 |
The season's final episodes of nighttime soaps
have become scary affairs, with bombings, crashes, assassinations
and assorted other mayhem, but according to Teri Austin, who
plays Jill Bennett on CBS's Knots Landing, all these fictional
convulsions are so much pat-a-cake compared to what's really
happening.
Which is that every actor on the shows who isn't totally secure
and at contractual peace with the producers had to sweat out
every page of the final script-not to mention the rewrites that
keep churning out of the production offices on the hour-to see
if his character had a chance of living to scheme and lust for
another season, or if he succumbs to death or any number of
fates that are worse than.
In Austin's case, she didn't discover Jill's future until the
literal last moment. "Oh, others told me I had a good chance,
but let's face it, there are a lot of regulars on Knots and
I know I'm nobody." The screws tightened when Jill didn't
appear in the next to last episode. "A friend told me there's
probably a line in the script where Gary says, 'Oh, my God,
isn't it too bad about Jill being hit by that bus'." Then
the script for the season's final episode, the cliffhanger,
arrived. Still no Jill.
"I sort of took things into my own hands. I called in and
said somebody from TV GUIDE wanted to visit the set and watch
me at work." A couple of days went by and then "a
messenger came with two pages. Two wonderful pages." The
producers said they decided to write in a scene with Jill and
Gary "because they didn't want the viewers to forget the
relationship. I was, what's the word, ecstatic." Along
with those precious two pages came a contract renewal.
Jill's story was probably the least of the cliffhangers on Knots
because four of the principals hadn't signed new contracts.
The character played by Michele Lee, one of the four, was kidnapped
at season's end and everyone knows the terrible things that
happen to kidnapped women who don't sign new contracts. (Lee
will be back. She signed a new contract after the kidnapping
scene was shot.) Ted Shackelford(Gary Ewing), who has a new
four-year pact, points out: "When the show started there
were just four principals. Then eight. Now there are 12."
Which would seem to indicate some people could be spared. Kevin
Dobson(Mack) gleefully recalls that one year the cliffhanger
script was titled "Negotiations."
If Austin had been dropped, it would have been a blow to the
entire cast because they'd miss the fun of ragging her daily
about her Canadian accent, an accent she insists is all in their
minds. Says Austin, "The one thing I made sure of before
coming to Hollywood was that I got rid of my Canadian accent.
I had very little to start with and now it's all gone."
When this is related to Shackelford, he laughs and laughs. But
Austin is defiant. "On the show there are New York and
Alabama accents, and every other kind, and nobody pays any attention.
But if I say one word they think sounds Canadian, bells ring
and sirens howl." She says Dobson once tried to console
her "and he told me," -here she does Dobson's unmistakable
New York accent-"'It took me a long time to lose my accent'."
David Jacobs, executive producer of Knots, sums it up gently.
"Teri has a Canadian accent, but she is working on it."
Austin's career began in her native Toronto, where she did a
TV talk show, stage work, improvisation and "radio drama-something
most actors here never heard of." She studied theater at
York University where "a lot of the work was in improv,
you just stand there in sheer terror and cope or die."
Two years ago Jacobs came to Toronto to produce a soap and hired
Austin "for a show or two. She played a waitress, someone
very sexy. She had a scene where she was to burst into tears
and she did it very sweetly. She's not a great actess, but she
had a certain quality."
A short time later, armed with tapes and resumes' and piles
of good notices, she decided to test the Hollywood scene. "To
my surprise, I got an agent right away. It turned out I had
an advantage over most newcomers because I had actually worked;
I had done things on stage and TV and even radio."
She tested for several pilots and sat through innumerable interviews.
"In Canada and interview is just you and somebody behind
a desk. Once at Warners there were 17 people. I asked the guy
in charge, 'Did you sell tickets?'" One day she was being
tested on the Lorimar lot and decided to phone Jacobs. She was
invited for coffee, and when she got back to her hotel she found
a message that she had landed a guest shot on Knots.
That led to the continuing role of Jill Bennett. As Jacobs puts
it, "She just happened to be the right woman in the right
place. We needed someone in her 20s, not quite an ingenue."
No one, of course, is suggesting the other women on Knots are
advancing in years, heaven forbid. "I wouldn't even think
of commenting on that," says Shackelford. Of Austin, Jacobs
muses, "She's sweet. She's a particular favorite of mine."
Austin: "In anyone's career, there has to be someone to
say, 'I'm going to give this person a chance.' For me, it's
been David."
It isn't easy for an unknown young actress to join a long-running
show like Knots, populated by lords and ladies of TV. When Austin
did a guest shot there, he says, "I mainly just hid in
my dressing room." She overheard whispers about there being
someone exciting in the cast, but before she could make any
modest disclaimers, she discovered the someone was Ava Gardner.
On being introduced to someone she regarded as a real star,
Austin recalls, "I felt like saying, 'Can I get you some
coffee, can I park your car?' "Gardner, she adds, "was
very pleasant." Here she does a wicked little imitation
of Gardner puffing majestically on a cigarette.
Austin seems a merry addition to Knots. She has sexy scenes
with Shackelford and asks, "Have you noticed how often
the scripts call for him to take off his shirt? That's for the
42 million women out there." For one such scene she asks,
"Gee, Ted, aren't you putting on a little weight?"
Then, "You see, he gave up smoking last fall and has been
putting it on ever since." Shackelford vigorously denies
this and observes, "Of course some people have a tapeworm
and can pig out all day."
Before Shackelford talks to a reporter, she solemnly advices,
"Now, Ted, you are a dear friend, but remember, you're
not funny." She needn't have worried. The main thing he
has to say, when asked to sum her up, is, "She's like a
day at the beach."
Austin has a home in Laurel Canyon "with a private back
yard where I can sunbathe without worrying about strap marks."
Of Hollywood men, Austin, 27(according to friends; she won't
discuss her age) and single, says, "I'm having fun."
Though she's found "the guys are very forward, a little
abrupt. Like, 'Hi, how are you, how about Thursday night?'"
They also seem to live in a world bounded by show biz and cars.
"I went out with a doctor. He was writing a script."
"On one date this guy led me to his car and said something
like 'This is my new Humpty Dumpty.' I could tell I was supposed
to scream or jump up and down, but all I could think of to say
ws, "It's very nice.' He was crushed."
She's not only appalled that Hollywood men like to be identified
by their cars, but that plenty of women go right along. "They
will describe some guy to you by saying he drives a Porsche.
They don't say whether he's nice of handsome or ugly or out
on parole. Once I asked a girl about one of these Porsche men.
'Do you remember what he looks like? Would you recognize him
without his car?'"
She has also encountered men interested in more than scripts
and cars, namely, the casting couch. Yes, she's encountered
men who told her she could advance through sex, and yes, she
was enraged by it, and no, she never gave in.
Austin drives what she describes as a "dollar-ninety-eight
rented Datsun," courtesy of the weak Canadian dollar."
"It was the cheapest car they had and the only one they
would rent me. Someone coming from Toronto has the same status
here as someone from Pago Pago." Though her standing on
Knots means "I can eat and pay the rent for quite a while,"
she still treats the Hollywood dollar with respect. She not
only drives the cheapie car, but at a luncheon date parks it
on the street a block away, thus saving valet-parking charges.
Sometimes she and the cheapie car take a man to a neighborhood
restaurant(Barney's Beanery) that has pool tables in the back.
She's an excellent pool player, a skill about as rare as lumberjacking
among Hollywood women, and she's found the surest way to crush
Hollywood males, next to yawning at their cars, is to trim them
at pool. "Men simply don't like to be beaten at pool by
a woman," she says. She stoutly denies ever throwing a
game just to shore up some guy's ego, "though I do lose
now and then."
Austin is her real name(though "my brothers say it's too
dull, I should use something with 'Lust' in it), and her parents,
two brothers and two sisters live in Toronto. She can speak
a little French and "if I'm around French speaking people
for long I get very brave."
Of the future, she says, "I'll stay here as long as I can
get work, but I wouldn't hang around if the time came when I
didn't seem to be wanted. I was very comfortable in Toronto."
She's thought of daring London and the stage. "Not much
money but it would look great on a resume'." Meanwhile,
Hollywood looks good. And with luck, the day may never come
when Gary has to announce that poor Jill has just been hit by
a bus.
Copyright KnotsLanding.Net 2003
|
|
