Not Young, Still Restless by Jeanne Cooper

Author:Jeanne Cooper [Cooper, Jeanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-05-09T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Awards and Other Dramas, Onstage and Off

There’s a real sense of community among soap actors that’s very unique in the television business. You’ll find it within specific prime-time shows and maybe some talk shows and reality shows, for all I know, but you won’t find it across the board among, let’s say, all sitcom actors, or all one-hour-drama actors. We long-term soap actors, no matter which network we’re on, who’s producing us, and who’s writing for us, have too much in common to not cheer for one another’s victories and feel one another’s pain when the chips are down, the stakes are high, and we’re being told on a sickeningly regular basis that this medium in which many of us have loyally, lovingly dedicated the majority of our adult lives is dying of old age. (We don’t happen to believe that, by the way. We really are bright enough to know the difference between “dying” and “being killed.”)

Being a soap actor means working your ass off, memorizing vast amounts of dialogue day after day, with no long hiatuses and few, if any, reruns, therefore few, if any, residuals. In fact, a friend of mine, whose career began on a soap before she went on to a distinguished film career and married an insanely wealthy man, once told me that if she had to work for a living again, she’d go back to her waitressing days before she’d audition for another soap, because by comparison being a waitress was so much easier.

Being a soap actor means watching executives and writers come and go, whether or not they seem to have respect for the show, the storylines, or the cast. It can be infuriating, for example, not to mention intensely discouraging, to read interviews in which your newly hired boss is taking pride in never having watched a single episode of the show of which he’s now in charge.

Being a soap actor means being asked to take pay cuts every time your contract is up for renewal because of the economy, budget constraints, blah, blah, which would be a bit more palatable if the executives who are so concerned about our budgets were taking pay cuts as well.

Being a soap actor means devoting the majority of your professional energy to shows that are rarely given a fraction of the promotion and publicity prime-time shows enjoy.

Being a soap actor means being given some storylines you adore and some storylines that make absolutely no sense to you at all, and when the latter is the case, knowing your input, even your expertise, about what your character would and would not do, or what might be a really interesting direction for your character to take, is about as welcome among the executives as a swarm of bees at an outdoor wedding.

Being a soap actor means enjoying a theoretical illusion of job security with a constant awareness that at any given moment, you could be let go or replaced for “budget” or “storyline-dictated” reasons, or,

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