New Interview Susan Flannery 3-7th Dec 09

[judithshappy]

Read here, looks pretty new to me
Tomorrow Part 2 is on that same site

www.welovesoaps.net/2009/12/susan-flannery-interview-part-one.html


edit: all 4 parts of the interview will be posted in this thread.

[Cece]

Thanks!! I will copy and paste in case the link is somehow removed.

The Susan Flannery Interview, Part One
Thursday, December 03, 2009 Posted by Damon L. Jacobs

Strong. Fierce. Independent. Brilliant. These are just a few of the words that are spoken when you bring up the name “Susan Flannery” in any conversation. But what does she think about her illustrious career in television and films, and well as her activism in AFTRA? Please enjoy this unique conversation in which Ms. Flannery shares her reflections on her past, insights about her present, and hopes for her future.

We Love Soaps: It is so great to talk with you. Some of my earliest memories were my mother and I watching you on DAYS OF OUR LIVES as Laura Horton.
Susan Flannery: Oh my God! In those days there were so many women who stayed at home. That’s totally changed now. I was once standing at Dodger Stadium with my kid. I was standing in line getting hot dogs. I was in line and I was aware there was someone behind me. I turned around and looked up—this guy must have been 6”5’, he looked like a hulking football player, around 35 or 36-years-old. He leaned down and smiled and said, “Dr. Laura?” I was already on B&B by this point, so DAYS OF OUR LIVES was so long ago! I said, “Your mother must have made you watch when you were sick.” He said, “Yes, but I loved that show.” That was my favorite. So many kids watched the show when they were home sick.

We Love Soaps: You are originally from New York?
Susan Flannery: Yes, actually Jersey City, New Jersey. Lived in New York and Jersey and went to Cathedral High School in Manhattan.

We Love Soaps: Did you move to California to pursue acting?
Susan Flannery: I did. I went to Stevens College in Missouri and then spent some time at Arizona State University, then California.

We Love Soaps: Were you building up to an acting career or were there other interests?
Susan Flannery: I always knew I was going to be an actress. I studied drama. I was supposed to go to Yale but I decided I didn’t want to go to New York and do the stage. I wanted to come here [to California].

We Love Soaps: Did television appeal more to you than theater?
Susan Flannery: Film and television did. I was trained in theater, and that was fabulous. I would tell every person who wants to be in film or television to go do as much theater as they can. It teaches you to use the whole instrument. So many times you get these kids who have no experience. They’re talented, but they’re acting from the neck up, they don’t know what to do with their hands. I thought if I did stage I’d get really bored saying the same lines over and over again for six months or something. That’s why I wanted to come out to California.

We Love Soaps: How did DAYS OF OUR LIVES come to you?
Susan Flannery: I had a wonderful agent named Meyer Mishkin, and a guy in his office named Bob Shure. He had actually left the agency, he had been gone three or four months. He called me at home, he said, “There’s a part that I think you should go up for. I can call the casting director and have him call to have you come in.” So I went over and that’s when I met Betty Corday, Ken Corday’s mom, who ran the show. They had worked very close with Irna Phillips on AS THE WORLD TURNS. Her husband [Ted Corday] was quite brilliant. He was a director, and Betty originally was a casting woman. I came on a year after DAYS OF OUR LIVES started.

When I came on, they had just brought Bill Bell on. He wanted to recast this Dr. Laura character because he didn’t like the girl [Floy Dean]. He was just starting, and they gave him thirteen weeks to pull the show up in the ratings. Betty called him in Chicago and said, “We found this girl who we think is right.” They casted me for six weeks, they said it was a six week part. They didn’t have VHS back then, he would have to watch the show when it was on. He saw the first show I was on. He called her and said, “That’s it, that’s the girl.” And then he wrote the show around me. And I did the show for eight more years. I never had a contract until the last year [laughs]. I worked every day, five days a week, I just refused to sign a contract. He and the network and Betty gambled on me staying. And he was great, he was a wonderful writer. This was his first show alone not under Irna. He told me that he wrote for the first two years every single script.

We Love Soaps: By himself?
Susan Flannery: Yes. And back then it was every day, they only had New Year’s Day off. It was 259 shows a year, two years in a row. Then he hired people to come in. He was so determined to be successful in his own right. And of course he was a genius in my mind.

We Love Soaps: He really saw the potential of Laura to become the central force on DAYS. When you learned that the role was going to be a psychiatrist, did you study psychology or psychiatry?
Susan Flannery: No [laughs]. I just took what they gave me and played it. The truth is, I never saw a patient. They would open a scene and I’d be standing at the office door saying, “Alright Mrs. Smith I’ll see you the same time next week. Then I’d close the door, head to the desk, and someone from the family would knock. It would be MacDonald Carey [Tom] or Edward Mallory [Bill]. But I never saw an actual patient.

We Love Soaps: What are some of your memories of the show then? I know it was a 30-minute show with a very tight cast.
Susan Flannery: Very tight. It was a great cast. It was MacDonald Carey and Frances Reid (Alice), and they set such a professional tone for us. Denise Alexander (Susan) was there at that time, Ed Mallory and John Clarke (Mickey) were the romantic leads. Then they brought in Susan Seaforth (Julie) and then Bill Hayes [Doug]. Bill Bell was the first writer to ever include music. When he brought Bill Hayes, he (Doug) opened a little restaurant on the show, and had him singing. He expanded it and opened it up. He moved it out of the concept of radio into actual television. At that time so many soaps were photographed radio shows.

We Love Soaps: Can you tell me more about those differences?
Susan Flannery: When you’re doing radio and the door opens, the audience has no idea who is stepping in the door. “Oh hello Ron, it’s so good to see you,” and you say their name. When you’re on television you don’t have to say, “Hello Ron,” because they’re right there. You don’t have to have quite as much dialogue. And he adapted to that visually quite well. He had a couple of great directors that helped him, that really stretched it for him and started shooting things in a different way.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Please come back tomorrow for Part Two in which Ms. Flannery talks about her Golden Globe Award-winning performance in The Towering Inferno, leaving DAYS, and going toe-to-toe with J.R. Ewing on DALLAS.

[Kim]

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!

[annaitaly]

Thank you Judy and Ceci!

[Cece]

Part 2 of the interview...

The Susan Flannery Interview, Part Two
Friday, December 04, 2009 Posted by Damon L. Jacobs
In Part One of our interview with Emmy and Golden Globe-winner Susan Flannery, the actress reflected on her early acting career and her role as Laura Horton on DAYS OF OUR LIVES.

In Part Two of our interview, Ms. Flannery shares how she got the time off from her soap role to do The Towering Inferno, how the sixty minute format changed DAYS OF OUR LIVES, and why she only stayed on DALLAS for a short time.

We Love Soaps: Laura was at the center of a very controversial storyline. She was married to one brother [Mickey Horton] when raped by the other brother [Bill Horton].
Susan Flannery: Ed Mallory [as Bill] came in drunk and raped her. She kept quiet because she didn’t want to make a big scene. Then she married the brother [Mickey] and he never knew it.

We Love Soaps: She knew it wasn’t Mickey’s baby. She knew it was Bill’s. This story went on for many years.
Susan Flannery: That story went on until the last year I was on the show. That’s when [Bill Bell] exposed it. He could keep a secret. But you could write differently then. Remember, the viewing audience was much much larger. And, there were so many women that stayed at home then. You’re talking 40 years ago. The economic situation in the country was completely different.

We Love Soaps: Do you think a story like that would work today, to have a secret that’s held for over four years?
Susan Flannery: You’d have to be awfully good at weaving it. I don’t know. It’s a whole new way of telling story now. And I’ve always believed a lot of that has to do with MTV. It’s boom-boom-boom-boom, people have to see things much faster. It depends on the story. But that’s what I think is so great about Brad [Bell]. He came to that conclusion quickly on his own. It took him to two to three years to figure this out, but he moves stories boom-boom-boom, every three months. He has his same characters and he has manipulated these same characters for all these years. He does little capsule stories and then moves it on to the next one and the next one. I think that’s what keeps the audience intrigued, especially overseas.

We Love Soaps: Recently my We Love Soaps partner did an interview with Wesley Eure, who played your son Mike Horton.
Susan Flannery: How is Wesley?

We Love Soaps: He’s great. He shared with Roger how he was quite a prankster on the set. In his interview he shared an anecdote in which he was trying to make you break character in a scene. He said that Susan Flannery does not break. Would you say that’s an accurate reflection?
Susan Flannery: [Laughs] Yes, I loved him. He was great. He and Patty Weaver [Trish] were wonderful. He was a great kid, I always thought he would go further ahead in his career because he had a lot of solid acting and emotion.

We Love Soaps: He mentioned how coming out has worked against him in the field.
Susan Flannery: Oh, at that time, yeah.

We Love Soaps: What led to your leaving DAYS?
Susan Flannery: It was just time. You don’t want to stay there together. I had done The Towering Inferno, so that opened a lot of doors.

We Love Soaps: You won an award for that?
Susan Flannery: A Golden Globe, yes.

We Love Soaps: Was that the catalyst for you leaving the show?
Susan Flannery: Absolutely. I had actually wanted to leave a year earlier, before I did Towering Inferno. I went to New York and walked into the NBC building, went upstairs, and said, “Tell them I’m here.” [Laughs] The Vice-President said, “Oh my God, what are you doing here?” I said, “Well, I had a couple days off so I came.” I went to see the president of the network at the time. I said, “Listen guys, I want to do some other stuff. Why can’t I do some guest stuff on a primetime series. That’s not a big deal.” They promised me they would, and nothing happened.

Then I got the opportunity to do The Towering Inferno. And I called them, on a Sunday morning, in New York. I said, “I want to do this, you gave me your word, and I’m going to do it. And we’re going to figure out how it’s going to be done.” Then Betty Corday called me and said, “We can’t pay for it [the extra studio time].” I asked, “How much is it going to cost? I will pay for it.” She was stunned. She had no answer. And I did, I had to pay for the studio time. We had to film five episodes on a Saturday, then Bill wrote me out the rest of the time.

We Love Soaps: And the show was still 30 minutes at that time?
Susan Flannery: Yes. We went to an hour during my last year. They asked me to stay to launch the hour. So I stayed the first six weeks after we launched to an hour. The first day we filmed I did 80 pages. I was in every single scene. And they shot it in sequence. They were still trying to do it like a regular soap, rolling the commercials, rolling the music cues. They hadn’t made the leap in technology or understanding that they had to shoot it differently and do post-production. That all happened after they went to the hour.

We Love Soaps: “In sequence,” you mean they would film your scene, someone else’s scene, then come back to you?
Susan Flannery: They would start with the prologue and go to the epilogue.

We Love Soaps: They would just follow the order of the script?
Susan Flannery: Yes, which is how you do it when it was 30 minutes. But in 30 minutes that was easy. They would go to black, run the commercials in, because they only had one recording machine. They would roll the music cues and everything. So at the end of filming those 30 minutes you had a completed show. There was no editing.

We Love Soaps: So I imagine with the 60 minute format you would have been there quite late?
Susan Flannery: No, we still got out. They just went straight through, and you finished by the end of the day. But I said to them, “I’m glad I’m leaving. It’s so rushed that you’re no longer in control of your performance. And that doesn’t make me happy.” So I did the first six weeks when the show launched for an hour. That’s the reason I agreed to do BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL . I like that form. That was Bill’s favorite form too. He hated the hour. He thought they had to pad too much story.

We Love Soaps: After DAYS, you did some film and television, and ended up a few years later on DALLAS.
Susan Flannery: It was a lot of fun. It was Larry [Hagman], Linda [Gray], and Patrick [Duffy]. I didn’t get to know Patrick so well, all my stuff was with Larry. But they were all just great, and Linda and Patrick have ended up on our show [B&B].

We Love Soaps: You were in DALLAS during it’s most popular year, right after J.R.’s shooting [1980-1981].
Susan Flannery: That’s why people always think that I was on it for four years. I did those thirteen episodes, and it was the year right after he was shot.

We Love Soaps: I remember when you came on very clearly. You were a tough PR agent [named Leslie] who ended up screwing over the Ewing family. There was a big cliffhanger that summer where we knew J.R. had murdered a woman in the pool, but didn’t know who it was. Leslie was on the list of people who we thought it could have been. I was hoping it wasn’t you, I wanted Leslie to come back. Why did you not come back?
Susan Flannery: I only signed for those thirteen weeks. I didn’t really want to do a nighttime soap. I did it for those thirteen weeks and that’s all I really wanted to do to tell you the truth.

We Love Soaps: What was the drawback of doing a nighttime soap?
Susan Flannery: I guess I had done the material for so many years in a sense. If it had been a different kind of show I probably would have stayed. Everybody thought I was crazy because it was the biggest show in the business. I thought, “This is great, I’ve had 13 weeks, I’m happy.”

We Love Soaps: What did you want to do after DALLAS? What would have been your ideal?
Susan Flannery: Oh. I don’t know. That I can’t really give an answer. Everything you do in a way is your ideal.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Stay tuned for third part of our interview to learn more about Susan Flannery's participation in Douglas Marland's A NEW DAY IN EDEN, and what led to her triumphant return to daytime in THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.


Part 3 will come later.

[Cece]

Here are the parts of the Wesley Eure interview which mentioned Susan Flannery... He played Susan´s son (Mike Horton) on DAYS.

We Love Soaps: On DAYS OF OUR LIVES, you were part of one of the longest kept secrets in the history of soaps - the reveal that Bill was Mike's father and not Mickey.
Wesley Eure: The Mike before me was a little boy and suddenly I burst on the scene as a teenager. And then a wagon falls on my chest, then I find out my father really isn't my father because my uncle raped my mother years ago at the hospital. [Laughs] So it was an amazing time. I had such a good time with Ed Mallory who played Bill, and Susan Flannery who was Laura at the time. We went through a lot of Lauras. She was my first mother.

We Love Soaps: You also worked a lot with Patty Weaver, who played Trish, and went to play Gina for many years on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, as well as the Horton family. What are some of your fondest memories working at DAYS?
Wesley Eure: It was fun. I loved to play practical jokes. I was a kid on the show, or late teens/early 20s. We had this big scene once with Susan Flannery and I had to take my shirt off. Mike was talking about me going out with Trish at the time. It was dress rehearsal and Susan Flannery was this consummate actress, one of the best actresses I've ever worked with. And nothing phased her, not a thing. I went to the make-up room and painted a big heart on my chest that said, "I love you, Mom." So we're doing the scene and she's yelling at me about Trish or coming in late and I take my shirt off and she sees the heart and I can see that recognition go across her eyes. And at that one moment she stops but she continues the scenes, and I continue the scene, and I'm trying to hold it in, and the camera men are laughing and you can hear the people in the booth laughing. Susan Flannery doesn't break at all. The scene ends, and it's a very dramatic scene, and she turns to me sand says, "Don't ever f**k with an actress." And we laughed. It was so much fun.

We Love Soaps: Speaking of Susan Flannery, she's been on THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL for many years now and I think she's recognized as one of the best, if not the best, actress in daytime.
Wesley Eure: She's amazing. I remember she was in Towering Inferno as the love interest of Robert Wagner. It was my first time going to a big movie watching someone I knew or worked with die on screen. It was a very odd little moment. That's a strange juxtaposition for a young actor to watch people die.

[Cece]

The Susan Flannery Interview, Part Three

Saturday, December 05, 2009 Posted by Damon L. Jacobs

In Part One of my interview with Susan Flannery, the Emmy and Golden Globe winning actress shared her path to DAYS OF OUR LIVES and recollections of the series. In Part Two, she shared more about expanding her career to movies, and the changes on DAYS as it went from 30 to 60 minutes.

We know that Susan Flannery is a dynamic force to be reckoned with in television and movies. But are you aware of how she acts on the strength of her convictions behind the scenes? Please read on as she shares her decision to join THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, as well as her off-screen activism.

We Love Soaps: Soon after DALLAS you went on to work with Douglas Marland on A NEW DAY IN EDEN.
Susan Flannery: Yes. I stopped acting for awhile. My producing partners, Michael Jaffe and Gary Hoffman, did NEW DAY IN EDEN. It was the first soap sold to cable. It was Oak Communications. They wanted us to continue with more seasons. My partner Michael said he didn’t want to do it . I said to him, “Are you nuts?” But he didn’t want to do it so we didn’t do it.

We Love Soaps: I never got to see it. But I had heard there was lots of nudity and it was too hot for network TV.
Susan Flannery: That’s how they sold it. But there was never really any nudity. It was always delicately shot. You know who got his first job there? Jack Wagner.

We Love Soaps: Would you have preferred for that to continue?
Susan Flannery: Sure, it was a money maker.

We Love Soaps: Did you enjoy being in the role of producer?
Susan Flannery: Oh yeah. That was fun.

We Love Soaps: So given you had done daytime TV, had successfully done prime-time and movie work as well as producing, what led you to take the role of Stephanie on BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL?

Susan Flannery: Well I wasn’t going to do it originally. Frank Pacelli was a director on DAYS OF OUR LIVES with Bill [Bell] and then on Y&R. And he and I were friends over the years. I had left my contract with Columbia Pictures Television. It was just at the holiday time and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Frank said to me, “Bill Bell is going to do a new soap opera.” I said, “Oh, good for him.” He said, “I think you should do it.” I said, “Nah, I don’t want to do it.” So he sat with Bill and said, “Susan Flannery’s contract was up at Columbia, and she’s not sure what she’s going to do, I think you should call her.” Bill said, “Really, you think she would come back to acting?” Frank said, “I don’t know but I think you should call her, Bill!”

So Bill called me and I said, “no.” He called me five times and I said, “no.” I said, “I can’t talk now, it’s too busy, it’s the holidays.” And then finally he called and said, “Can we sit and talk? Just come to the house.” I said, “No I won’t come to your house. Let’s meet at the Beverly Hills Hotel and have a drink.” So we sat and talked. And of course he talked me into doing it.

We Love Soaps: How did he do that? How can anyone talk Susan Flannery into doing anything?
Susan Flannery: I don’t know. He just caught me at a weak moment. I also knew what a wonderful writer he was. And he had written so brilliantly for me at DAYS OF OUR LIVES. I really was between sixes and sevens, I really didn’t know what I was going to do. Sometimes things come to you in the most unexpected time in a way you don’t see coming from left field. And when an opportunity presents itself, sometimes you have to refocus and say, “Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be, so okay.” So that’s what I did, that’s how it turned out.

We Love Soaps: You recognized you had some opportunities open to you and you chose not to fight it.
Susan Flannery: Well yeah, I guess that’s what it was. I fought it at the beginning and then I thought, maybe you’re not looking at this the right way. So here I am, 23 years later, holy cow!

We Love Soaps: You mentioned that during your entire run on DAYS you didn’t have a contract.
Susan Flannery: Not till the last year.

We Love Soaps: Did you consider doing the same with BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL?
Susan Flannery: No, they wanted us on contract. [Bill] knew I wasn’t under contract all those years and he didn't want to go through that again [laughs].

We Love Soaps: Did you think you would still be on 23 years later?
Susan Flannery: Oh yes, I knew the show would run.

We Love Soaps: What led you to know that?
Susan Flannery: John McCook and I, we both knew the show would be on the air for as long as possible. I said to him, “Things will change eventually in television, but we’ll have a really good run on this.”

We Love Soaps: When you say things will change...
Susan Flannery: That first year the union, AFTRA, came to us, we had been working without a contract. They asked us to come to a meeting because they were trying to find out what we wanted and what we thought. Frances Reid was there. And I said to them, “I think we should have foreign residuals, and we still don’t. Isn’t that right, Frances?” She said, “Well you can negotiate that in your individual contract.” I said, “But that’s not the point. Everybody should be entitled to it.”

And they looked at me like I was crazy. I said, “I’m telling you these shows are going to sell overseas. And the other thing we should have are residuals if they’re played on cable.” They looked at me [again] like I was a crazy. I said, “Here’s my prediction: you’re going to have a network on cable that will be dedicated simply to soaps, 24 hours a day. They’ll play old soaps and new soaps, and we should have the residuals. They’ll give it to us now because they’ll look at you just like you looked at me now, like I’m a lunatic, and they’ll say ‘give it to those idiots, what do we care?’” They didn’t listen to me and what have we got? SoapNet, that people get paid pennies for. I knew television was changing. I had been a producer. I had been with Columbia, I had been at the networks, I spent five years doing it, so I knew what was coming. It was like, who could not know?

We Love Soaps: What were the results of you standing up?
Susan Flannery: They didn’t take it seriously. It was so foolish of them at the union. They could have gotten residuals, even if they started slowly on cable, and then they could have increased it slowly every contract. So by the time cable broadcasts came around, they would have paid something. They get paid nothing.

We Love Soaps: Is that still the case?
Susan Flannery: They get basically nothing. I don’t think they even get a hundred dollars for a show. I don’t know because BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL isn’t on cable, it isn’t on SoapNet.

We Love Soaps: When B&B plays overseas, do you get residuals for that?
Susan Flannery: We get residuals, but we still don’t get the residuals that we...we had a big union meeting at the Central Plaza Hotel. I stood up and said, “Excuse me, I’m going to tell you something right now. You give us foreign residuals or this union is going on strike.” And everyone in the room froze. And Eric Braeden turned around and said, “If she said we’re goin’ on strike then we’re goin’ on strike.” And we got the foreign residuals.

What they had was if you worked above a minimum, which most people did, they were allowed to credit that against your foreign residuals. We got that removed. So now people get money from foreign residuals.

We Love Soaps: So your activist efforts in the union proved successful?
Susan Flannery: Yeah, well, Kim Zimmer and Martha Byrne, a few years before that, stood up and said to them, “We have to have a turn around.” Because they would work until twelve or one in the morning, get no money, and then have to be back at six in the morning. So then they had to pay [the actresses] a penalty. It was only when they had to pay the penalty that they made sure to get them out so they wouldn’t have to pay that penalty. When it costs money then all of a sudden they find a way. That’s why unions are so important. For the health, for the pensions, and to protect you.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Stay tuned on Monday for the final part of our interview, in which we discuss Ms. Flannery's thoughts about Stephanie Forrester's demons, as well as the future of daytime television.

[annaitaly]

Thanks!!!!

[Cece]

The Susan Flannery Interview, Part Four
Monday, December 07, 2009 Posted by Damon L. Jacobs

In Part One and Part Two of my interview with Susan Flannery, the Emmy and Golden Globe winner shared her history of work on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, and reflections on technical changes behind the scenes. In Part Three she revealed what led her to return to daytime on THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, as well as her inspiration for participating in union activities.

In the final part below, Ms. Flannery reflects more on her proactive role in advocating for actors' rights, and shares thought about Stephanie Forrester's psychological problems, as well as insights into the business of television.

We Love Soaps: Would you say that most of your efforts in AFTRA have been successful, or at least had a satisfactory resolution?
Susan Flannery: No, I think we should all be one union. SAG [Screen Actors Guild] and AFTRA [The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists] should join together, I’m a great believer in this.

We Love Soaps: For those of us not familiar with the unions, what are the differences?
Susan Flannery: SAG was always film and AFTRA was always radio and television, live television. And then when television moved to tape, then AFTRA represented electronic. Now they’re shooting movies and movie of the week and prime-time series on high definition cameras. So they’ve gotten into this fight and they shouldn’t be. The middle class actor is the actor who is suffering. They need to join together so they all represent the same thing. It’s as simple as that.

We Love Soaps: Getting back to BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, I think one of the most interesting stories for Stephanie was in 2006 when we learned more about her child abuse.
Susan Flannery: Didn’t you think that was brilliant?

We Love Soaps: I thought it made so much sense.
Susan Flannery: It was such brilliant storytelling. It explained so much.

We Love Soaps: It was. What was really interesting for me as a therapist is that traditional psychotherapy models would suggest that insight into one’s past results in a change in behavior. With Stephanie, we saw her come to terms with her abuse, yet a few months later she was back to her angry outbursts and scheming. It didn’t seem to make an impact on her.
Susan Flannery: I agree. Any behavioral pattern, whether it’s drug related, or alcohol related, or a destructive self-pattern, you have to be prepared in your life to make that change. She discovered this, but at the time she wasn’t prepared. You’re absolutely right.

We Love Soaps: Recently we have seen Stephanie forgive her mother before she died. Do you think this is the kind of event that will lead Stephanie to want to change her behavior and the way she relates to others?
Susan Flannery: It’s going to be interesting to see how he [Brad Bell] presents this opportunity. Because he’s broken the main family. He’s got Eric married to Donna. And Stephanie and her sister are over with Jackie. And he’s brought Don Diamont in who is now running Forrester. So the family structure isn’t what it was for all of those years. It’s going to be interesting. It’s almost like she said to herself, “Alright, this is the way it’s going to be.” The kids are grown, she’s letting them move off on their own. She’ll always love Eric but it’s like, enough already [laughs]. He’s happy, he’s going to be with this girl, as long as she’s nice to him, it will be okay. She’s carved out this new life. And I thought that was also very interesting that he brought her sister in [Alley Mills as Pam]. Ashley Jones [Bridget] came up to me and said, “I love the scenes with you and Pam, because it shows Stephanie’s humanity.” That’s very true, it does.

We Love Soaps: What would you like to see happen for Stephanie?
Susan Flannery: Oh I don’t know. I never think about story. I never talk about story, in the sense I’ve never gone upstairs to Bill or Brad and said, “I’d love to do a story about such and such.” I always felt that was not my area. I would be intruding into their territory.

We Love Soaps: Have you always believed that in your work as an actress?
Susan Flannery: Yes.

We Love Soaps: In this past year, there’s been a lot of soap headlines about actors walking out on roles because they didn’t personally or politically believe in what their character was doing. Have you ever been given a story and not liked the character direction?
Susan Flannery: Yes, in all the years with BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL was the rape story with Katherine Kelly Lang [Brooke]. I just said to them, “You can’t do that. The audience will never forgive her for that. And Eric and Ridge as characters will never forgive her. We have to find another way to make this work.”

We Love Soaps: What is going to take to keep daytime dramas on the air?
Susan Flannery: I don’t know. As soon as you say something is dead and gone, then it has a resurrection. It’s not just soaps, it’s network television, they’ve been dinosaurs for 15 years. The business as it’s been is all going to change. All of this is changing and going to change further and further.

We Love Soaps: Do you think there have creative changes that have led to the diminishing ratings?
Susan Flannery: In the ratings? No. I don’t think it has anything to do with the creativity of the shows or the style of the show. It has everything to do with the economic situation in the United States, and technology. Technology has scattered and fractured the audience. You’ll never have another Walter Cronkite. Not because you don’t have someone who is good, but because he would never have that one single audience factor ever again. That’s the root of it.

We Love Soaps: BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL and YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS are consistently the top two rated shows on the air. They are consistently feature their veterans in different stories and offer family based stories year and after year. Do you think that’s a coincidence?
Susan Flannery: Oh no, I think that’s very much Bill’s legacy in the set up off the show. And of course Maria Arena is married to Bill’s son, Bill Jr. Maria started us with us twenty two years ago, she came on at the end of the first year as a young writer. She and Brad used to write together. She’s quite smart and very very bright. She’s doing well over there [at Y&R].

We Love Soaps: If you could go back to 1966, starting on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, and give yourself a piece of advice, what would that be.
Susan Flannery: Oh honey, that’s too many to say. Let’s leave it at that. [Laughs]


And that was the last part of the interview.
But it was terrific!!!

[annaitaly]

It was a very nice reading

Only i dont agree with susan abt that part of the "fast storylines" ... ... I dont find it positive or good
Or better...it's ok to be a bit faster than it was used to be, but it can't be all so quick and disconnected

Thanks Ceci! karma!

[Cece]

Anna, have you watched soaps like Days of our lives, The young and the restless etc? Storylines are painfully slow. On B&B they are much faster, and I like it. BUT I don´t like Brad Bell´s shocking twists that makes asses of all characters. You can have faster storylines, but for heaven´s sake DO NOT ruin characters and long-time couples!!!!

[annaitaly]

No....i havent watched any of those soaps actually.
But still, i think that the mix FASTNESS + DISCONNECTION/ LACK OF HARMONIZATION of the stories just produces a very bad final result.
As i said in my previous post, ok a bit faster, but not so fast and so senseless stories
I'm not blaming the disaster all on the fastness, but to the combination of both the elements of fastness and nonsense of the stories.

[judithshappy]

Thanks for posting all 4 parts. Good interview, finally something new. Even though no picture...good anyway