Soap Opera 451: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama's Greatest Moments by Alina Adams

Author:Alina Adams [Adams, Alina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PERFORMING ARTS / Television / Guides & Reviews
Amazon: B005NSDZYC
Goodreads: 20524592
Publisher: Alina Adams Media
Published: 2011-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

MEMORABLE MOMENT: Actress Eileen Davidson plays Kristen. And Susan. And Sister Mary Moira. And Penelope. And Thomas (Days of Our Lives, 1998)

BACKGROUND: Kristen (Eileen Davidson) was so desperate to hold on to John (Drake Hogysten), despite his love for Marlena (Diedre Hall), that Kristen took the baby of her pregnant look-a-like, Susan (Eileen Davidson), and passed it off as hers and John’s. When Marlena learned the truth, Kristen locked her up in a secret room. Later, Susan turned the tables on Kristen, locked Kristen up with Marlena, and took Kristen’s place with John, even going so far as planning to marry him. Susan ultimately reclaimed her son, Elvis, and left town, but Kristen kidnapped Susan’s sister, Mary Moira (Eileen Davidson), to lure Susan back. Kristen was presumed dead, killed by Susan’s boyfriend, Edmund, but that was actually another look-a-like, Penelope (Eileen Davidson). There was also a long-lost brother, Thomas (Eileen Davidson). Eventually, Kristen tried to sell Susan into an island harem, but Susan pulled a switch at the last minute and sold Kristen instead.

BEHIND THE SCENES:

Eileen Davidson: Tom Langan, who was the Co-Executive Producer at the time, told me they were going to try to get somebody to play the part of Susan. I suggested that I play it. She was supposed to be really different from Kristen. (Headwriter) James Reilly put in the Elvis stuff. He created the rough sketch, and I filled it in. We added a padded suit, false teeth, contact lenses, and we tried out some wigs. But, I created her personality. I had a lot of input. Susan was supposed to be insecure, from a small town, not very worldly, basically kind of ignorant. She had an innocence. I based a lot of it on innocence, not necessarily ignorance. But, she was very intelligent in a certain way. She was good at getting what she wanted.

(At first), they only had Susan in mind, and they really didn’t know for how long. James just kind of took off. He’s brilliant. The whole story was brilliant, with the teeth falling out at the wedding (below), all those things he wrote were so funny. He took inspiration from me, I took inspiration from him. For Susan’s different hairstyles, I watched Eight is Enough – which is strange because Dick Van Patten is now my father-in-law – but, one of the characters on the show, I don’t remember which daughter it was, wore her hair in pony-tails on each side of her head, and up high. I was looking for different crazy hairstyles for Susan. I was looking for anything and everything. I would add things like Susan screaming at the vampire movie with popcorn in her mouth. Then James added all the different characters as we went along.

I did go to Catholic school, so when it came to Sister Mary, I went in very broad strokes, like the ruler was my idea. The fact that she was strident and a disciplinarian. But she had a soft heart. A lot of nuns, in my experience, were like that.

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