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SOD
January 16, 2007
Smith Staying on OLTL
“I was going to leave,”
reveals soap vet Hillary B. Smith, who originated the role of OLTL’s Nora in
1992 and won an Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy in 1994. The actress inked a
one-year deal at the end of 2005 and thought that her Llanview days were done.
“I had other things that I wanted to do, so I was really Zen about the fact that
we had given it a year and that they couldn’t come up with anything and okay,
time to move on,” she explains.
So, Smith was surprised when
she got the call from an ABC rep. “She said, ‘We’d like you to stay for four
more years.’ And they pitched me a story and I thought it was intriguing and
interesting and thoughtful and I said, ‘Okay, yeah, I’d like to stick around to
do that. That sounds like fun.’ It was very exciting and flattering.”
That fun story includes
reteaming her with Catherine Hickland (Lindsay). “They’re going to revive the
feud between Lindsay and Nora,” she reports. “That did it for me. If I get to
work with my Puss-Puss again, I’m thrilled. Everyone knows that Catherine and I
love each other and what’s better than seeing two people who love each other
hate each other [laughs]?”
Phil Carey (Asa) will also be
in the mix. “I love working with him and I love him,” she raves. “Talk about
having a secret crush on someone. I have one on him. And I think he’s got one on
me. It’s a mutual little fanfest we have going. He’s so wonderful; he’s the
greatest curmudgeon in the world.”
As for Nora, Smith previews.
“She is going to go in an interesting direction. This will be a clean slate for
her She’s going to be a little different. I think it will be interesting how the
story unfolds; it will make a lot of sense.”
Smith admits that the last
year has given her a new view of the show. “I enjoyed the past year so much
because it gave me a chance to really prioritize my life and to put the show in
the proper perspective, which is, it’s work,” she explains. “I’ve had a lot of
family issues, so it gave me the time to be close to home, which I’ve loved.
When you’re working on a soap opera for as long as some of us have, you work
more on being your character than you do on being yourself, so I’ve enjoyed
going back to being me again.”
Smith says she’s thankful to
her fans for the enthusiasm that they have showed for her alter ego. “They’ve
been very sweet and very supportive, and it seems they’ve been supportive no
matter what I did or where I went,” she notes. “I think this is a nice tribute
to them, and I hope they enjoy the ride because I’m really looking forward to
it.”
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