Red Room Where the Writers Are

When Maeve Kinkead joined the Guiding Light cast in 1980, her character, Vanessa Chamberlain, was an over-indulged, wealthy daddy's girl. Over time, Vanessa has become Springfield's dignified voice of reason; a savvy business woman who never compromises her ethics, a loving mother who puts her children first. Genteel. Composed. Graceful. Strong. These are the words that come to mind when I think of Vanessa. I have to confess, I've always had a soft spot for her. In many ways she's the ideal modern, American woman; juggling career and family and never dropping the ball, and looking great all the while. More than this, though: Vanessa is warm and exceedingly likable. She's genuinely good-hearted. Does any Guiding Light viewer not love Vanessa? She's Springfield royalty.

I was lucky enough to catch Maeve just as she got ready to take a much-deserved vacation after shooting her final scenes, ever, as Vanessa. I found Maeve to be just as warm and likable as Vanessa, and every bit as genteel. Intelligent and thoughtful, it's clear that she's put a great deal of thought into what the loss of Guiding Light will mean for people who have tuned in every day for years. We talked about the relationship soap viewers form with their favorite characters, various story lines she's been involved in, and the changes that have taken place at Guiding Light over the years. She eventually turned the tables on me and asked my opinion, as a viewer. As has been the case with other Guiding Light cast members I've been lucky enough to interview, speaking with Maeve Kinkead was a pleasure.

Vanessa started out as a spoiled brat, and emerged as a heroine – very dignified and virtuous. Which have you enjoyed playing more?

Playing Vanessa as a brat was, for me, incredibly thrilling. Back then Vanessa wanted center stage, and she just grabbed it. She didn’t have to care about what people felt or thought. It was deeply thrilling to play a brash character – having people react to her, instead of her reacting to people. As an actor, that was a lot of fun to play. Of course, Vanessa was so pampered, but a lot of her brattiness was nothing more than an act to cover up her insecurities. It wasn’t really true. As the character grew and changed, she began to show what she was feeling. With that, the role become more multi-layered, which I've loved. There have been satisfactions in playing this character in both ways, but the satisfactions of playing Vanessa as a brat, and the more mature, multi-dimensional Vanessa are different.

Except for a couple of very short breaks, you’re the only actress to have played Vanessa, and I doubt viewers would buy anyone else in the role - I certainly wouldn't. On the other hand, you’ve worked closely with different actors taking over different roles: the role of Billy was recast for a while, and there has been a succession of actresses playing Dinah. What’s this like, as an actor – suddenly facing a different co-star in the same role?

For an actor, it’s hell on wheels. Just horrible. It’s just such a shock to suddenly be working with someone new. No matter how you try to talk yourself down, there it is.

What I’ve tried to do, is try to lie low, stay grounded, remember who Vanessa is, give the new actor space and time to let their temperament come through. Sometimes you know, right away, that a recast won’t work. Luckily, that’s been relatively rare on Guiding Light, because the casting department has been great. Wendy Moniz and Gina Tognoni approached Dinah in very different ways, but they were both wonderful in the role.

I always loved the interaction between Vanessa and Maureen. I love that the writers honored the friendship that can exist between women by portraying Vanessa as experiencing a kind of widowhood when she lost her closest friend. I watched the scenes from that week, recently, and they're still very powerful and moving. Tina Sloan told me shooting that story arc was really difficult for her. Was it tough on you, as well?

It (filming the story line that culminated in Maureen Bauer’s death) was emotionally draining for me. Over the years, I’ve thought of Vanessa as a real person. Trust didn’t come easily to her. She’s had trust issues with Billy over the years. Even her relationship with her father wasn’t perfect when she first came on the scene. Certainly the only female Vanessa ever fully trusted was Maureen, and with good reason. It was very difficult to lose that character – difficult for a lot of people.

This was a real turning point for the show. In some ways it was a communal loss, and I think people learned something from it. Think about who Maureen was: she wasn’t an overly dramatic character, an agent provocateur. We saw her mainly in her home, with family and friends. Ellen Parker is such a fine actor. She always came in quietly, did whatever she needed to do to prepare herself for a scene and, even if it was just walking from the refrigerator to the kitchen table, she made every movement seem natural, and every gesture one that Maureen would make. These slow, gentle scenes mirrored the realities of life, just as soap operas did. And that changed when Maureen died.

I know people love Vanessa and Billy together, but the Matt/Vanessa storyline was amazing and one of my favorites, especially at the very beginning. I distinctly remember my mom, who is a staunch woman, watching that scene at the 5th street fire. When Matt and Vanessa finally found one another, this tough New York career woman turned to me, a little weepy-eyed, and said, “This is a really, really beautiful story.”

That’s so nice to hear! It really was beautifully written.

Did the writers always plan for this to be such a major story?

Not at all. Originally, having Matt and Vanessa meet was just a vehicle by which to bring Matt to Springfield, and there were other plans for that character. The writers had Matt set to go on a whole different trajectory, which included a relationship with another character.

What drove it, then? Was it a matter of chemistry?

Something just happened betwen us on camera. Chemistry? I don’t know, but we worked really well together from the start. I adore Kurt, and always have. I trust him on some level without words.

Of course, the big love story these days is Otalia. I see so many parallels between Otalia and Matt/Vanessa: a seemingly unlikely pair…their love is a secret…and they don’t know how to go about breaking the secret to the people they care about. But also because it’s very old-fashioned and gentle. Especially at the beginning, Otalia seemed very real in a way that the Matt and Vanessa story line seemed real – or the way we wish real life could be. Both stories have a lot of heart.

Yes, there was a lot of heart in that story line, and it did seem very real. Of course, once Matt and Vanessa were settled things changed, for a variety of reasons. The show had changes in Executive Producer, and a decision was made to go in a different direction with the story. The writers, God bless them, wrote some beautiful scenes in wrapping up Matt and Vanessa’s relationship. For Vanessa, the deciding factor was when Matt slept with Dinah. She just couldn’t get past that.

I’m glad of it. Who wants a Vanessa who would let that slide? As a fan, I don’t want Vanessa to be that woman who just lies down and allows herself to be hurt like that.

Thank you for saying that. I’m glad to hear it. I never wanted Vanessa to be that type of woman, either. I’ve never thought of Vanessa as a victim.

GL has tackled subjects such as marital rape, domestic violence, breast cancer, interracial marriage, etc. Have there been any story lines you’ve been involved in of which you’re especially proud, or experiences when your work on GL has touched people, personally?

With the Matt and Vanessa story line, we got a lot of letters from people who were in relationships where there were significant age differences. They wrote in and not only thanked us for the story, but also to tell us about the issues they faced, some of the difficulties they encountered because of the age differences. I appreciated that – that people shared their stories and were so honest. It meant a lot that they were willing to share both the good and the bad with us.

I was also really proud to be a part of the rape story line (involving Jack Riley), because the story was told from a feminist perspective.

If I recall correctly, Vanessa wasn’t actually raped. It was an attempted rape, and it was quite something for Guiding Light to illustrate that, even though she wasn’t raped, it didn’t mean everything was a-ok.

That’s right – Vanessa wasn’t raped, but the point was made that she’d definitely been violated. I was proud of that.

One thing I’m also really proud of is the way we’ve shown the effect that alcoholism has, not only on the alcoholic, but on the family, the children. In the past, Billy’s alcoholism has definitely put Vanessa in the position of trying to figure out how to protect her child, how to not be an enabler. What does a woman in that position do? How does she keep her children safe? Soaps have an advantage when it comes to dealing with issues such as alcoholism, because the audience really cares about the characters. It’s not just some anonymous character on the screen going through this trauma – in a lot of ways it’s a friend.

Also, because soaps go on and on for years, they can approach these issues at a more realistic pace, and take us on the journey with a character. A nighttime drama about an alcoholic might be 40 minutes long, by the time you’re 30 minutes into it, the character is already at an AA meeting and resolution is around the corner.

That’s right – it just gets fixed, magically. Soaps are almost like real time, in that respect. The viewer forms a relationship with the characters in a way that isn’t possible in any other medium.

I think that’s one of the reasons people are drawn to them. I know it’s why I’ve been drawn to them since I was a kid. Soap opera, in my opinion, is a uniquely American form of storytelling, a legitimate literary genre in its own right - which is one of the reasons we're writing about it at Red Room, a literary site. When soaps are a thing of the past, I have no doubt film students and aspiring writers will look back and study them.

Yes, and a lot of people make fun of soaps. I think people are attracted to that sense of knowing characters, that continuity. Just as I look around the set and realize that there are people I’ve known for 30 years, I’m sure viewers must feel the same way about the characters – lots of them have been right there with us, the whole time. It’s really touching. Soap opera actors have it different from other actors, because the audience relates to characters as living human beings. I know other actors, actors in my family – when they’re recognized in public it’s not as a character. This is unique to actors working on soaps.

Once all the soaps are gone, there won’t be anything like this, anywhere. It’s like a moment in time, isn't it? - The relationship that soap viewers share with characters.

That’s right. We won’t see this, again.

The Guiding Light Project was started by Jennifer Gibbons, who wanted to formally document, before it was gone forever, what Guiding Light has meant to people, how it may have inspired people's creativity. When she first had the idea, she came across a poem by Hal Steven Shows, called Enter Vanessa Chamberlain. Some published poet out there was so moved by your character that he wrote a lovely poem about her. Did you know about this?

I had no idea. Really? I’d love to read it.

It's lovely. I’ll send you a copy.

Maureen Garrett was recently interviewed by Mimi Torchin, and she commented on how shocked she was to witness the production model GL adopted not long ago. Soaps have definitely changed. Can you talk about how they’ve changed – what you miss from the way they used to be, and what may have improved since you first took the role of Vanessa in 1980?

We used to have all the time and money in the world to produce Guiding Light. When you have the luxury of time to rehearse at length, you can experiment, change a scene, change the shape of a scene. There’s more room for subtlety. Actors do not like their rehearsal time being taken away from them, and that’s something that’s been lost.
Of course, sometimes you can lose great stuff when there's no spontaneity. Without the luxury of time, you can make it work if you can fly with it and think of it as improv. Sometimes great things happen, and it can look very fresh, when you go about it in this way. It depends on the actor. I’ve certainly worked with actors where the first take is best. Sometimes you finish filming a scene and think it’s better than it actually is, or worse than it actually is. We used to have time to re-shoot, but no more.

The show looks edgier, rougher, which is what I think they were going for. It’s not as pretty as it used to be.
I purposely never watched anything shot using the new production model until Bill and Lizzie’s wedding and, to be honest, I was amazed, because they did a great job.

I’ve never been a regular viewer, which might sound silly, so I should be asking you, because you are a regular viewer – what do you think about the changes?

Well, first off, it doesn't sound silly at all that you don't watch regularly - when someone makes doughnuts for a living, the last thing they want to do when they get home is eat doughnuts. As for the production model - early on, I thought some of the camera angles were just awful, but that’s changed, and it now works for me. I’m incredibly impressed with the show this cast and crew churn out every day. We’ve heard about how actors basically get one take, and one take, only. No one else is doing that – shooting a mini movie five times a week, with almost no time for rehearsal, and no room for second takes. People who have visited the studio talk about how small and tight the various sets are, and I think the camera operators deserve a lot of credit for creating the illusion of space. The actors, too – Crystal Chappell has talked about how the camera operator might be right up next to her when filming in the farmhouse living room. To watch the show, you’d never guess that the actors are in cramped quarters, with cameras practically shoved up against them. It speaks volumes about how professional this cast and crew are.

It does. We have an incredible group at Guiding Light. When I first heard about the changes in the production model I was really proud of people for just rolling up their sleeves and saying, “Let’s do it!” It’s a shame that, now that people are used to it, and know how to work with this new model, it’s all ending.

One thing I don’t like is the hospital set. It’s awful, and the lighting is just incredibly unflattering to every actor who’s unfortunate enough to have a scene there. The farmhouse is great. All the sets look good – except the hospital. Just awful.

Even with the old model there were always sets we liked and sets we didn’t like. I’ve heard this before about the hospital set. It really isn’t pretty.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. In closing, do you have any upcoming projects that you’d like to talk about?

I’m actually just going to take some time to take this all in. I just got my MFA, and I’ll be doing some writing. I did some theater last year, but I want to put that aside for now. I plan to sit tight and take time to think about a lot of the things that have been a part of my life because of this show. We’ve had three months to digest this news – that it’s really ending. A lot of us have been thinking about what we’ve had, what we’ve lost, and what we never even knew we had. I know I’m taking from this experience a huge sense of pride in having been involved in something that’s meant so much to people. I’ve developed a different sort of acknowledgement of the audience – I’ve been thinking about them a lot; all the people who have been on this journey with us.

Check Maeve in action as Vanessa seeing Matt Reardon and realizing he is the man she met while on vacation.

 

 

© 2009 Lana M. Nieves
Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves