| Fi For Two | |
More
Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly Articles
|
|
Fiona Hutchison Relishes A Second Cupful Of ONE LIFE TO LIVE's Grand Gabrielle
October 10, 2001
Memo to any future
executive producers hoping to entice Fiona Hutchison back into their lairs: Read
her old clippings. (From 1991: "My biggest regret is that Asa and Gabrielle
never got together ... they would have made a dynamite duo.") And invite her to
breakfast.
Earlier this year, ONE LIFE TO LIVE Executive Producer Gary Tomlin apparently did both. After futile attempts at reaching Hutchison on vacation in Anguilla, he touched base with her when she returned to New York City, where she lives with husband John Viscardi (ex-Tony) and their two children, Hutch (5) and Trevor (31/2). It was a familiar call - since Hutchison's departure from the show in 1991, every regime had tried to find a place on the canvas for the hair-flipping, emotional Gabrielle. "Gary came to me and said, 'Let's have lunch,' " recalls Hutchison. "I said, 'I've had a lot of lunches; they never work out.' So he said, 'How about breakfast?' "
From there, it was all over bar the shouting (and with Gabrielle, there is usually shouting and sobbing and terrible angst). After a 10-year absence from Llanview, Gabrielle - and Hutchison - were back in town ... this time, married to Asa.
Hutchison couldn't be more thrilled. Phil Carey (Asa) is a neighbor and family friend who became a mentor during her first run in the role, from 1987-1991. Remembers Hutchison, "Phil took me to his favorite watering hole and gave me his acting lessons, which I soaked up gladly. None of them are printable, however."
Just The Facts OLTL
Hero: "Phil Carey [Asa] is my Olympian, my he-man. And if you don't
believe me, tough luck." |
Gabrielle is the kind of role daytime is lacking these days - she really puts the drama back into melodrama with her seesawing emotions, tan-trums and commitment to using sex as a weapon. Hutchison believes that over-the-top antics are what viewers really want. "We are here to entertain," she says. "We are hopefully here to give you 47 minutes of relief from whatever problems you might have. Gabrielle is a very emotional, raw character. She's everything you felt and wanted to do - and couldn't."
A character whose past scenes have included damning God to hell in a chapel (causing the real-life archdiocese of New York to complain) and making love in the hay with Max (paired with shots of a horse kicking the side of a stall) can be a potent force. "It gets people riled up," grins the actress. But playing that person is also emotionally draining - and it put Hutchison in therapy last time.
"There are areas of Gabrielle I have to be cautious with," she explains. "I'm prepared to go into the dungeon with her, to go back. But before - I worked solid for eight months, five days a week, without a break, crying on a regular basis, going to the depths of darkness. My inner clock would burst me into tears at 4 o'clock every afternoon, even when I wasn't working."
For all of her passion in the role, acting wasn't Hutchison's original choice of profession. Born in Miami to two native British subjects (hence her dual citizenship) and raised partly in Jamaica, she studied for 14 years to be a ballerina. Sidelined by a spine injury at 19, she spent two years recovering and discovered a talent and interest in acting.
There are no regrets. "A ballet dancer's life is short-lived as far as performing on- stage," she says practically. "With acting, I felt I had all the time in the world."
Following some bit parts on the P&G soaps, Hutchison landed the role of Gabrielle. Four years later, having been put through the wringer with her (and through therapy), she left in a noisy contract dispute. (Capital Cities, then-owner of ABC, was trying to get soap actors to agree to a salary, rather than the traditional guarantee/contract setup.) She popped up as jewel thief Jenna on GUIDING LIGHT from 1992-94 and again from 1996-98, then briefly last year as AS THE WORLD TURNS's Celia. But the siren song of Gabrielle kept calling her back - and so did those execs.
Leaving OLTL the first time was hard, remembers Hutchison, but she did take with her the man who ultimately became her second husband, so there were benefits. Although they weren't a couple at first (she was still married to British-based assistant director Sean Dromgoole), Hutchison and Viscardi hit it off as friends immediately. "It's revisionist history to say it was love at first sight," she allows, "but now I can look back on it and say, 'Oh, that's what it was.' Love at first sight is when you're not in control of your emotions. That's what we were feeling."
|
For a while, the two remained good friends, she struggling with her marriage and Viscardi "dating every girl on the show," laughs Hutchison. "He'd hide in my dressing room so that nobody else would find him." After she was legally separated, they gave romance a whirl. "I remember the first time he kissed me, we were so scared. Our lips were shaking and bouncing off of each other."
They did something out of a soap opera next: took AIDS tests ("This was the early 1990s. My [soon-to-be-ex] husband was seeing other people and John had been around") and waited for six months to see if they were both clear. "It was the best six months I've ever had, abstaining like that. I tell him we should do it again!"
For now, the part of her life that bears repeating is on ONE LIFE. With everything stable at home, getting unstable on the job is much easier. "If my life were a mess, I don't think I would have come back to play Gabrielle," she says. "I don't think I would have trusted myself to cope with it. I wouldn't have put my health at risk."
Still, she's only been back on the job a matter of months, and Hutchison knows that going to that "dungeon" with Gabrielle could prove a little dangerous. But she wouldn't have it any other way. "I said to Jim [DePaiva, Max] the other day, 'Hey, I think I'm owed a congratulations,' " the actress recalls. "He said, 'What for?' And I said, 'Well, it's been four months, and I'm not in therapy yet. I still have a personal life and I'm happy. What's going on here?' And he said, 'Give it time.' "
© Soap Opera
Digest,
2001
Photo used with permission from ABC
MediaNet
