Interview with Timothy D. Stickney

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Like many actors who play villains on daytime, Timothy D. Stickney (R.J., One Life to Live) has learned to justify many of his character's evil acts. Here's his take on some of R.J.'s evil crimes.

On what you can't get away with on a soap: "Obviously rape is not a problem, stealing children is not a problem, but actually killing someone...[then] you're dead, you're gone." Hence, things got a little stick(ne)y this summer when R.J. ordered Tillie to kill Lindsay. "The 'I want her dead' [episode]... was a scary half a day. That's one of the signs of impending doom," Stickney laughs. Luckily for him Tillie didn't succeed. The only other time the actor worried about his job was when R.J. put a hit on Max's twins. "But it was a misunderstanding. R.J. made a phone call where he said, 'Do anything.' I went upstairs (to the executive producer) and asked, 'Do you want me to really say 'Do anything'? And they said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' Initially the kids were dead, but people went crazy, so the kids are kidnapped, sold!"

On why R.J. didn't fight back when Antonio beat him up at the police station: "If you are in their clubhouse, a police precinct, you're a fool to think about doing anything. R.J. is not a dummy, so what can he do except take the beating and see if there's a possibility for anything later. He's really trying to win my daughter back."

On R.J.'s bad rap: "Explain why they (the cops) never went to look for Téa when the rapist (Todd) showed up and she disappeared? She wasn't a bad person, I was, but they never helped me look for her. They don't know (she ran away with Todd), how do they know? By the time I get the payoff letter it's already months later. "R.J. can't be honest enough for these people, so I've decided he's just a little more shrewd about the scams, especially since the last time they arrested him was Cristian's scam, the whole counterfeit ID thing he sold me for like a month. And then the police raid his place because he was making fake IDs because they needed to look for the body. R.J.'s not the one who has to justify why the artist can't paint anymore, that's his fault too, by the way: R.J. wired the car to hurt Todd, [Cristian] steals the car and hurts himself and it's R.J.'s fault! That's what Cristian's going to tell Liz or that R.J. sent a guy to scare him out of town who decides he's going to steal Jen. How do I know I hire a stalker?

On R.J.'s growth: "He has changed. It's very fortunate you're catching me and him now because there's been a long enough period where I think he's been honest about what he's doing, trying to do as much as possible because he had this albatross of that drug thing (supplying Lindsay with the memory-erasing drug) hanging over his head. I was feeling that the character had grown backward, he had had a period where I thought he was a pretty good person but then because the town hurt him a lot he turned back into the person he was when he was a teenager and operated from "hurt you before you can hurt me, and your mother."

On whether or not Lindsay will ever turn R.J. in?: "Hopefully it's as far as it is [going to go] because they told Nora that they think I'm involved and she said I wouldn't do it. So since I doubt I have a receipt in my name anywhere I really don't see how... It's not like, "UPS delivered one memory knockout."

© Soap Opera Weekly, 2002
Photo used with permission from ABC MediaNet.

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