Tuesday, June 19, 2012

DAYTIME EMMY WEEK SPOTLIGHT: LINDA DANO (ANOTHER WORLD)

Yesterday, for our Emmy week spotlight, Julia Barr (Brooke; All My Children) took us behind the scenes of her Emmy-winning performance following daughter Laura's death.

Today, it's Linda Dano's turn with Felicia's 1992 alcoholic intervention on Another World.

Linda recalls:

The intervention scenes were difficult to shoot on two levels.  Because both Felicia and I loved everybody in that room, I had to prepare myself for the layers of emotions we had to play.  It was hard to see these friends turns on her – I layered anger on top of what I knew was the right thing for her friends to do.   I knew Felicia very well and I knew this is exactly what she would feel.  To get to that point, I tapped into my childhood and to those moments in my life when I witnessed the extremes of alcoholism, and how violent it can get. 

To make it work over a long period of time, you force yourself to stay in a very interesting place, connected to the emotion and then it’s not hard to reach for it.  I am a very emotional person in real life so I can reach for those emotions when I have well written scenes to play.  I actually like being lost in them and taking the ride along with my character, blowing life into her and her situation.

I also had the good fortune of working with a wonderful team.  During those years, producers, directors and writers had more time to work with characters than they do know.  I also worked with a wonderful cast who supported each other in any way they could.  Especially on Another World, we were a tightly knit group.  My co-stars in this storyline were the best at their craft.  Stephen Schnetzer, Alicia Coppola, John Aprea, Victoria Wyndham should all take equal credit for making this story work as well as it did
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Read more from Linda, Julia, and a host of other Emmy-winning actors, writers, producers and experts in Soap Opera 451: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama's Greatest Moments enhanced e-book, available on Amazon and B&N.







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