The Suds Report - Jan22/10

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SUDSIEST QUOTES OF THE WEEK:
“Because they asked! I’m easy. I’d never done a soap. And they killed me off — it took me four days of overacting to die.”
—National treasure Betty White to AOLTV.ca on her daytime gig
Translation: On B&B, overacting is a requirement.

“I love being the best show. I don’t want to be called, ‘The Best Show You’re Not Watching.’”
—One Life head writer Ron Carlivati in a feature interview with Soap Opera Digest
Translation: Damn TVGuide.ca!

“We put all of our stock into ratings [laughs]. Ratings are far and away the most important thing, but I don’t think it’s necessary to point out that we’re not the No. 1 show. Because when we were No. 2 and sometimes the No. 3 show, nobody pointed it out then.”
—One Life executive producer Frank Valentini speaks out in the same Digest interview
Translation: When we were No. 2 and 3, I was 12 years old! (And yes, we did point it out, Frank).

“I don’t think people should be worried. Our commitment is there. There are no secret plans to cancel the show hidden in a drawer somewhere.”
—ABC Daytime President Brian Frons “thinks, but isn’t sure” when Soap Opera Digest asked him about rumours that the net is considering cancelling One Life
Translation: I hide all that information in my glove compartment.

“For me personally, I always wanted to meet Angelina Jolie, but I don’t really see that as serving the needs of our audience, so I would have to go with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, so that the audience and I were both happy.”
—Frons continues to prove he needs therapy in the same Digest interview
Translation: But with our luck, we’d probably have to settle for Jennifer Aniston.

OLYMPIC PROGRAMMING
Will the Winter Olympics affect your soap lineup? Yep!
While Suds isn’t sure how DAYS will be affected in the States when NBC airs the Winter Olympics, official Canadian broadcaster CTV tells Suds that their daytime lineup will move to A while they air non-stop sports coverage from Vancouver beginning Feb. 12. CTV's lone soap, The Bold and the Beautiful will find a temporary home at A during the icy event until March 1.

SO LONG SPRINGFIELD New events announced Where’s Ellen Wheeler? Liz Keifer, Bradley Cole, Justin Deas, Grant Aleksander, Beth Chamberlin, Kim Zimmer, Marcy Rylan, Daniel Cosgrove, Robert Newman, Jerry ver Dorn, Jessica Leccia and Michael O’Leary will be appearing on March 7 at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. For tickets and more information surf over to www.celebrityeventsgroup.com or call 1-866-364-0330 to purchase tickets securely. And if you still haven’t gotten your GL fix, Mike Gold announced that he’s also organized a cruise, So Long Springfield at Sea (sadly, there’s no stopover in San Cristobel). Fans will cruise aboard the Carnival Glory, departing July 31, 2010 through Aug. 4, 2010 from New York. With stops in St. John’s and Halifax, this is a fantastic end-of-summer treat. Mohegan Sun will be giving away one cabin for two to one lucky fan.

Just the fact that Brian Frons would hire one of the most maligned writers in the business, a man who is directly responsible, along with his executive producer Ellen Wheeler (formerly Cindy on AMC), for destroying the oldest show on TV, Guiding Light, is mind-boggling considering the myriad of talent available for hire out there. Daytime is the only industry that will recycle a failure over and over again. I’m beginning to think that Kreizman is hung like a horse or something. To put this into perspective, this will be the Emmy winner’s third soap opera he’s penned in less than one year! Um, maybe that should tell you something, Brian! Oh, and the fact that the last two sudsers he penned were cancelled! In related news, Frons is courting former President George Bush to play Erica Kane’s new love interest!

The ABC Daytime president defended his decision by promising, “David and Donna are the perfect team to bring new ideas to All My Children while remaining true to its core by telling stories with a focus on the integrity of the show's history, its characters and families on the canvas.”

Considering Frons’s last three head-writing appointments, I don’t believe a word that comes out of this guy’s mouth. Wasn’t this the same company line he dished out about Chuck Pratt, Esensten/Brown and Megan McTavish, too? Hey, at least AMC’s PR department got off easy. All Michael Cohen had to do was cut and paste Kreizman and Swajeski (who I like) into ABC’s spin-cycle.

Not that Kreizman is the worst writer in the world, but from a PR standpoint, it’s shocking that ABC would put their company in this precarious situation, considering many GL fans are furious with the writer. Thanks to Lorraine Broderick serving as interim head writer, the show will more than likely improve initially when Kreizman takes over. But knowing Kreizman’s track record, after one year, it’s all downhill. And the fact that Stephanie Gatschet is toiling on AMC these days ... well, be very afraid, soapers.

The only ray of light in this dark news is that One Life will continue to outshine Frons’s second favourite soap child.

So why Kreizman and Swajeski? A high-level source tells Suds that it may not have even been Frons’s decision! “This was Barbara Bloom’s doing,” claims the insider. “She should get an agent fee for securing all this work for David. Barbara tried to place him on the other CBS soaps, but no one wanted him. After that failed, Barbara called her best friend, Julie Hanan Carruthers, who agreed to hire him. Barbara is running ABC more than people think thanks to her relationship with Julie.”

The insider also reports that producer Lisa de Cazotte, who was rumoured to have been hired to replace Carruthers, did not quit. “She was fired,” claims the mole. “She would have moved to L.A. to continue her AMC gig.”

However, Carruthers is skating on thin ice. “If this appointment doesn’t work, Brian will fire Julie, who lobbied for Brian’s friend Chuck Pratt to be fired so quickly,” says the source.  Well, at least Carruthers did something right for once.

Thankfully, Swajeski is a part of his new head-writing equation. The former Another World scribe says, “Working with Agnes Nixon was a highlight of my career. My first job in soaps was as Director of Daytime at ABC. I was assigned to, among other soaps, AMC. I remember sitting next to Agnes in meetings and marveling at how she always went right to the heart of scenes. How she brilliantly crafted the dreamers, the strivers, the connivers, the heroes — so that we loved every one of them. At times, Pine Valley was more real to me than Manhattan. I was lucky to learn how to tell story at the feet of a true master.”

Prove it, Donna.

As The World Turns, Global/CBS — A star is born!
• Gossip Girl’s Valentina deAngelis has been cast as Holden and Lily's daughter, Faith. The soap decided to SORAS the role vacated by Ashley Marie Greiner in December.

• Pity the fool who dares to date Paolo Seganti and his wife Carlotta Chang’s new daughter! The happy couple welcomed the newest addition to their family on Dec. 20. Daughter Lucia was born at 12:13 a.m. Insiders tell Suds she’s already breaking hearts.

• Talk about a short-term commitment! Sarah Wilson will be assuming the role of Liberty when Emmy-nominated actress Meredith Hagner leaves the cancelled soap. Wilson is said to air sometime in March.

• File this under weird. The Redding Pilot is preaching that World Turns went on location to shoot Alison and Casey’s wedding (puke!) at the local First Church of Christ, Congregational in Connecticut. Redding’s own Colleen Zenk Pinter suggested the location when “a regime change” dictated a new location (what does that mean?). Apparently, “[World Turns] had already shot weeks and weeks in the bell tower in a beautiful white church,” Pinter told the website. When TeleNext needed to switch locations, Pinter said, “I’ve got the church for you.” So will we have to endure Casey and Alison’s wedding for weeks? No, we won’t —  the nuptials will only air over two shows on Feb. 15 and 16. Whew!

The Bold and the Beautiful, CBS/CTV — Desperate Emmy winners!
• You know who Sarah Brown reminds me of? Sopranos and Desperate Housewives star, the uber-talented Drea De Matteo. (She'd make a fierce Carly on GH. And don't the two spitfires look alike, too?) Yep, that’s all I have for you this week, my incestuous soap kids. The good news? The show is earnestly and gradually regaining my attention again. For now.

• OK, I lied. Congrats to Brad Bell’s most overexposed Logan, Jennifer Gareis, who is expecting a bambino!  Gareis and her fiancée Bobby Ghassemieh will welcome their own little honey bear, a boy, in early summer 2010.

Days of our Lives, NBC/Global —  Project video!
• Perhaps the DAYS cast should take over Conan O’Brien’s late-night talk show. On the heels of Molly Burnett and Casey Diedrick’s music video spoof, DAYS released another hilarious online offering. A source informs Suds that this after-school project was just a small clip of a longer video, which played at the soap’s Christmas party last year. Memo to DAYS — I want to see the entire thing, damn it! You bitches are funny.

• Is there a lap dance in it for us, too? Daytime’s least-known actor (ha!) Crystal Chappell will appear on The Bonnie Hunt Show, which is strangely in DAYS’ pocket, this Monday. Her entrance? Sliding down a fire pole.  No joke. But there are several punchlines in this story …

• Digest mistress Stephanie Sloane interviewed Renee Jones in one of their best issues to date. The back-burnered Jones wants more story — but she’s happy just to be a part of the show. “Something deep in my soul right now just doesn’t want to work more,” says the talented actress. Bite your tongue, Renee! Who else is dying to see Daniel and Renee’s black-and-white anatomy together in a medicine closet? • There is something called bad publicity. Star Magazine is reporting that Rihanna's possible new boyfriend, Los Angeles Dodgers star Matt Kemp, has a violent history of his own seeing that his former girlfriend, Felisha Terrell (ex-Arianna), filed a restraining order against him in 2008. In the papers, Terrell claimed that she suffered “constant verbal abuse and threats.” Or was she talking about Ken Corday?

• Turns out that James Franco is a soap fan. But he clearly wasn't watching One Life if Franco chose GH! He tells New York Magazine, “If I wasn’t watching my VHS copy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or Whoopi Goldberg’s movie Jumping Jack Flash — because those were the only two movies we had the foresight to record — I guess I was watching soap operas.” The film hunk confirmed that his GH stint will be a part of his yet-to-be-confirmed performance-art show at Deitch Projects’ Long Island City space this spring — which may air on GH!

Franco adds that he’s a better man for working on a soap. When the Milk star recently auditioned for the role of Aron Ralston, the real-life trapped hiker who amputated his own arm with a pocket knife in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire follow-up, 127 Hours, the director asked him to quickly memorize and deliver his audition speech, and Franco nailed it. “Because I had just done GH, where I was doing 77 pages a day, I can memorize like that,” he said snapping his fingers. “I have to give credit to GH being able to memorize like that, and I got the part,” he says. No word if he also managed to make out with Steve Burton.

• Congratulations are in order for Greg Vaughan and his wife, Touriya, on the birth of their new son, Cavan Thomas (hot name, by the way) on Jan. 19. When asked for comment from ABC, a rep said, “Who is Greg Vaughan?” Oh, I kid ...

• Perennial Emmy pre-nom and Emmy winner, Nancy Lee Grahn, won’t be competing for a statue this year. And I support her decision. More actors, who don’t have the material to compete, should follow her lead. The soap vet tweeted, “I have politely declined [to be] put on the Emmy ballot once again ... unless they add a best daytime twitteress catagory!” If NATAS still refuses to introduce a much-needed guest star category, I doubt it, Nancy! And that sound you hear? Kelly Monaco buying her Emmy dress!

Gotham, gothamtheseries.com — The Shriner’s Club
• Did you miss GH superstar Kin Shriner’s debut on Gotham? Here it is! After viewing the eppy, then read my interview with the Daytime Emmy-nominated soap-hopper here.

One Life To Live, ABC — Bob Guza would be proud!
• This just in — I’m still madly in love with Amanda Setton, who proves there really is a god and that perfection exists!

• Remember Viki and Tina’s Asian babysitter on One Life? Bring her back to take care of Bree! And Jessica.

• Someone named Taylor Gildersleeve (ex-Sydney, AMC) has been cast in the recurring role of Leah — a possible Starr-Cole interloper. Her character will probably have cancer and have a mortgage to pay.

• Instead of sending me blessings, critters, hugs, chocolates, and kisses on my Facebook account, why don’t you people send One Life an audience instead?

• Robin Strasser revealed on her titular hotline that One Life is in the process of figuring out a long-term story featuring Tuc Watkins while he’s on his Desperate Housewives hiatus. The Emmy winner reminds fans that Watkins and Gina Tognoni shared some pretty fierce chemistry back in the day. FYI — Strasser’s phone number is 212-414-5300.

• Loyal Suds and One Life fan Dean Blake is as equally obsessed with the best show on daytime as I am. But Florencia Lozano should consider seeking a retraining order after she reads his rave on her performances recently (Setton and Lozano could get a two-for-one deal). Blake offers, “One look said it all -- Téa tries to say goodbye, Todd tugging on her arm, Tea physically resisting as she purrs, “Tooodddd”, and yet she can’t quite leave, despite her best intentions. These reunion scenes the week of Jan. 14 were some of the best I’ve witnessed in ages.”

He adds, “One unique element of their relationship is how vulnerable Todd lets himself be with Téa. Also, I love how he’s opened his heart and soul to her by letting his guard down (and creating some poignant confessionals shortly before their wedding). In the process, Téa smooths out the edges of Todd, maybe more so than some people would prefer. That’s what great chemistry can do — derail any story on the page.

What captivated me about these scenes was how the writers stayed true to the characters — this was not a lovey-dovey, happily-ever-after climax — without draining the romantic aspects entirely. Trevor St. John's brooding anti-hero Todd and Florencia’s brainy, feisty yet flawed Téa achieve a push-and-pull dynamic reminiscent of Stanley and Stella from A Streetcar Named Desire (with Lozano portraying a much smarter version of Stella, of course!). However, as we all know, the mind doesn’t always rule the heart. Upon making love, there is only a small glimmer of basking in the glow, as reality sets in, each of them analyzing and fretting over the others’ future actions once they’re separated again. TnT are more than aware of the past possibly repeating itself. That being said, these scenes were poetry in motion — flawlessly executed directing, blocking, photography, writing and acting, elevating mere soap to a fine art. Both of these actors bring out the best in each other!”

My two cents? Much ink has been spilled asking why two smart women like Téa and Blair would fight over a rapist. Yes, Téa and Blair undeniably love Todd, but what I adore about this refreshing triangle is the fact that Téa and Blair aren’t fighting for Todd’s love at all. These bitchy rivals are actually in love with hating each other and getting the upper hand! If Todd only knew.

• Once again, One Life reveals a huge story spoiler a month in advance (last year, they previewed the mass gay wedding shocker two months before it actually aired). In a TV Guide Magazine story, One Life revealed that, “half the characters on the ABC soap will be involved in a multi-car collision during a snowstorm on Llantano Mountain. Exec producer Frank Valentini promises the pile-up, which includes a massive explosion, 'will be more epic in scale than the plane crash we staged [in 2006] and the impact more far-reaching. It’ll blow everyone’s mind.' You can blame the whole mess on slimy psychopath Mitch who has kidnapped his daughter Jessica and taken her to his mountain hideaway. Ultimately 15 characters end up at the locale with various intentions — to save Jessica, to shoot Mitch, to reveal paternity secrets, to find out the fates of loved ones. And there’s considerable fallout: Natalie is severely injured and Mitch gives Jessica electroshock therapy, which so warps her brain that she psychologically regresses to her teenage years. In a nutsy twist, a still–delusional Jessica will start a new life as a student at Llanview High! And she won’t just be hittin’ the books at school — she’ll also find love there. (Valentini promises there’s no jailbait involved).” Bree Williamson acting as a teenager? How novel! Hopefully, a repressed Jessica will realize her true love is Cristian.

The best news? This GH-inspired storyline will help to finally usher out Crystal Hunt. “Word is, her exit involves a fall through the ice and the use of some pretty spectacular effects,” writes Logan. Tell that to Brad Carlton!

• Developing story — Amanda Setton and I are engaged! We’re registered at Llantano Apparel.

• As Suds reported three months ago, Barbara Garrick is back as Alison Perkins. Expect to see the nutty fruitcake at the end of February. The Tales of The City star will continue to air long after Roscoe Born’s Mitch leaves the canvas.

The Young and the Restless, CBS/Global — Rowell's Emmy-worthy book cover! • Check out the multi-faceted book cover and art from sexy-as-hell Victoria Rowell's highly-anticipated “fictional” book, Secrets of A Soap Opera Diva, out in bookstores on May 4. Can’t wait! Don’t forget that the multiple NAACP winner will be visiting Toronto for the Casey House AIDS charity fundraiser Snow Ball on March 6! • Emmy winner Kristoff St. John  reports that his recent knee surgery was a success. Good news because I’m digging this Ashley and Neil flirtation. Though the actors could “up” the sex factor.

Want to dish the soaps with Nelson Branco? Join The Suds Report discussion group today on Facebook.com.

Nelson Branco is a Toronto freelance entertainment journalist, who regularly contributes to Hello! Canada, The National Post, The Los Angeles Times' theenvelope.com, TV Guide USA, tvguide.com, Inside Entertainment, OUT, and fab magazine, along with spearheading the soap coverage for TVGuide.ca's popular daytime TV hub. After graduating from Ryerson University in 1997, he moved from Toronto to New York in 1998 to take on the roles as senior news editor at Soap Opera Update. Branco first freelanced for Soap Opera Weekly as an intern in 1994, and after leaving Soap Update to help create and launch Bauer Publishing's In Touch Weekly in 2003, Branco continued to freelance occasionally for its sister publication, Soaps In Depth. Most recently, he helped create and launch Canada's first celebrity magazine, Weekly Scoop in 2005 as its news and entertainment director. Branco is also a contributor to a new TV show titled Planet Soap to air in Canada and America.