Foundation Archive: Susan Lucci

When producers were casting the ABC soap All My Children back in 1969, they thought Susan Lucci would be a contender for Tara Martin, the good girl of suburban PIne Valley.

But once creator Agnes Nixon laid eyes on Lucci - her brown eyes flashing with anger in her taped audition - she knew she'd found her vixen, the boyfriend-stealing Erica Kane.

Lucci would more than own the role, taking Erica — over the course of the show's 41 years — from teenage troublemaker to high-end fashion model, magazine publisher, cosmetics queen and international beauty.

In the process, she would marry almost a dozen times, attempt suicide, survive a kidnapping and a plane crash, hunt Nazis in South America, pose as a nun, go to prison, attempt a prison break for one of her loves and — not surprisingly — end up at the Betty Ford Center for prescription drug addiction.

Lucci, in turn, reportedly became the highest paid actress in daytime television and an international star.

The daughter of a Yonkers, New York, building contractor and a nurse, Susan Victoria Lucci always dreamed of being a performer. She sang in school musicals and made it to the New York finals of the Miss Universe pageant, but ultimately dropped out to complete her bachelor's degree in theater arts.

Married, the mother of two and a grandmother, Lucci was interviewed in 2013 by Karen Herman for the Television Academy Foundation's Archive of American Television. The following is an edited excerpt of that discussion; the entire interview may be screened at TelevisionAcademy.com/archive.

Q: What were you like growing up?

A: As a little girl and throughout my teenage years, I loved to watch TV. I would make up stories and act out all the parts with different voices. So it was natural for me to want to be an actress.

Q: Did you pursue your interest in school?

A: I did. It was very lucky for me that my parents moved to Garden City on Long Island, where they had an amazing drama department. Once I got to high school, we had a drama teacher who rehearsed us the same way you rehearse a Broadway play. It was such a great head start,

Q: And you continued acting in college?

A: I majored in drama at Marymount College in Tarrytown. The drama teachers were graduates from Yale who'd worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Martha Graham's dance company.

Because Tarrytown is only 45 minutes from Manhattan, they were all working in the business as well. The man who lit our shows was also working off-Broadway, and the head of our drama department was a member of the Lincoln Center Repertory Company.

Q: What were some of your first jobs after college?

A: The first job I had was at the Ed Sullivan Theater. I would sit on a stool while they lined up cameras and corrected their color.

It was thrilling for me to be in a theater in New York. I had grown up watching The Ed Sullivan Show with my parents on Sunday night. I could feel all that in that building.

Q: How were you cast on All My Children?

A: I got a call to meet the casting director, Joan D’Incecco, about a new show. It was a really hot, humid day in New York in July. I have naturally curly hair and olive skin, which at the time made me look too ethnic, or so I was told.

People said I probably would never work in television because of that and because I didn't have blue eyes.

I thought, "Oh, it's so hot." So I wrapped a scarf around my head and hid all my curly hair and went to the meeting. It was a good meeting. The producers all said they'd like me to come back for the audition, in about six months.

As I was leaving, they asked if I had any questions. I said, "Do you want to see my hair?" They said, "No, we just know we want to see you come back." They called me back six months later, and I had to go through five rounds of auditions. There were hundreds of girls who auditioned for the part of Erica Kane.

Q: What do you think they saw in you in that first meeting?

A: I don't know, because I didn't meet Agnes Nixon until after she saw my screen test. And it wasn't until the fifth callback that they put me on camera.

What I've been told by Agnes and others is that when she saw the screen test, she saw my eyes and said, "Those are Erica's eyes."

Q: What were you told about Erica Kane?

A: She was the naughty girl in town, the troublemaker. She collected boys — mostly other girls' boyfriends — to put notches on her belt. She was the daughter of Mona Kane, who had a drinking problem, and Eric Kane, a famous film producer who left her mother when Erica was nine

Q: What do you remember about the audition?

A: In the scene, Erica, who was 15, was getting ready for her math tutor to arrive. Her mother wanted her to study math, but Erica was putting on her mascara and saying, "He's very cute and he doesn't care if I know math. I just want to have him as my boyfriend."

It was eight pages, and it involved a knockdown, drag-out fight between this teenager and her mother.

I thought, "Wow, whoever wrote this is brilliant!" I didn't know about Agnes at that point. But this was how real mothers and daughters talked to each other. In those eight pages she established character, relationship, there was humor and there was love, even though they were fighting.

It was fantastic.

Q: When did you know that Erica was a breakout character?

A: The entire show was a breakout! Six months in, we knew because suddenly we were being invited around the country to speak.

People were writing books [about the show]. You could see that it had suddenly gone mainstream.

This is before people taped shows. I was getting letters from college kids from all over the country, even from professors at MIT! So many people were watching, even people like Sammy Davis, Jr., and Carol Burnett. It was thrilling.

Q: Were there times when you would get the script and worry that Erica had gone too far?

A: There's one time that sticks out in my mind, yet it became one of the show's most iconic scenes: Erica fighting a grizzly bear.

We shot on location, way north in Canada. Adam Chandler [David Canary] had kidnapped Erica, and she was trying to escape when she encountered a grizzly. The scene called for Erica to yell at the bear.

I remember saying to the producer, "Don't you think we've gone a little too far with this?" She said, "No, it'll be great. Try it."

We did it in one take, they all loved it and that was that. As it turned out, that bear did not want to work. It was a hot day.

Q: Erica's love life and all of her husbands — you probably have the list memorized....

A: There were several marriages, but not that many men — maybe eight. Some were repeats and some were not legal. Some of the loves of her life were the men she didn't marry, the men who got away.

Q: You had a marvelous food fight with David Canary....

A: The food fight is one of my favorite scenes, It was a 13-page scene. B.H. Barry, the famous fight director, choreographed it.

We wanted to get it in one take because it was very complicated. Once I had squeezed the grapes over his head, there was no going back. We learned the choreography in the morning and rehearsed when we could. We shot it at around 9:30 that night. We did it in one take and had the time of our lives.

Q: Did Erica's sense of fashion ever correspond to your own?

A: I always loved fashion. My mother handed me a Seventeen magazine one summer when I was 11. She said, "I think you'll like this." She was right.

My grandmother and my mother both loved fashion and taught me a lot. So I loved Erica's fashions. The only difference was that I would wear these Dolce & Gabbana dresses to a cocktail party and Erica would wear them on the plane.

Q: And her hair?

A: Oh, my goodness, the hair! When I look at clips of All My Children, it's like a history lesson in hair.

During the '80s, when my hair got so big, I don't know how they fit me in a frame. But those were the times — I guess you had to fill out from your shoulder pads to your hair. And there were a lot of large earrings.

Q: What kind of mother was Erica?

A: This was a wonderful surprise for the audience. I don't think anyone would have thought she would be a good mother. But she was like a lioness with her children, and that fit — it was just a surprising fit. It was great, and great for me to play.

Q: The show was known for tackling issues in the news....

A: Erica's addiction to prescription painkillers was very much in the news during the time we were doing it.

Again, this was all Agnes Nixon. She wrote storylines that were socially relevant. While Agnes would always say that her first responsibility was to entertain, she also felt a real mandate to inform.

I remember watching a drug storyline on her show One Life to Live. A graphic came up with information about [the rehab center] Odyssey House, for anybody who needed it.

That was a long time ago. But that shows you how Agnes was so ahead of her time. I mean, Erica had a legal abortion on television.

Q: Was there any blowback?

A: The issue of legal abortion had been in the courts, but to my understanding, Erica had the first legal abortion on television.

I grew up Roman Catholic, and I remember going to confession to say my penance. There were two people sitting at the other end of the pew, When they saw me, they were scandalized. They said, "Oh, there she is. She's praying. That's horrible!"

They were talking in loud whispers — I think they wanted me to hear. At the time people often didn't separate the actor from the character or the storylines. People would stop me in elevators and talk to me about it. They were outraged.

Q: Another big story was when Erica's daughter, Bianca, came out....

A: Yes. Jean Dadario-Burke, our executive producer at the time, called me into her office to tell me about a storyline they had in mind.

At that point audiences had only seen Bianca as a baby and a little girl. Erica's ex-husband had gotten custody and taken her away, so they hadn't seen the character for a long time.

Now she was coming back as a 16-year-old, and it was going to turn out that she was gay. She was going to come out to Erica.

Q: How did you feel about that?

A: Jean was telling me how many suicides there were among young people, among teenagers in particular, because they were afraid of coming out to their parents, afraid that their parents wouldn't love them anymore. I didn't know this.

We both sat there with tears streaming down our faces. I told her I was so thrilled and honored to be part of such a storyline,

I said, "It's so important that the girl we cast, that she gets it." And, boy, did she.

That was Eden Riegel. What a special actress Eden is, a special young lady. Love her! We worked very closely the whole time that she was on All My Children. That storyline was groundbreakng and audiences embraced it,

Q: Of course, you received 19 Emmy nominations for playing Erica before you finally won....

A: I was thrilled to be nominated, but I can tell you, winning is better. It's much better.

All my nomination certificates are framed and hung in a place of honor. I remember that after the ninth nomination, that seemed to be a turning point for me. I didn't write any speeches after that. I remember thinking, "Don't get your hopes up." But I'm a very hopeful person, so that was hard.

Q: And then finally in 1999....

A: Yes! I hadn't thought about a speech. I didn't let myself go there.

But that year there had been talk about the storyline with Bianca, who had an eating disorder. I was lying in bed the night before the awards and thinking, "My goodness, after 19 nominations, if I were to win, there would be so many people I would want to thank! I don't want to miss anyone." So I ran over it in my head.

The awards that year were held in Madison Square Garden, and as I was walking in, people in the press were saying, "This is your year." I was hoping they were right, but I said, "History has taught me that I'm probably not going up on that stage."

Q: What do you remember about that night?

A: I was seated in the front row with Rosie O'Donnell on my left and my husband on my right. I sat down and Rosie said, "When you go on stage tonight, hand me your evening bag. Because otherwise they'll say your name, you'll be all excited, you'll stand up fast, you'll probably step on your bag and that won't be a good thing on TV."

I said, "Rosie, that is so nice of you, but I'm probably not going up." She said, "Well, just remember that."

When Shemar Moore opened the envelope, he said, "The streak is over!" I thought he was announcing some playoff scores, since we were at the Garden. I thought, "Isn't that nice? He's letting all the people in the audience know."

And then he said my name, but I didn't hear it. The only way I knew I won is because Rosie reached over and took my evening bag.

Q: What was it like on stage?

A: My husband took me over to the stage and somebody escorted me up there. Shemar gave me the Emmy.

When I turned around, the whole room was on their feet.... I didn't know if I could keep standing. I was afraid my legs would go out from under me. It was just amazing. I'll never forget that as long as I live. It was an amazing, amazing moment,

Q: How did you feel when the network announced the cancellation of All My Children after 41 years?

A: It was surreal. I don't think any of us really got it. There was so much work at hand.

The last episodes were incredibly well written, but, like any end of a great novel, you want to know what happens next. They promised a surprise and there was — Agnes was very much involved, as was head writer Lorraine Broderick.

To this day people want to know what happened: who was caught in the crosshairs of that gun and who got shot? Did Jack and Erica get back together again, or did she go to Hollywood?

Q: Was it difficult to film the finale?

A: That last day, Agnes was on the set. I remember we took a cast photo, and I got to sit with her.

It was surreal. It was like going through a mourning period. There was denial and disbelief and anger and tremendous sadness and a tremendous sense of loss. That's how we all felt.

The fans are still so spectacular. When I'm out and about now, people stop and say such wonderful things. It feels like Erica's still with us, and that makes me happy.

Q: Did you ever consider leaving the show?

A: Every time my contract would come up for renewal, I would think, "Am I happy?" And I was. I was so happy with the material. I was so happy with this incredible ensemble of actors.

I was able to balance raising my children and playing this part that I loved. I got to be on Broadway and do many other things in addition to playing Erica. And it was all because of Erica.

Q: What advice would you give an aspiring performer?

A: I would say, do what you love. If this is your passion and you need it to breathe, pursue it. Get the best education you can, go to the best teachers, see everything you can see. Watch the work of some great directors and keep on growing. Not just when you're beginning, but always.