Awe that's not fair. I really do feel bad for Cellini in all of this. None of it was her fault at all. It's sort of similar to how it went with Emma Samms too. They came in and did what they were told by the production staff. They had no control over their characters personality or even their look. Weirdly they insisted on colouring Cellini's hair the exact shade of blonde to be Amanda. And yet, perplexingly, with Samms they just gave her an orange bubble perm, not at all like Fallon's hair.
Again they wrote the character of Amanda totally differently once they had a new actress playing her. The same as they did with Fallon. Amanda went from being a spoiled, pouty and sulky young woman to being an oddly perky and optimistic business woman. Overnight! Fallon went from being a snappy, sassy and often brittle Daddy's girl to being a totally dependant damsel in distress who had a penchant for chunky sweaters.
Both actresses were victims here. Only Samms was able to fair better due to having a lot of acting experience prior to Dynasty, including a run on a successful daytime soap where she undoubtedly learned a lot. Samms also benefited from being almost immediately shipped off to Colby Land where she wasn't as jarring and different among the regular Dynasty cast.
Over on The Colbys, Samms was initially to be the centre of the Spin Off, however Bast and Huson were quick enough to realise that that was never going to be the case so they really downplayed Fallon and took the show in far more exciting directions.
That's the difference here, the Dynasty producers were always very quick to place blame on someone when their decisions weren't working out. Too lazy to actually try to fix a situation and too mean to want to. I have said it before but it's almost like they resented the actors they had cast. They hated that they were necessary for the show to be a hit.
They held the cast in contempt. They were all replaceable, and indeed all four Carrington children eventually were replaced.
Cellini was a F**k Up, yes, but she was their F**k Up. And they made her the fall girl. They threw her under the bus and probably damaged her career as an actress permanently. They cast the wrong girl, because she apparently (I never saw it) looked a little like Oxenberg, they didn't care how she acted at all. And then when her acting wasn't what they wanted they sacked her and blamed her and her acting. Morons!
It all goes so deep though. They could have worked something out with Al Corly, they should never have let him go, he was too good an actor. They could have and should have appeased Pamela Sue Martin, better scripts, a better love interest, a lighter work load, they just didn't care. They should have given Oxenberg a raise without her even having to ask for one. Her storyline basically gave them their much coveted #1 show in America rating, finally. With Oxenberg gone the writing for Amanda had better be very good or what's the point? But no, they recast her with an actress they hadn't any faith in, because she looked a little like her and gave her a recycled plot line that nobody cared about. Don't even get me started on what they did with Gordon Thompson in The Reunion. Pamela Bellwood was sacked for being pregnant? I mean, the Dynasty scripts where that tightly plotted and written that they couldn't have accommodated her? They retooled and rewrote constantly when it suited themselves. The cast, the ones everyone was tuning in for every week were merely annoying devices that were some how necessary to keep the ball rolling.
Urrggghhhhhh Sorry for the rant. I hadn't thought about all of this for a long time.
