Would The Audience Have Accepted AM As An Evil Character? (Was Leviiathon question)

[Cousin_Barnabas]

NOT THE PHOTO!
 

[Gerard]

I think the audience would've accepted a darker character on the part of Alexandra Motlke, whether as some other form of Victoria or as another character.  For me, the characters of Pt1970's William Loomis and his wife, Carolyn Stoddard Loomis (a lush, no less) were far more complex and engaging than their original ones, what little we saw of them in PT1970.

Gerard

[KMR]

that said i've always thought, just for fun, a vain, glamorous and pleasure seeking victoria would have been fun for a few months in 1970 parallel time.

Ha! I had the wonderful opportunity to witness something along those lines several years ago. An absolutely amazing improv group in Chicago called Free Associates (sadly no longer in existence) had a DS spoof called Back in the Shadows Again. They took audience suggestions and created "full length" episodes which were usually side-splittingly hilarious. The one that I found most funny had Vicki in charge of Collinwood while both Liz and Roger were away, and the power was going to her head. At one point she even had the gall to move the brandy bottle to another location in the drawing room!

[Cousin_Barnabas]

 

[MagnusTrask]

I think that after a considerable gap where AM was absent, they could have brought her back and done anything they wanted with her.  By the time of PT, half the audience wouldn't know the character, as new viewers came in.

Was the clueless true-blue character she became really so wildly popular toward the end of her time on the show, that the public would have insisted on no changes?   Hadn't they actually been trying the audience's patience with her more and more, making changes necessary for continued public acceptance?

[Joeytrom]

If AM could only play Vicky, then would they have sent her to 1897 instead of Barnabas?

[Mysterious Benefactor]

That's a very interesting question. But if she didn't, apparently with DC's attitude about her playing characters other than Vicki, AM would have had to sit out that entire storyline. 

[Joeytrom]

DC- And he thought RD was such a versatile actor.  No one will ever know what was on his mind.

If AM is in 1897, what about Barnabas?  Does his present self do the same thing with the I-Ching?
BC would probably have Vicky believing he is a Victorian Age ancestor of present time BC!

[michael c]

in terms of DC's belief that alexandra could only play victoria 1897 is really something of a wild card...


there's really no way he, or the show's producers, could have justified paying a contracted player(had she not become pregnant when she did)for nine months and not utilizing her. something would have had to give.

alas we'll never know.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Actually, wasn't her son born in April of '69? So, considering that would have coincided with the beginning weeks of 1897, it might have been possible for AM to have taken a maternity leave of absence and to have given birth to and then to have taken care of her son for several months before coming back in November '69. Many other soap actresses have done something similar.

[michael c]

the timing of her pregnancy is what's critical in this discusion...

let's say she had NOT become pregnant in the summer/fall of 1968, but at an earlier or later time or not at all, then curtis would have had to find something for her to do during the 1897 arc.


THAT'S the question we'll never have answered.

that said rachel drummond was enough of a vicki-type character, a wide-eyed and clueless ingenue governess, that perhaps she could have been some earlier incarnation of vicki and that would have satisfied curtis' beliefs about the actress/character. but again we'll never know.

[Gothick]

The audience seems to have written in complaining bitterly en masse about Frid's portrayal of coldly evil LeviaBarn, so I suspect the reaction to an evil Vicki, or even Moltke playing a well-written evil character, might have been equally unsophisticated.

It's interesting to note that the weeks of the introduction of the Daphne character in the 1840 flashback (not, be it noted, the character's original role as a ghost, and then somehow returned-to-life human, in 1970) present Daphne as a woman with a ruthless edge about her and a mission that certainly suggested her moral code was not in line with what the Standards and Practices office would have expected for a heroine.  And Daphne was the closest they ever got to having a Vicki-like character return on the series.

G.

[michael c]

when david and hallie need to find some "modern" clothing for daphne to wear when she, um, materializes i guess in 1970 they find a trunk of vicki's old duds and give them to her.


i believe it's the final reference to the character on the series.

[tragic bat]

If the audience accepted Frid and Parker playing radically different characters in the PT1841 storyline, I imagine they could accept Moltke in a different role as well.   I would have liked to see it happen.   

[retzev]

while i can understand motlke's desire to play a more complex character i've always found vicki's placidity a nice, and necessary, counterpoint to the over the top, scenery chewing characterizations that happen elsewhere on the series. she had a soothing onscreen presence and moltke's quiet, even rather flat, acting style and slightly aristocratic bearing gave a gravity and seriousness to some outrageous situations.

...

that said i've always thought, just for fun, a vain, glamorous and pleasure seeking victoria would have been fun for a few months in 1970 parallel time.

Word.