Karen Cellini - would we have gotten used to her?

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

I forgot about Stephanie
Yes she was classic, the only good thing about The Colby’s and she breathed life into season 9.
I did like her original incarnation before it being tweaked for Dynasty.
Kate O’Mara, she was just ok, maybe if the writing was better, a lot better….
The only Fallmont should have been Bart just for Steven, I didn’t need the brother, mother and father borefest that Sammy Jo tried to suck up to
Karen couldn’t even have been a Fallmont,
Like Emma, they never should have gotten anywhere near Dynasty
Emma and Karen weren’t Dynasty material which says a lot because I think Kathleen was

 

[GillesDenver]

Season 7 was crap including the clunky “love Remembered” episodes, again like in 5 if you’re not going to consummate the relationship then don’t bother. No point at all and Alexis’ knew to bring her long haired wigs and peasant blouses on the oil rig trip just in case…? Also why end the story, maybe they get back together until the end of the season until he regains his memory but then still has fellings for her, it was a stunt storyline and after they ended it everyone became nice for no apparent reason.
Catherine was the last actor that was “Dynasty” that the show hired. The prior being Gordon’s Adam. Everyone that followed her was completely forgettable and you don’t think of when you think of Dynasty.

Like you and everyone else, I wondered for years why the "love remembered" episodes did not have a real follow up but I got the answer in 2022 when I obtained the original story outlines. Those episodes were actually written at the last minute and "inserted" before the already written story outlines from season 7B. Only "the portrait" was edited in order to give an aftermath to that double episode.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

I remember Heather Locklear back then on some talk show saying how touched she was by those 2 upcoming episodes, more PR we fixed it.
Sure Heather, say what you want about them making Sammy Jo the mastermind behind every evil plot but by then her character was as bland pointless and boring as Emma Samms
Sammy Jo become the most introspective thoughtful borefest.
A love remembered should have continued and had Blake divorce Krystle and marry Alexis then regain his memory
A story arc that finished the season
Why not, tell John Forsythe sorry bro we know you’re secretly in love with your co star but the two of you have no choice, it’s you have more love scenes with Joan because we’re desperate not to get cancelled so you can continue to receive your fat paycheck for bad acting on a tanking soap.
He was close to 70 that show whatever crap it became by season 7 was his last chance at that kind of money.
What did they end up doing, I can’t even remember except having a boring character from the past come back who became evil, rich insane and powerful since he left all with having serious brain damage issues (a dynasty staple)
Did they really think a stunt 2 episode story would save it at that point especially with the crap they were giving before and after
Season 7 where they gave us Karen Cellini, Teri Garber and special appearances by Emma Samms, how much lower they already hit bottom
Aaron Spelling was a hack tv producer whose shows were pure shlock but got lucky on casting. Not the best person for a quality show like season 1 and even 2 Dynasty

 

[PhD.in.Dynasty]

SPIEGEL: If you'd been more modest, you would still have received nice fees. The talk is of 25,000 Deutsche Mark [in 1986 the average worth to 1,- DM was 2,17 US $= 54,250 $] per episode.

Thanks for posting this interview! Just to point out that the exchange rate is inversed. I.e. $1 equaled 2.17 Deutschmarks. This means that her weekly salary was around $11,500. If the information about her asking for $10,000 more per week is correct, she would have essentially requested a doubling of her salary.

 

[Brian Kinney]

Just to point out that the exchange rate is inversed.

Oops, sorry.

If the information about her asking for $10,000 more per week is correct, she would have essentially requested a doubling of her salary.

Not much considering Catherine Oxenberg was the lead in The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (terrible but sold well internationally, with Olivia de Havilland, Ray Milland and Stewart Granger) two years before Dynasty and that gave her a little spot in gossip magazines. The producers didn't recognize the value she brought as an actress (perfect in that role) or for publicity. But by Season 6's finale the importance of Amanda's storylines had decreased and I assume it reflected negatively in viewer demoscopy - probably done before Oxenberg asked for a raise.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

The answer to this thread is a unanimous NO.
If any actress epitomized the mid 80’s new wave euro influenced era it was Catherine Oxenberg.
How lucky to strike such magic in casting after the loss of PSM.
How incredible if Pamela Sue returned (with all the flash backs and portrait I guess they thought she would ) what interesting dynamics being replaced as Carrington daughter by Blake and having to learn to share that role.
Catherine may not have been a great actress but she made it up in spades with attitude and looks.
Plus she gave purpose ever so briefly to Dex’s character that I found completely pointless and made Joan look old. He always seemed to be just there with nothing to do and no real personality,
Amazing he stayed until the end and hiding his status back then especially with the Rock Hudson drama that happened
I guess she did get some bad advise and after what Joan did they weren’t taking that from lesser characters, still cutting off your nose to spite your face from the producers.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

The answer to this thread is a unanimous NO.
If any actress epitomized the mid 80’s new wave euro influenced era it was Catherine Oxenberg.
How lucky to strike such magic in casting after the loss of PSM.
How incredible if Pamela Sue returned (with all the flash backs and portrait I guess they thought she would ) what interesting dynamics being replaced as Carrington daughter by Blake and having to learn to share that role.
Catherine may not have been a great actress but she made it up in spades with attitude and looks.
Plus she gave purpose ever so briefly to Dex’s character that I found completely pointless and made Joan look old. He always seemed to be just there with nothing to do and no real personality,
Amazing he stayed until the end and hiding his status back then especially with the Rock Hudson drama that happened
I guess she did get some bad advise and after what Joan did they weren’t taking that from lesser characters, still cutting off your nose to spite your face from the producers.

Some executives like saying "no" to an actor, even if it hurts the product long-term, or even short-term. And if Oxenberg's agent is overly ambitious for his client, demanding a certain number of prominent scenes per episode -- and the producer already doesn't like her off-screen personality -- it's not going to turn out well.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Paulson should have returned Catherine Oxenberg for season 9.her career went nowhere after she left like PSM
The Shapiros advised him to fire Emma (why didn’t they early in season 6?) but he didn’t
Emma did a decent job in 9 impersonating Pamela Sue.
I guess he didn’t feel like the character had importance.
Aside from Stephanie the characters he introduced were duds and it would have been interesting to reintroduce the other daughter.
(They erased her completely and David must have felt leave it be, she should have been there since Steven was gone, it also would have been great to return Al Corley that season, start the role and finish it because the reunion really didn’t happen (krystles coma dream)
Imagine all the Carrington children all together for the final season ( with PSM, GT, AC, and CO
Maybe it would have interfered with the Sammy Jo & priest, Joanna, and the Virginia the hooker storylines

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Paulson should have returned Catherine Oxenberg for season 9.her career went nowhere after she left like PSM
The Shapiros advised him to fire Emma (why didn’t they early in season 6?) but he didn’t
Emma did a decent job in 9 impersonating Pamela Sue.
I guess he didn’t feel like the character had importance.
Aside from Stephanie the characters he introduced were duds and it would have been interesting to reintroduce the other daughter.
(They erased her completely and David must have felt leave it be, she should have been there since Steven was gone, it also would have been great to return Al Corley that season, start the role and finish it because the reunion really didn’t happen (krystles coma dream)
Imagine all the Carrington children all together for the final season ( with PSM, GT, AC, and CO
Maybe it would have interfered with the Sammy Jo & priest, Joanna, and the Virginia the hooker storylines

Good writers are not always good casters.

That said, Paulsen wanted to rehire PSM for Season 9, but Spelling discouraged it. Whether Martin would have returned is another thing.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Why would Spelling have discouraged it
I thought he loved Pamela Sue, Catherine I could see him saying no to..
Paulson did put the work in with Emma, she’s no Pamela Sue when it comes to Fallon Carrington but she did improve by miles that season and it couldn’t have been by accident.
probably much like Karen Cellini they threw Emma in and said do this without proper prep and guidance to replace a beloved characters which in Primetime is impossible
Same with Jack but I don’t know why I accepted him as Steven, a sub par Steven but an adequate replacement unlike Emma which I stopped watching the show after her intro. Maybe because it was season 3 so early in that the really bad hadn’t come just yet.
Rewatching early 6 and 7 episodes (which wasn’t easy to do) and seeing Emma and Karen in action, they were both god awful, with Emma the writing was bad too but man they both were horrid even if they were originators in those roles it would have been awful and the show wouldn’t have been so popular if they were the original casted Fallon and Amanda

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Same with Jack but I don’t know why I accepted him as Steven, a sub par Steven but an adequate replacement unlike Emma which I stopped watching the show after her intro. Maybe because it was season 3 so early in that the really bad hadn’t come just yet

Plus, the plastic surgery scenario permitted us a firewall, as it were, between Steven#1 and Stevenbot2. Later, the multiple recasts just showed up and said, "I am Fallon/Amanda/Adam now."

Spelling discouraged the rehiring of PSM because although her liked her, he also liked Samms and dumping her cold probably seemed a bit rude. Paulsen was thinking about story quality, but at least he turned Samms' Fallon back into the closest she could get to the original Fallon.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

I didn’t mind Emma in 9
She did a decent job and by then it didn’t matter anyway
Season 6 is a different story altogether.
They struck gold with the original casting
even the girl who played Lindsay was convincing as an early 80’s teen (now all the kids on shows look like models) the Blaisdel and Michael stories just were boring, but Blake, Krystle and Alexis
Plus Pamela Sue, Al, Pamela B, john J, Gordon, Heather, Catherine all were perfect perfect casting and they ruined that magic with horrible recasts and bad plots that maybe with the original actors might have worked ok.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I didn’t mind Emma in 9
She did a decent job and by then it didn’t matter anyway
Season 6 is a different story altogether.
They struck gold with the original casting
even the girl who played Lindsay was convincing as an early 80’s teen (now all the kids on shows look like models) the Blaisdels and Michael stories just were boring, but Blake, Krystle and Alexis
Plus Pamela Sue, Al, Pamela B, john J, Gordon, Heather, Catherine all were perfect casting and they ruined that magic with horrible recasts and bad plots that maybe with the original actors might have worked ok.

Re-casting core characters in primetime just rarely works.

With a television series, if it's going to be any good, you have to go to lengths to create a palpable alternative universe in which the characters, and the viewers, can inhabit.

Recasting sabotages that, and, if done at all, must be done very, very carefully.

And few promising hit series were ever more sabotaged than DYNASTY, a series perpetually less than the sum of its parts, an executive always on-hand to destroy their particular, special corner of the show.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

By the way,
Off this thread but watching early season 6 episodes. Linda plays Rita exactly like she plays Krystle
There is zero difference how she has Rita interact with Blake , Alexis , Jeff or anyone.
You also have to realize the limits of your actors and their abilities before you create stupid plots for them . It’s not like they had Meryl Streep on hand to play 2 roles at once
That’s why all the characters were killed in Moldavia and the show ended in a thrilling high.
Funny how the CW paid homage to the recast situation of the original, unintentionally but they took it to the extreme. Bad Recasts and bad writing for both shows
A few episodes at the end of season 1 were actually good

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Off this thread but watching early season 6 episodes. Linda plays Rita exactly like she plays Krystle
There is zero difference how she has Rita interact with Blake , Alexis , Jeff or anyone.
You also have to realize the limits of your actors and their abilities before you create stupid plots for them . It’s not like they had Meryl Streep on hand to play 2 roles at once

Oh, I know. Some people make the opposite point: that Linda plays both roles "so differently." Which always confused me... But now, I've drifted into the belief that Linda was better as Rita than as Krystle -- because she could emote and be edgy as vulgar Rita, while by this point in the series Krystle had become so frozen and overly-controlled that the character couldn't really resonate anymore.

I have had a bias, however. We used to dub in fake dialogue for episodes of DALLAS and DYNASTY in the mid-'80s, "imitating" the actors' voices and making the dialogue "match" their movements in a scene... We were so good at it. I was much better at DALLAS because the men were more interesting than the ones on DYNASTY, frankly. But my dubbing partner was brilliant at both shows.

We were far better than that reductive MYSTERY SCIENCE 3000 crap.

The fake dialogue usually involved lots of lesbianism, coprophagia, inappropriate allusions to the kids, and everybody was gay (except for Steven, just like the show itself).

But was was most notable about our loopy loopings in retrospect was that our dubbed "Krystle" was moany and spoiled and sullen and lazily ruthless --- which was just exactly what Rita, and Linda's performance as Rita, turned out to be.

It was basically identical.

Then again, I have an abnormal karmic thing with this madenning show which has always ventured stupidly into the preternatural.

Where is Krystle's right arm?????

 

[DF414]

Catherine Oxenberg was fired the week before season 7 started filming.
There was no time to rewrite the scripts and the story outlines so they had to recast Amanda.
Karen Cellini (who made the audition for Channing in "The Colbys") was hired 3 days before shooting.

She was fired just after the second episode of season 7 aired.

If they blamed Oxenberg for the ratings decline why not just write off Oxenberg early on in season 7 with a murder mystery? That could have been a fun ratings ploy. The more I think about it, I think that it was chaos behind the scenes by season 7 airing and they fired Oxenberg after a fight. I think someone - ABC, Spelling, someone, should have cooled off and said "let's give her a raise and then have her character killed off in a murder mystery for a ratings ploy".

I never felt Oxenberg's acting was THAT bad - she was perfect for that part. I felt bad for Cellini - she was not a good actress at the time and they really put her in woefully unprepared. I still to this day think that re-cast turned so many people off to Dynasty that they did not get back. My husband used to audibly groan every time she came on. He couldn't even focus on her - he is the calmest person I know and for some reason those scenes he just threw his hands up - imaging the live audience in the 1980s.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

If they blamed Oxenberg for the ratings decline why not just write off Oxenberg early on in season 7 with a murder mystery? That could have been a fun ratings ploy. The more I think about it, I think that it was chaos behind the scenes by season 7 airing and they fired Oxenberg after a fight. I think someone - ABC, Spelling, someone, should have cooled off and said "let's give her a raise and then have her character killed off in a murder mystery for a ratings ploy".

I never felt Oxenberg's acting was THAT bad - she was perfect for that part. I felt bad for Cellini - she was not a good actress at the time and they really put her in woefully unprepared. I still to this day think that re-cast turned so many people off to Dynasty that they did not get back. My husband used to audibly groan every time she came on. He couldn't even focus on her - he is the calmest person I know and for some reason those scenes he just threw his hands up - imaging the live audience in the 1980s.

Yes, not only was Oxenberg not that bad of an actress, I didn't think Cellini was all that bad an actress (although I would have made Cellini a Fallmont, along with Emma Samms). Oxenberg was limited but, typical of DYNASTY, pitch-perfect original casting.

I, too, would have given Oxenberg her nominal raise for Season 7, then killed her off in that avalanche cliffhanger that should have occurred in the Spring of 1987. With Fallon#1 simultaneously jarred loose from her mountain lair where The Abominable Snowman held her captive for three years (I think I'm kidding).

But they always blamed whomever they could for the ratings slide, as long as they were in front of the camera, or "a DALLAS writer."

 

[DF414]

Yes, not only was Oxenberg not that bad of an actress, I didn't think Cellini was all that bad an actress (although I would have made Cellini a Fallmont, along with Emma Samms). Oxenberg was limited but, typical of DYNASTY, pitch-perfect original casting.

I, too, would have given Oxenberg her nominal raise for Season 7, then killed her off in that avalanche cliffhanger that should have occurred in the Spring of 1987. With Fallon#1 simultaneously jarred loose from her mountain lair where The Abominable Snowman held her captive for three years (I think I'm kidding).

But they always blamed whomever they could for the ratings slide, as long as they were in front of the camera, or "a DALLAS writer."

I will never fathom why they just wrote Amanda off like that - it's like they were told to make nice and to dump the murder mystery. Hell, the murder mystery could have brought everyone together if the edict from ABC was to make nice.

Also - did we ever get a blood test that Blake was the father? I cannot remember.

 

[Mustard]

Karen Cellini was never going to have that authentic British aristocratic exiled princess air that Catherine Oxenberg had. The Dynasty brass didn't seem to realize that they had struck gold in the sense that Catherine Oxenberg in real life was almost like Amanda's situation (i.e. Catherine Oxenberg in real life is the daughter of an exiled princess), and no American actress, whether Karen Cellini or anyone else, was going to capture that authentic British aristocratic exiled princess air. And Catherine Oxenberg's Amanda was still different enough to have her own distinct personality. I thought her Amanda was more left-wing than most people of her background.

I think Karen Cellini was okay enough in her performance, but she was never going to be what Amanda had been previously. With Cellini playing the role, Amanda was now more of a middle class American girl, and that simply wasn't Amanda before, at all.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Once again...

Cellini and Samms: Fallmonts...!