Lau and Kim Delaney, because they were the huge hot couple here.
I was just the one on the outside who created all the manipulations. And I remember them
doing photo session after photo session, interview after interview. They were just
splashed everywhere and they used to really dig it -- and I remember feeling very envious
because I wasn't a heroine, I wasn't someone everybody loved. Everybody hated me. They
weren't asking for pictorials of fun little days in the park with me! And being as young
as I was, it hurt that no one liked me.
Did you use that in playing Liza?
I'm sure I did. It really hurt that I
didn't feel acknowledged. Then I remember that third year when I got nominated for an
Emmy, and none of them did [she lets out a wicked, Cruella DeVil-type laugh]. Ah,
redemption is mine!
Back then there were no Emmy categories
for young actors, and the nominations usually went to the old pros, the big stars, so it
was rather cheeky for a young one like you to be honored.
It was a big deal. Even then I knew that.
All those feelings of not belonging, all that envy didn't matter after I was nominated
because what really mattered was what my peers had said about my work -- that it was
excellent. Getting nominated told me that all the things I thought the business was about
wasn't really what it was about. It was about the work. And I've always carried that with
me.
You were the leading lady of Santa
Barbara. On AMC, Susan Lucci is clearly queen. Do you miss being No. 1?
No. I miss A [Martinez]. I know that we
were the No. 1 focus all those years. People really loved that couple, we had volumes of
good stories, we were the first two anyone wanted to photograph. I know all that to be
true. But if you sifted it all down, the most precious part wasn't the recognition, the
magazine covers, the Emmy, it was what I got to do every day with A. I could be in the No.
1 spot at AMC, and it wouldn't be as magical and precious or as satisfying. Susan is the
foundation of this show, and nobody thinks differently. That's not my place, and I'm happy
that's not my place. I had that, and I had it where I was supposed to have it.
Would you be nervous about a reunion with
A? Expectations would be very high.
It always made me a little nervous. It was
nerve-racking because it was... perfect. I think it would be scary at first, but then it
would be right. Like a big hug from a relative you hadn't seen in a really long time. I
have to tell you that it kinda rubbed me the wrong way that he went to work on Profiler
with another Walker.
Huh? You're kidding, right?
I know it sounds silly. I read articles
that said "Martinez to join Walker on Profiler" and I know that people assumed
it was A Martinez and Marcy Walker, not Ally Walker. What does NBC do? Walker-Martinez,
Martinez-Walker. Now, I love Ally, and Ally knows I love Ally. I'm a big fan of hers -- we
were on SB together -- and I was thrilled for A that he was back at the network [that
aired SB]. But it really rubbed me the wrong way.
Are you saying NBC intentionally tried to
fool the fans?
I don't know. Maybe. I'd only be
hypothesizing but, who knows? Maybe. I thought, "Wait a minute. If anybody is gonna
cash in on this, it should be us!" A was on one of those talk shows where they have
some surprise guest call in -- which was me -- and I nailed him on it. [She laughs.] I
said, "What are you doing working with that other Walker?"
Last question. Emmys. Many were surprised
you didn't get nominated this year.
Why do you think that is?
Why do I think you didn't get nominated?
Yeah.
I don't know. I can never make any damn
sense out of the Emmy nominations, and it's foolish to try. My question is this: Even
though you have already won one, is it important for you to keep winning? Does an actress
need that validation every five or six years to keep reminding the audience and the
industry that she is still a contender?
It would be nice to be able to do that. I
don't know if the Powers That Be consider Emmys evidence that you're the best of the best.
Louise Sorel has never won an Emmy -- never been nominated -- and you would never discount
her value, because she's brilliant, she's a miracle. Then there are people who've won
Emmys because maybe they had one good year. So if the people who hire and fire think the
Emmy is important, then, yeah, it's important to win one every few years. As the years go
by, I see the same people being nominated, the same group every single year, and it
becomes like an old boys' club. They may be the best of the best, but do they have the
work this year?
So did it bother you not to be nominated?
No. I would love to be nominated again.
But I think it maybe takes time for people to know what kind of work you do. I haven't
done a lot of press. Maybe it's the press that gets you the nomination.
Yeah, like that publicity whore Justin
Deas?
Well, I guess that busts that theory! I
would love to be nominated again, to be in the running and win for this character. When
Disney bought ABC/CapCities a year or so ago, the first thing you wanted to do was come
out and do your little dance and show how worthwhile you are. You want to let those people
know they're not paying you these big sums of money to be going, "Uh, can I have a
different purse? Liza wouldn't use this one." You want them to know the audience
likes you, regardless of your age, but especially when you get older and start to get
pushed into those kinds of stories where you become somebody's mother. You need to remain
vital. You need to be validated. You need the Emmys, or at least to be nominated for them.
I saw Jess Walton after the Emmys. It mattered to her to win that. I was thrilled for her.
There was that look of relief on her face, the look that says "Look what everybody
said to me tonight! All the work I've done for all these years has accounted for
something!" We want to be told that we're loved and cherished and valuable -- no
matter what age we are. I would like to win an Emmy for playing Liza. My other one's
getting a little tarnished. |
