Publication: Soap Opera Weekly
Author: Lara de Losh
Date: July 18, 2000
While battling on-screen is certainly a hoot, the real laughs for OLTL's
Catherine Hickland and Hillary B. Smith happen behind the scenes
Hillary B. Smith: Catherine, you are such a shopper. You buy everything. It is fabulous—she has sales. We live off what she buys. She brings clothes to the studio with the tags still on them and sells them to us for nothing.
Catherine Hickland: Well, what am I going to do if I am not wearing it? I’m an obsessive clothing buyer.
HBS: I know. It’s fabulous, and it serves us, so don’t stop.
CH: I’m in a 12-step program for obsessive clothes buying (Laughs)
HBS: We keep pushing her back a couple steps because it will curtail our wardrobes otherwise.
CH: But the makeup I don’t sell; I give it away and, because I have to buy it anyway for a magazine column I write. I could have companies give me things, but the truth is if they give it to me I feel obliged to write something nice, and I don’t always want to write something nice. If I buy it and think it’s a crappy product then I can say so. Save people money, you see.
HBS: It was totally a compliment to your generosity.
CH: I’m not used to you complimenting me (Laughs)
HBS: Well, you usually don’t deserve it.
CH: Thank you
Soap Opera Weekly: How do you feel about Lindsay and Nora stepping in where Dorian and Viki left off as archenemies?
HBS: I’m complimented by that, but I personally love the Viki/Dorian thing so much that even though Robin (Strasser, Dorian) has left the show for now, I don’t choose to think of us like that. But there is a parallel, and I’m flattered by the resemblance to it.
CH: Right, and happy to be in those spaces.
SPW: There is a nice comedic level to your performances.
CH: Well, you have two ham dinners on one plate. We are each continually trying to outdo the other. You should see when someone new comes on the set—like Lea DeLaria (Delphina) came here—and the two of us vying for her attention.
HBS: We became the rye to her ham.
CH: We have two Type-A personalities here, please understand…
HBS: With total appreciation of other Type-A personalities.
CH: Absolutely.
HBS: You come in, only half energized—I can always count on her to bring up the other half. It’s probably a sick relationship.
CH: What is great is that we both have dark sides to us, but we’re never dark at the same time.
HBS: It’s a good thing. (Laughs)
CH: Really.
HBS: When I’m spitting nails…
CH: I’ve got the pom-poms out, and I’m like "Come on now, Hillary. Rah-rah-rah."
HBS: She’s very good at ducking. My whole place comes from a basis of reality, so if a story or situation is so over the top, you automatically will take it to a comedic level.
CH: You have to, otherwise it’s quite unattractive to see two women our age spitting and clawing.
HBS: Exactly. When your characters are trapped in a bathroom, and its on fire, the spitting and clawing becomes completely understandable, in which case you play it for all the reality that there is. When you’re lifting someone up to a window ledge…
CH: Who’s got a big fat ass…
HBS: …And you’re trying to lift them up, and she’s saying, "What’s the matter with you, why can’t you lift me higher?" The words, "Have you ever heard of Atkins?" do tend to slip out. (Laughs)
CH: That’s the first time that I realized that I had a fat ass.
HBS: It wasn’t your ass I was talking about.
CH: She pointed that out to me. That line wasn’t in the script. She added it in, and I thought, "Do I really have a fat butt?"
HBS: No, honey, we are the same size—of course you don’t have a fat butt. (Laughs) Why would I ever think you had a fat butt when I wear your pants? Course, I am slightly taller…
CH: Better distributed.
HBS: Let’s talk about food issues.
CH: Is this in real life or television?
HBS: Right, because on television we throw food at each other—but in real life we wouldn’t waste the food.
CH: We spend about 90 percent of our working day thinking about food—thinking about how to acquire it…
HBS: Where we’re going to eat it.
CH: I mean this is really a sickness.
HBS: When she first came on the show I realized that the only way to get this girl to function was to tie a feedbag around her neck so she could just nosh whenever she felt like it. She could just dip her head and go.
CH: I do like to eat.
HBS: This woman is minute in relation to all the food she orders—not consumes, though.
CH: Do you notice that everyone around me is blowing up like a bloated tick, and I stay the same size? It’s because they eat all my food.
HBS: She orders large quantities of food, picks at it and then leaves it, like, outside Woods’ (Robert S. Woods, Bo) door, or says to one of us, "Here, take this sandwich, " or "Here have this salad." "That’s what happens. It’s the purchasing thing again."
CH: I swear it is left over from my anorexic days from the early 80’s, because that ‘s how I used to fool everybody. I would get this food on my plate, push it around so that it looked like it had been eaten, and then everyone else at the table would start picking at my plate, and nobody noticed that I hadn’t eaten a thing. Of course, these days, I still push it around and play games, but I do eat it.
HBS: I don’t’ understand, because you always say, "I have to eat because I’m going to collapse if I don’t eat." How could you have done that during your anorexic days?
CH: I felt terrible. I was tired all the time, had searing headaches. I lived on laxatives—I was very messed up. But, damnit, I was thin. You know, that’s the hardest part to let go of.
HBS: There’s no such thing as being too thin, too rich or having too much closet space, is there?
CH: It’s no joke. But part of my mind still misses being 89 pounds. It’s just that I know that it’s not good for me to do that.
HBS: I have to tell you there is a freedom of feeling the wind blow between your thighs.
CH: (Laughs) It’s been a long time since I felt that breeze.
HBS: I wouldn’t touch that comment with a 10-foot pole.
CH: I actually bought an outfit yesterday because my girlfriend told me that with the pants on there was a space between my thighs. Great—$1600 for the stuff, no problem, there’s a space between my thighs, I’m told. Wrap it up.
HBS: I did that once.. I bought a jumpsuit because I it was a size 4. It was a white jumpsuit—it looked like I was going for a sanitation job. But it didn’t matter, because it was a size 4, and I had to have it in my closet so I could say, "Well, I have a size 4 in my closet."
CH: Did you ever wear it?
HBS: I did, actually. But I had to keep throwing things over it, because people kept saying, "You look like you’re in a sanitation job." But it was a size 4.
CH: As Linda Dano (Rae) would say, "Accessorize!" Do you ever look back at pictures of yourself at events from years ago? This is the thing about being in soaps for this many years, and we’ve both been doing this for a long time, so you have a lot of documentation. Meaning: pictures of yourself taken in 1980. You look at some of the outfits you’re wearing and it was definitely the "What was I thinking?" mode.
HBS: Those haircuts that we had—good lord.
CH: What haircut? I had hair down to my butt.
HBS: Well you were smart to keep it there.
CH: But the eye makeup was so severe. And I really had some outfits in the 80’s, boy. Those shoulder pads.
HBS: Linda Dano! We can blame her—her and Norma Kamali. Norma Kamali turned us all into football players. However, not having been born with shoulders and having plenty of hips at the time, I was very grateful for these pads that raised your shoulders up to your ears.
CH: And made your derriere look smaller.
HBS: By the time I got to this show I had lost all the baby fat, and I thought "This works. Here I am, 25 and looking fabulous."
CH: 25, 26…
HBS: OK, 26 ½.
CH: And then she woke up.
HBS: I have been here almost eight years, and I’m only 35 now.
CH: That makes me 34, so that works for me.
HBS: Why are you laughing? Actually, I’m 65…don’t I look good? If you think of it, if you lie up, people think: Damn she looks good.
CH: I remember one time the Star, when I was going through this heinous divorce stuff with David Hasslehoff, they ran this horrible story—it was libelous, none of it was true. The only thing that I freaked out about was that they made me older than I was. (Laughs) I was like, "Get me Carol Burnett’s lawyer, I’m suing." Several people said, "You should, they said terrible things," I said, "I don’t care about that, they said I was 40," and I was, like 30. I was so upset about that. I didn’t care about any of the other stuff, it was just the age. How sick is that?
HBS: I get it. You expect all the other stuff, but the least they should do is research your age, for gods sake. And spell all my lovers’ names correctly, ‘cause if they find them, god bless ‘em. (Laughs) What would you want the Star headline to say about you on your obituary?
CH: Oh, please! I don’t want to think about that. What about you?
HBS: I have thought of so many of them, but I think it’s "Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson Come to Blows Over Actress Hillary B. Smith, Whose Husband Still Stands By Her." That’s a good one, don’t you think?
CH: I like that one. I’ve been in those magazines for a long time, having been through a couple of celebrated divorces, so I don’t fantasize about headlines in the tabloids myself, you know.
SPW: Hillary, what has Catherine brought to the show for you?
HBS: Storyline (Laughs) A sense of fun that was definitely missing. Two years ago we were kind of reeling here; we didn’t know what end was up, we had gone through a lot of executive producers, and Jill (Farren Phelps, executive producer) was brand-new, and we had just been riding the Georgie wave. When Catherine came on, first of all, it was new blood in the show, which always helps, and backstage it was someone new to play with.
CH: Never stop idolizing me, Hillary.
HBS: Did I get that far? Did I get to the point where I threw myself at your feet? And also, she has good sales.
CH: Yes, that’s really it. We get along well, but that’s not to say we haven’t had a couple of little blow-ups, you know. I think when you really care about people, you also have the moments where they can hurt you, and you can hurt them. But the good thing about this one is that she will get in your face right away about it, which has actually helped me to become more the same way. I’m more "Get my feelings hurt, go sit in my room, get all mad and hold it against somebody until I’m damn well good and ready to let go." (Laughs)
HBS: I just don’t have time for that in my day.
CH: So I’ve gotten better at that.
HBS: I come right at someone. You have to be careful what you ask me because you’re going to hear the answer. It just saves so much effort in getting angry and upset—it’s just not worth it.
CH: Hillary will never die of a heart attack or cancer because she holds nothing in. She has no inner stress.
HBS: One thing Catherine has taught me is to always have a plan. This woman has 15 agendas going all at the same time.
CH: No, just Plan A and Plan B.
HBS: She’s always got something brewing in the pot. It’s very interesting to see someone who recognizes her tools, and uses them to build. It’s been very inspiring and very educational. I wait for opportunities to present themselves and then I jump on them. But I never thought about going out and creating my own opportunities.
CH: I don’t like to be without anything to do. I don’t like to depend on one thing as my sole income and center of creativity. I also believe that we have to use what we have in front of us. You don’t wait until you’re unemployed to have a great idea, because you can use what you have now to springboard your great ideas.
HBS: It creates a healthy outlook for her, because in this business there are always going to be back burner/front burner times, but when the back burner gets too long it can really be frustrating. She doesn’t ever let that happen because she has constantly got something she can work herself into and at least have the creative flows going out.
CH: It will all be in the book. She laughs. There is no question that I will write a book. None.
HBS: After I am dead, I hope.
CH: I don’t know what exactly it will entail, but I want it to be dishy but inspiring, rise-from-the-ashes kind of stuff. I have a lot of interesting tales.
HBS: She has 50,000 lives she’s led. I am telling you, and each and every one of them could be a book. The names she sometimes tosses out…
CH: All right, we can stop there…that is the end of the interview.
HBS: Oh, no, it is just beginning.
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