Still the Place with Laura Layton, Courtney Thorne Smith.
And Daphne's Aniga an iHeartRadio podcast.
Good Night Later, another Melrose minute. So you guys at home don't know this, but we have one of our writers, Chuck Pratt, coming up as a guest. And one of the things he mentioned when we talked to him is that when Heather started on the show, she didn't want to play a bit because she'd been doing that on Dynasty. So they had to sort of rewrite it to make a Manda nice obviously in the beginning.
So what we know now just for a very brief time at least can be nice for a second.
I think you called it a switch and bait or something. Yeah, They're like, okay, you're not a bitch, You're just switch.
So she starts off really nice and as we know, So I wanted to ask you, guys, how you felt about your character in Melroe's Place and how you changed or other shows, Like did you start a show as something and then as the show went on you became a completely different character? I do.
I think I have a lot to say on the subject because I came in, like, you know, kind of not knowing that it was a long term character anyway, but I also was super focused on like the youth of her whatever. And then there was a big long stretch of time that I wasn't on the show, like the well, the rest of season one, and then I came back in season two and had to like pick up there and and kind of you know, discover what
these new storylines were. And it was she came in as the problem in her sister and Michael's marriage, right, Sydney came in as the affair and like just sort of mischievous, troublemaker person. But in the second season, in the second season, but over time, like there there it was hard for me to like maintain, wait a minute, how old is she? And like what how sophisticated is she?
And is like then she started doing all these like the blackmailing and the d and the canniving and just the evolution of that and trying to trying to say, how do you find like that same person in there, like that consistent thread and that same person and figure, Okay, if she's what nineteen years old, eighteen nineteen, how does that kind of person like age and develop and like we're watching this on camera like over these three four seasons, and that was sort of always in my mind, like
is this even making sense? Is this even tracking? And like I felt like I had to find just a couple things to latch onto to make it always make sense. And those things were like Sidney always felt not enough, not she felt less than her sister. That that was like her easiest competition to go, oh, I just want to be like her or better than her something, you know, like that jealousy thread was consistent, you know, sort of
drove a lot of her actions. But even when it got to be like insanity, I'm like, wait, can I still justify this? Like is this still tracking?
Yes? And it was still the same character.
It was hard. It was hard to keep that thread. And then I do think that after a while, you just go, Okay, I'm just going to do.
My best Hereio, I'm just going to do script by yeah, my own reality right now.
This is just where we're at. And plus we're in double up, so I really have no idea.
Yeah, they asked us. One of the fan questions was did we ever push back? We couldn't, right, No.
There didn't There was never. Yeah, I was saying we didn't ever have time. I never, you know, thought I thought there were so many writers and so many people the studio and everyone that I didn't think I would have a say. Well, it wasn't welcomed at all. It wasn't like an invitation. No one ever says to you on a show an ensemble, hey, if you have any ideas, let us know with ten people never had.
One of the things that Chuck will say when you guys hear that episode is that he's never had a show with faster turnaround. Yeah, like they were, Yeah.
Thirty time scripts a year.
It was so fast they didn't have time. So if we pull that thread and say I don't want this to happen, that might affect the next ten episodes, right, yeah, right. And it was also as the show goes on, like I started with Allison, Midwest kid trying to do well, and then I have an affair with the married man, and then I'm drunk, and then I'm on, then i'm and you know, I won't leave the apartment when it's blowing up.
All this stuff.
But it was also fun, right, you don't want to play nice girl from the Midwest for five seasons. Like part of it was oh no, I have to do that. And it was like, all right, let's try it. Like it was. It was great. It was almost like an acting class because you just had to do it. There was no time. You didn't have to debate and think, and it's not like you're reading a play and you're like,
this is my characters through line. It's like, all right, I had to do so many things that terrified me on that show.
Did you have to do that as in TV? Because there's no end to it. You don't know if it's going to end in a couple episodes at the end of the season or keep going. So the writers, you know, when you say like a Midwest girl or how we all came into something, that's who you were when it started, and then adventure happens, and then life happens, and then Mal's this crazy apartment building that you're in and then it just happens and you have to, you know, make
it work. It doesn't all have to make sense. Especially on Malos's place. You heard chah it around bottles of wine, coming up with whatever we could come up with they're not going well.
Or Midwest Girl.
Yeah, but like you're trying as an actor to say you just wanted to stay on some sort of rail.
You want to ground it for yourself. You want because because here's the thing, as crazy as it was, you're trying to find some element of truth. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense. So you're trying, especially if it's a serious like I had a couple of serious storylines and I was like, oh, like I was trying to and it was you can't. If it's something that's a serious storyline, you can't laugh at it, right. So it's not like, oh,
this is light. It's like this is real and I have to bring this some gravitas even though it's so we did hold in such a ridiculous way.
I mean, I always played for the drama. That's the thing is. I kept hearing back then, you know how Chuck said they didn't like the word soap, And I remember I never thought it was a soap. I didn't know what people were talking about.
I would do.
Interviews for magazine and go, this is not so Not that I thought I was too good to do so, but I'm just saying I had never thought about it as that, and I always played it for the drama. And I think as I look back, and I see how Joe really had so much drama put upon her and put upon her. I think, you know when a
writer and actor that's a symbiotic relationship. They pick up on what they're seeing when you play the scenes, right, and so they're writing to that, and then you're picking up on what you're reading and you're going, oh, I can bring this, and I think it kind of like morphs into a thing together.
Well, but you started, so Joe starts she was married to this wealthy man in an abusive relationship. She comes here to start over. She starts relationship with Jake. So that's sort of what we know about her coming in. And then what's the craziest leap you had to make as an actor for Joe? Do you remember the craziest leap?
I mean, I'll answer the first question that you actually initiated the beginning of this, which was she was strong when she started, right, and then she became so weak. I got so tired of all of the victimization that they did of Joe, and I remember fans saying this during it, and since you know, like God, she was so tough, she was this tough girl. What happened and I'm like, that's a good question. Maybe I should have
said something, because I did get tired of that. You know, they're literally I know you guys didn't watch a lot. You know, we're all working on twelve hour days. But I had like so many different men take advantage and put her in a bad situation and you know, all
this stuff. What was the worst one, Well, the most extreme was, you know, she falls into this thing with Reid who's like a drug running a drug runner with that boat, and I ended up like blowing him away after he like kidnaps me and kicks me down.
And super violent.
It was so violent. Yeah, but I just Daphne as an actor, like love the direction, you know, like bunding him and trying to get out and looking like wow. But it doesn't mean I want to just be like beat up all the time or like you know what I mean. And I love the payoff of blowing him away off that boat and he goes flying over and but so that was very far fetched. But I guess what I'm saying is that is a way that I wish that my character hadn't gone so far in that
directed to be such a victim. I wish that she would have been stronger. I would look at you guys and say like, well, not so much Sydney. But I would look at like Alison and and Amanda.
They have these.
Strong scenes back and forth. You know, she's running a company, she's like standing up to her and I would just go like that would be so cool.
Oh that's so funny. But you loved like the the gun toting version of Joe of like being able to stand up for yourself and doing that. It's like, I
hate that stuff. I would like the comedy like I want to and they wrote it to me and I but I also like, like what you say, like when you have to have a scene that's real, like when you have to have a scene like like no, she's got real feelings under there, Like she like that Sidney tended towards the like goofy or like you know, the all the goofy stuff that she did, but also like there were those opportunities to tell like a heartfelt story that you had to have her actually be a real
person and be real. I liked those things, but he did not like the things like you're talking about like actiony stuff and I hate it's so interesting how people like just sort of are drawn towards other you know, different things. And and but like you said you had to take Alison to the place you said things were scary. Was it the times when you were really being vulnerable?
And it was a mixed bag, Like I keep thinking about when Alison was an alcoholic, and it was so much fun for me to play because Alison finally got to do all the stuff she'd never done because she was so so she was like that sort of out there, angry, ballsy saying I remember, I remember one time she pulled the tablecloth out from the dinner, right. That was really fun. But I was a sober alcoholic at the time, right, Like we've tried. I turned a year sober my first
Dan Melrose play. So for me, it's like I wanted to treat it with with how it would be authentically and I'm doing this soaproper version of it. So it was fun to play, but I also had this awareness of oh, it's like I wanted to get into the truth of it. And there was some of that too, like they remember do you remember like she hit the
kid on the bike? Oh, I mean that was like that was a moment of this is the stuff that can happen, Right, that was the real gravitas, but so fun, but I wanted to treat it with seriousness, so I was kind of a it's it's interesting, like you were saying, like you love the punching, hitting, but you didn't like
her being a victim. So it's interesting as we're going through it, Like some of the most fun things to play are the hardest to play, like when when Alison is high and you lose custody of your child, like that was an exciting scene to play, and how awful and how challenging and how difficult. So sometimes it's both, right, like the hardest end up being the most most challenging. Right, it's interesting, and most challenging are also usually the hardest.
It's so so as we wrap this up, it's gonna be so fun to have Chuck in here. I mean, he was the longest writer and executive producer on the show, and he did come from a decade of writing soap operas.
He's written so.
Great so he thinks like that and like how the what's that thing? How the soup is made? He was in the room, you know, like I can't maybe there's you never know, it's coming up next.
Yeah, and he will have him back to you because a man to see him.
He has a lot of many stories.
I have a feeling it was like a ten percent of his stories you told today.
Yeah, there's so many more I.
Know, and that's that's going to come up soon. But yeah, we've we've been having so much fun lately. It was so great to have Heather in.
Yeah, so great to have Heather.
More to come.
We're going to do recap next.
We got to keep our recaps.
Watching this with us. It's so fun.
It's so much fun to watch.
Melrose is getting juicy, all right, thanks for turning into another Melrose minute soon. That kids still the place. Thank