POP TV
THINK FACTORY MEDIA
Present
QUEENS OF DRAMA
Starring
DONNA MILLS
CRYSTAL HUNT
VANESSA MARCIL
CHRYSTTE PHARRIS
LINDSAY HARTLEY
HUNTER TYLO
JASON SHANE SCOTT
MARK ZUNINO
LORENZO LAMAS
SAM SARPONG
Special Guest Star JOAN COLLINS
A group of seasoned daytime drama actresses get together with legendary night time drama star Donna Mills ( Knots Landing ) to develop, pitch and produce a new drama series pilot that will be picked up by a network...
Queens of Drama, starring a sextet of current and former suds sirens—Donna Mills (Knots Landing), Vanessa Marcil (General Hospital), Lindsay Hartley (All My Children), Chrystee Pharris (Passions), Crystal Hunt (One Life to Live), and Hunter Tylo (The Bold and the Beautiful). Their goal is to write themselves a drama series and pitch it to the networks. But first they have to lay down their pitchforks. Mills gave us a preview.
Things quickly get cutthroat in this series. Is the conflict among the actresses real? Semireal? Fiction with a whiff of reality?
It’s a hybrid, and I was very careful with the producers, because there were times when they pushed me to be a major bitch. I said, “No, I won’t do that.” I can be headstrong, take-charge, a little pushy, but I don’t think I’m bitchy and I didn’t want that to come across.
Any qualms about jumping into this?
Oh, yes! When they first called me, they said, “We have this reality show…,” and immediately I was resistant. “I am not doing a reality show!” But then they said, “Listen to what it’s about—women who get together and want to create their own nighttime drama.” And I thought that was kind of nice. It’s about something. It has a purpose, a goal. So I took a leap of faith. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it but, as it turned out, I had a really great time.
Is it really any different from acting?
On one of the early days of the show, all six of us were together for a scene and the cameras were rolling but nothing was happening. We were all just sort of staring at each other! Finally, I turned to one of the producers and said, “Somebody has to call ‘Action!’ because, if you don’t, nobody will do anything. We’re actresses!” I can’t speak for the others, but what you see of me in Queens of Drama is pretty much me. I don’t do anything in this series I probably wouldn’t do in real life. I’m not saying I thought up everything. They definitely came up with ideas and ran them by me. I don’t think the audience believes those housewives shows are really, really real.
We also know that certain reality stars like to stir up trouble in order to get famous. Does that apply to any of these divas? [Laughs] I don’t think any of us is planning on this show for our fame…or to get rich. It’s entertainment. At least, I hope it’s entertaining.
At one point, Joan Collins drops in and it’s like Alexis Carrington and Abby Ewing are sitting down to lunch. Was it your intention to give us an ’80s fangasm?
They weren’t even sure they could get Joan, but it ended up being a blast. That era still means so much to people. People couldn’t wait for Thursday night and the next episode of Knots Landing. Your friends came over. It was an event! Now you can hole up in your closet by yourself over a weekend and watch three seasons of House of Cards. It’s not as exciting. But, boy, that era was fun. In fact, I’m writing a book! The proposal just went out to the New York publishers. I’m doing it with James Spada [author of bestselling biographies of Barbra Streisand, Grace Kelly and Bette Davis]. I was approached to do a book back in the Knots years but I said, “I have nothing to tell, or say. No one wants to hear what I think about anything.” But six or seven months ago I was approached again, and now I feel ready.
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| Joan on set with Donna & stylist Rene Horsch |
The gradual disappearance of soap operas has significantly reduced opportunities for actors in that genre. So what better way to exploit the situation than “Queens of Drama,” a Pop series that assembles a group of actresses for the ostensible purpose of trying to produce their own show, but really functions as an excuse to create a reality-style serial on the cheap. There’s no harm done, unless A) you once wrote soaps, and are thus rendered obsolete; or B) you have a functioning cerebral cortex, which will struggle to buy this as anything other than unconvincingly manufactured melodrama.
Granted, there’s something so deliciously meta about the concept — following the soapy sextet as they try to craft and sell a show, when in fact what you’re watching is the show — that some fans will accept the series strictly on its own bogus terms. Moreover, Pop is cleverly launching the half-hour format with back-to-back episodes behind its telecast of the Daytime Emmy Awards, which certainly provides the most hospitable platform imaginable to get the goods sampled.
Familiarity with the actresses and their daytime-drama roles isn’t even a requirement, since the project pretty quickly shoehorns them into types, deriving most of the tension from the catty relationship between Lindsay Hartley and Crystal Hunt. The latter even has the audacity to crack wise about her co-star’s age now that she’s auditioning for mom roles. Meow.
Leading the pack, sort of, is Vanessa Marcil, who enlists Donna Mills (sorry, “guest star” Donna Mills) to help advance the project. But Mills brings in Hunter Tylo without asking, which irks the others, and then takes a network meeting (at the CW, synergistically, given CBS’ ownership role with both that network and Pop) without informing her new partners.
The gang is so irritated by this, or at least professes to be, they seek to enlist another diva as a possible replacement for Mills. And when Joan Collins comes sauntering in, the music swells as if it’s 1985 all over again.
Chrystee Pharris rounds out the cast, largely presented as the voice of reason and sort-of referee between Hunt and Hartley. And “cast” is the operative word, since everyone is playing some variation of themselves, just with less sex than they used to have in soaps.
Of course, there are two ways of looking at this. Charitably, it’s possible to admire the ingenuity at work in finding an avenue to employ these actresses, albeit in a slightly different capacity; by contrast, it’s just as easy to lament that they only get to ply their trade in this context by pretending that they’re not really acting, in an “If life gives you lemons” kind of way.
Then again, the divas brought together here join a pretty sizable list of performers who have done just that by going the reality-TV route. And as Kim Basinger’s Veronica Lake look-alike put it in “L.A. Confidential,” “We still get to act a little.”
At present the series is not on dvd.. Hopefully maybe in the future..
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