MOVE IT AND SHAKE IT WITH WANDA

Actress Carey Cromelin, who has played Lewis Oil secretary Wanda on and off on Guiding Light since 1985, has many facets to her professional personality.

In addition to being a performer and writer, she is also an early childhood music education expert.

Want to see Carey in action? Check out the Movers and Shakers class for 3 and 4 year olds at New York City's world-renowned 92nd St. Y!

From a 1991 interview with Carey:

“I wanted to work at Washington’s Arena Stage. I grew up on all those plays.”

Instead, her star seemed headed straight for New York, though original intentions were only to stay for a little while before returning to the Washington scene. “I told a friend that there was so much work in New York but if I had no job in two weeks, I’d be back and would teach school.” She laughed. “Ten years later, here I still am.”

But soaps are a different venue than the theater. “I was waitressing and a woman at one of my tables said she’d seen me in a D.C. play and asked if I’d do soaps,” Carey remembered with a giggle. “I said I was really here for theater, but I guess I’d do a soap. That was extra work on One Life to Live. I thought it was easy then, little I knew. But when you come to town and know nothing, you think anything’s possible. Now when people ask advice on New York, I tell them to hold on to the novelty as long as they can. It keeps you going longer.”

As Wanda, with her off-the-wall, innate sense of humor, Carey offers a buoyancy that, before her, was subdued on Guiding Light. The secretary’s characterization is the melding of a real secretary to one of the show’s executives, with Carey’s own feel for Wanda’s persona. “The real Wanda called me one day,” Carey related, “and she said [doing a South Carolina drawl], ‘Ah feel lahke I’m talking to mahself in the mirrah!’”

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