Karen Cellini

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Been catching up on CBS Drama of Dynasty - Season 7. Karen Cellini - I mean she's just wrong isn't she? Even her title card is wrong with the strange pose.
 

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She was set up, IMHO. The writing for Amanda in Season 06.02 changed drastically and made her very unlikable. When KC was hired, they just threw her to the proverbial wolves. Even if Oxenberg hadn't been fired and went on to Season 07, the writing would still have been horrible. I don't think KC was any worse than Emma Samms as Fallon or Jack Coleman as Steven RE: recasts!
 

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Been catching up on CBS Drama of Dynasty - Season 7. Karen Cellini - I mean she's just wrong isn't she? Even her title card is wrong with the strange pose.

Are you talking about this (captured from seventh-season, first-volume Dynasty DVD, disc 3, from CBS Home Entertainment)?

karencellinidynastyseason7.jpg
 

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Because of the static acting required of everyone, we'll never know if she could have worked. They set her up.
 

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Apparently Karen Cellini has only appeared in two productions: Dynasty and Seriously Twisted. The thriller is available on YouTube. This way you can judge whether Karen Cellini was unconvincing as an actress in general or only on Dynasty.

 

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Apparently Karen Cellini has only appeared in two productions: Dynasty and Seriously Twisted. The thriller is available on YouTube. This way you can judge whether Karen Cellini was unconvincing as an actress in general or only on Dynasty.

Just the title makes it Emmy-worthy...
 

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The casting never made sense to me.
I don't like that Amanda completely disappeared and was not even mentioned,
unless int was in the last seasons when I watched intermittently
I thought Emma Samms might have been a better Amanda than Fallon
 

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i did like her delivery of “Well then, I suppose you better enjoy him while you can.”

Interesting, because I preferred her delivery of "Here's your answer." I liked how her voice was like a deep purr.
 

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It wasn't Karen Cellini's fault, but she was never going to play a British aristocratic character like Catherine Oxenberg, so it wasn't really the Amanda Carrington that we had known.
 

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It wasn't Karen Cellini's fault, but she was never going to play a British aristocratic character like Catherine Oxenberg, so it wasn't really the Amanda Carrington that we had known.

Not unless Amanda had really assimilated into the trailer park ethos and Arby's Roast Beef culture in America during the summer of 1986.

Dex had taken her on a whirlwind road trip down Route 66, stopping at every fast-food drive-thru, pasta palace, and honky-tonk dive between Chicago and L.A. to cleanse her of her upperclassumness.

And, voila!, she's Karen Cellini! With special sauce on her chin.

 
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Dynasty was the first time Karen Cellini had ever appeared on screen. Was she the only actor (apart from child actors) who had never been seen anywhere else before appearing on Dynasty? Her casting must have been phenomenal if they hired someone with no TV or movie experience to play Amanda.
 

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Is that really true?

That's apparently it. The producers apparently found her working at a Wendy's or something -- like, on the sign at a Wendy's...

It's a shame, really. She wasn't unlikeable. But Aaron never used her again... Maybe she wasn't interested in an acting career. Or maybe their attempt to scapegoat her (and her astute observations about the show she was exiting as quickly as she entered) did her career in before it even started.

Karen Cellini - IMDb

She should have been, maybe, a Fallmont or a Colby.
 

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The story i remember put out at the time she was hired is that she worked as a coat check person at a Hard Rock Cafe and had never before acted professionally. How true that a I don't know. However, I've always suspected Spelling hired her as a message to all the actors on Dynasty who thought about asking for more money that they can be replaced by literally anyone. He had enough trouble with Joan and now Catherine Oxenberg wanted more money, he may have felt he had to send a strong message, even if it was to the shows detriment
 

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The story i remember put out at the time she was hired is that she worked as a coat check person at a Hard Rock Cafe and had never before acted professionally. How true that a I don't know. However, I've always suspected Spelling hired her as a message to all the actors on Dynasty who thought about asking for more money that they can be replaced by literally anyone. He had enough trouble with Joan and now Catherine Oxenberg wanted more money, he may have felt he had to send a strong message, even if it was to the shows detriment
Every time the story of her "discovery" is told, she is working in a lower kind of job at HRC. Next time she´ll happen to be the cleaning lady (not that any of these professions isn´t honorable and worth of respect at all).

For those who perpetrated that infamous "Making of a Guilty Pleasure" she didn´t even exist!!

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The closest Glenn Close has been to starring in an 80s supersoap!​
 

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The story i remember put out at the time she was hired is that she worked as a coat check person at a Hard Rock Cafe and had never before acted professionally. How true that a I don't know. However, I've always suspected Spelling hired her as a message to all the actors on Dynasty who thought about asking for more money that they can be replaced by literally anyone. He had enough trouble with Joan and now Catherine Oxenberg wanted more money, he may have felt he had to send a strong message, even if it was to the shows detriment
I think Aaron Spelling shot himself in the foot. Catherine Oxenberg was only asking for the same salary as Heather Locklear, not John Forsythe. Oxenberg obviously calculated that the Amanda Carrington role wasn't easily recastable because of her background, accent etc., so Spelling responded by casting a typical American, even though that's as far away from Amanda as it gets. It shows no appreciation for the character.
 

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I think Aaron Spelling shot himself in the foot. Catherine Oxenberg was only asking for the same salary as Heather Locklear, not John Forsythe. Oxenberg obviously calculated that the Amanda Carrington role wasn't easily recastable because of her background, accent etc., so Spelling responded by casting a typical American, even though that's as far away from Amanda as it gets. It shows no appreciation for the character.

Spelling is on audio asserting that audiences "don't give a damn" if you recast the secondary roles as long as the leads are still there. Obviously, that's completely wrong, but since he recast all four grown Carrington kids, he must have believed it.

Also, Spelling disliked Oxenberg -- and her agent. She wasn't asking for a huge, undoable raise, but her agent was demanding weird stuff (e.g., a certain screen time, story approval, etc..) because he thought her prominence in Seasons 5 and 6 was more of a negotiating point than it was.
 

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I think part of Catherine's negotiations was that she wasn't very prominent in Season 6 compared to Season 5 which revolved around her and the cliffhanger. Whereas Season 6 her role was reduced because of The Colbys spin off and an inflated cast. She mentions her reduced Season 6 role in her interview, along with the fact that she wanted a $2500 raise - which I don't think put her in line with Heather (who was getting $20,000 an episode). I think Catherine was earning half of that.
 
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