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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 216572" data-attributes="member: 22">Very interesting. I never thought of it like that. We never got The Donna Reed Show over here (that I'm aware of), but I can see how having such a strong image as "the archetypal 1950s and ‘60s housewife" could make an indelible impression on people, if only subconsciously.Haha perfect! By getting it completely wrong, Trump ends up being right by mistake!It's tricky. An actor may know their character backwards, but be less aware of the bigger picture, of the purpose they serve as one small cog in the overall story-telling machine.Also, on a long-running series, there's the potential pitfall of an actor being so closely identified with their character that they don't wish to be seen saying or doing something on screen that could lose them the audience's sympathy. The cliched argument, "My character wouldn't do something like that" might really mean, "I don't want to be seen doing something like that."I'm not aware of Hagman doing much ad-libbing on Dallas, save for those rhubarby bits at the beginning or in the background of scenes.The counter-argument is that it's the actor's job to find a way to make what they're saying believable. When we interviewed David Jacobs (clang), he said that while he welcomed input from the cast of Knots Landing, Julie Harris, the most experienced actor on the show, only questioned one line of dialogue in seven years. He happily changed it for her, but then she went with the line as originally written anyway -- because (and I'm paraphrasing from memory here) she believed that the text was sacred and that it was the actor's job to breathe life into it.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?