Monday, May 16, 2016

ALICIA COPPOLA TALKS 'ANOTHER WORLD' (AND ME)

Michael Fairman (an old friend since our days of working on Pure Soap together) has a wonderful interview with Alicia Coppola (ex-Lorna; AW) about her new role as Dr. Meredith Gates on The Young & the Restless. Read the whole thing, here.

This is the part where I come up in conversation:

Lorna’s rape story was so powerful.  How was going through that experience as an actress?

ALICIA:  It was very draining, and also controversial. Alina Adams, an Entertainment Weekly Contributor, a wonderful writer, wrote a compelling article on Rape in Soaps. She highlights the message that soaps, intentionally or otherwise send, that women being raped instantly makes them better people; the notion that rape tames and subdues “difficult” women to make them likeable and softer.  All of this I completely disagreed with.  In her piece, she writes of Lorna’s rape.  I wrote to Alina and said (I am paraphrasing, of course…) “First of all, Lorna was always a bitch.  She was raw, and she was damaged.  She didn’t all of sudden become Mary, mother of Christ, because she was raped.  That’s nonsense.  She was a force to be reckoned with.  She was a badass, before the rape and after the rape.  So you can’t say rape tamed her, because that is what you are implying.”  Alina, as an amazing journalist, was so open to this dialogue and we did an interview addressing this.  Speaking from experience, I can promise you rape tames no woman, no one…quite the opposite in fact.  This was a very important storyline to me.

To read the entirety of what Alicia had to say on the subject, go to this Entertainment Weekly Community post.

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