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She is voluptuous, promiscuous and just plain venomous. She
is the vixen, a character long familiar to moviegoers and soap
opera addicts. Yet never before this year has she appeaed in
such variety -- and with such energy --on prime-time TV.
Take Abby Cunningham -- please. The suburban vamp of CBS's
Knots Landing so far has had an affair with Richard Avery, one
of the husbands on the cul-de-sac; gotten another husband, Gary
Ewing, into trouble; stolen her brother Sid Fairgate's invention;
and gone to bed (between satin sheets) with J.R., up from Dallas
to wreak some havoc in California.
Indeed, what 's so surprising about this year's profusion of
prime-time viragoes is not the hostility they have evoked, but
the excitement they have engendered. The classics like Gone
with the Wind and daytime soaps like Search for Tomorrow has
become, in the evening hours, the role model many people, especially
women, would like to emulate. One obvious reason for this turnabout
has been the success of CBS's Dallas, a breeding ground for
glamorous but treacherous women. In addition to Sue Ellen, the
perfect Texas wife truned alcoholic tramp, and her slithery
baby sister Kristin, who tried to kill J.R., Dallas has now
given us the unscrupulous Leslie Stewart, J.R.'s personal public-relations
consultant. Leslie is so flagrantly unethical that the Public
Relations Society of America has felt called upon to protest
her character and condemn her conduct. Yet, to hear such shady
ladies discussed by the producers who created them and the actresses
who animate them, you'd think vice was a virtue.
Donna Mills, who plays the sex-crazed Abby on Knots Landing
, says: "I think characters like Abby and J.R. are popular
because they act out a lot of people's fantasies. I know that
I'd like to do some of the things that Abby does. Our instincts
aren't that far apart. The only differences is that I have a
conscience and morals that she doesn't have." Donna Mills
says, "I guess once a victim, always a victim. Once you're
typecast in this town, it's difficult to break that image."
A petite blonde in her middle 30s, with the lithe figure of
a ballerina(which she once was), Donna started out in television
on soap operas. In 1971, she went to California to play Clint
Eastwood's girl friend in his film, "Play Misty for Me."
She spent a good part of the next few years being chased across
the screen. "I was bored playing the virtuous but vulnerable
woman who was pursued by villains all the time. It was not the
way I wanted to spend the rest of my life." So Donna decided
to turn down all the victim roles offered her.
For the next year and a half she played a lot of tennis. Then
she heard about the role of Abby Cunningham and decided to go
after it. "The day after she came in to see me about the
role," recalls David Jacobs, the creator of both Dallas
and Knots Landing, "she called back and said she wanted
to read for it, which was extraordinary for someone of her experience.
She said she was afraid that we were dismissing her, and the
truth of it is, we were. My initial impression was that she
was too sweet, I guess because she had played sweet and victim
so much of the time." Donna's reading and her pursuit of
the role convinced Jacobs and the other producers of the show
that she had a harder edge than they had first imagined. She
has been stirring up trouble ever since.
"I love this character," Donna says. "I love
her naughtiness, her open sexuality and her intelligence. After
all those years of playing the victims and fugitives, I enjoy
playing the aggressor. It's much more fun to make things happen
than to have them happen to you. People come up to me and say,
"You've added so much spice to the show. I can't wait to
see what you do next'." One of Donna's ambitions, of which
Abby would certainly approve, is to produce her own films. The
opportunity to be devious and ruthless, after years of being
virtuous and sweet, may at last have given Donna the power to
realize her dreams.
Copyright KnotsLanding.Net 2003
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