Re: Major Casting News!!!! AMC

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:43:43 -0500, luisavt wrote
(in article
<9f0a7def-c0a7-4443-a4c0-a97388edb037@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

On Dec 12, 2:11 pm, "bankbo...@xxxxxxxxx" <bankbo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is big!!!!

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Soap Opera Weekly is reporting that two-time Daytime Emmy nominee
Rebecca Budig is returning to the role of Greenlee on "All My
Children" and Sabine Singh is out.

Budig originated the role in 1999 and won a Soap Opera Digest Award in
2003 as Outstanding Younger Leading Actress. She left AMC in 2005 to
pursue other interests. She previously played Michelle Bauer on
"Guiding Light."

Sabine Singh joined AMC earlier this year and never caught on with
fans as well as Budig. Singh seemed no worse for the wear on Monday
night when she attended the "There Will Be Blood" New York premiere
with boyfriend Evan Altman.

"All My Children" seems to have a new approach to winning back lost
viewers - brining back fan favorites. As previously reported, Darnell
Williams and Debbi Morgan are returning to the sudser as well.
Williams told WeLoveSoaps, "I'm actually looking forward to the work."

Does this mean Kendall will go back to calling her the "garden
gnome"? I, for one, think Sabine is an improvement. She's much more
believable as Jack's daughter. And she's better in romantic scenes
because the guys aren't four heads taller than her. Rebecca was much
more annoying - remember when she was stuck in a pit for a long time?
Her endless monologues were even worse than Greenlee's current
whining. The new Greenlee has a softer side. I think Sabine was a
pretty good recast and she and Aiden go well together. <<

I don't think she's a horrible actor, but I do have a problem with her
portrayal of this character. It speaks to the same thing I mentioned about
the actress playing NuBabe: the nature of the genre is that characters _are_
recast, from time to time. So you cannot be inflexible about a change in the
acting style of your favorite character. However, it _is_ acting, and it
_is_ the responsibility of an actor to portray the character as written, and
at least _remotely_ in concert with previous portrayals. For instance, when
Jill Larson took over the role of Opal from Dorothy Lyman, she didn't change
Opal to a Boston-accented, sombre, practical woman who looked down her nose
at everyone. That's not the character. NuBabe is portraying the character
as an ordinary, average American girl who grew up somewhere in either the
midwest or a coastal metropolitan center. It's not just the lack of accent;
it's the phrasing and pacing of her speech, it's her body language, it's the
way she speaks her lines. She comes across as _sharp_, savvy, and educated
-- and not a slave to her emotions. Babe may be street-smart, but she ain't
sharp or educated...and she is most certainly driven by her emotions!

Sabine Singh may be suffering both from an unwillingness to look to Rebecca
Budig's previous portrayal (and you can't tell me she didn't have any tapes
available to her, whether at ABCD, the Museum of Radio and Television, or
YouTube!), and flaws in the writing. I guarantee you, though, that Budig
could have sold this sorry-ass storyline and _still_ made us hate Greenlee
for the _right_ reasons. Budig's Greenlee would have come out of the
accident hard and bitter even while being sorry, and wouldn't have made us
all go (sarcastically) "Wah, wah, Greenlee's whining again, how sad" (which
is what many of us feel when we watch her portrayal).

It's been a failure of a recast, IMHO, because of a combination of factors.
Sabine Singh has done fine in other roles. She may not be a _great_ actress,
but she's certainly competent. I don't know what anyone short of a great
soap actress could have done with this crappy material, frankly (particularly
the sudden romance with -- and dependance upon -- Aiden, which doesn't seem
all that believable for the Greenlee we've known and loved/hated). It'll be
a stretch, but I do believe that Budig (and hopefully an elevated level of
writing for her) can save the character of Greenlee. At least, I hope so.

Aisling
--
FAC Will Cortlandt
Jewelled Frango 2001
President Pro Tem, RATSA 'Just Smack Jack' Society - protecting Pine Valley
citizens from the corrosive sanctimony of Jackson Montgomery

"In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over
again for the truth to sink in, to kinda catapult the propaganda." - George
W. Bush, May 24, 2005

.

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