Nobody's girl
By Robert Rorke, Soap Opera Digest, 1990	Home   Cette page en Français

A woman who remains single invites curiosity. What's her problem anyway ? the world asks. Does she have a personality disorder ? Is she a man-hater, or is she just gay ? Judith McConnell has heard them all. An independent, vivacious woman, this tantalizingly single actress has been engaged three times, but has shied away from that final, binding commitment. "People say, "Oh, you know, maybe something is wrong with her, no one likes her, or she's homosexual,"" she laughs. "I love men and I love to make love with men. So what you do is you get a reaction and a lot of people say, "But, you are so attractive, so what is wrong with you ?""

She is sitting in her large dressing room, at NBC in Burbank talking about men and love and society. "I have had very long, very serious, live-in involvements, engagements. I'm not old-fashioned about anything at all, but I have this old-fashioned thing about not getting divorced," she admits. "I wanted to be so sure and when I was in my twenties, it all of a sudden became acceptable for a man and a woman to live together without benefit of marriage. When I were in college, a lot of my friends felt the pressure from their families and the social pressure to be engaged and have wedding plans by the time they graduated. You had to be pinned in your sophomore year and have your engagement ring in your senior year and then start on your wedding plans. It was a social thing.

Ten years before that, a woman didn't go to college. She was just going to get married - that was it. It's like a wave at evolvement; I was kind of rolling with it. You had to be Mrs. Somebody. The majority of women were not having careers. Then all of a sudden it was socially acceptable to be with a man, live together, in certain places. When David and I moved in together, my parents were appalled, but I knew that it was right for us to spend time together. It's much more acceptable in today's society to have been married and divorced, to have been married and divorced three times and maybe have put children through that tearing asunder, than it is not to have married. It's interesting how things have changed so fast in fifteen or twenty years. It's gone from "No one gets divorced" to "What do you mean you've never been married ?""

If the words "I do" don't exactly tremble on her lips, Judith has a self-described "talent" for friendship. She keeps in touch and hangs out and visits with an astonishing amount of people, including "best friends" from second grade and tenth grade to college chums from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, to buddies from her days on four separate soap operas. In Los Angeles, she does "girls night out" with her two best girlfriends every two weeks. So what if it involves driving thirty miles from her home in Burbank to meet her friends from Hancock Park and Mandeville Canyon at a convenient, equidistant spot ?

Judith McConnell gets around. When she's in New York, she looks up old buddies from As the World Turns like Kelly Wood (ex-Mary Ellison), Martina Deignan (ex-Dr. Annie Stewart) and Marie Masters (Dr. Susan Stewart). Often she winds up at her favorite restaurant, Iguana. "I've had more fun there," she says. "They see me coming; they part the waters when I'm in town. "Here she comes." I love it, I love to dance." Not surprisingly, some of Judith's friends can't keep up with her. Marie Masters, for one, finds that Judith's always set to go out at eleven p.m. - just when she's ready to go to bed. "Oh, yeah," says Marie. "She's always fluffing up her hair and I'm always getting into my pajamas."

How does one person have so many friends ? Or the time to see them ? "I'm not terribly selective," Judith confesses. "I don't mean I'm not cautious, but I don't say, "I don't like that person or that person." Accepting, I think, is the word. I love people. I think, at the risk of sounding self-involved, that I have a very loving nature. It encompasses a lot of different types of people from different backgrounds."

Her work on soap operas has covered almost as much territory. She has played slutty nurse Augusta McLeod, R.N. on General Hospital, Valerie Conway on As the World Turns, and rich bitch Miranda Bishop on Another World. Her longest run has been on the controversial, experimental and little-watched Santa Barbara, where she's played Sophia Capwell for five years. Firmly established in the show's main and only family, Judith's neck has remained blissfully protected from the oft-swinging ax that periodically chops characters who aren't Cruz (A Martinez) and Eden (Marcy Walker) from the cast.

McConnell sidesteps the issue of whether this show has enough well-developed characters besides the two principals. "If I knew the answer to that, I'd be a producer, or a network executive," she says. "I think the Cruz and Eden characters are magic. I think they have been beautifully written and even more beautifully played by Marcy and A, and they have certainty made the show strong. All of us would like to have more of a turn - that is the nature of anybody, you always want more story - but I think that the way the two characters have been written and the way the two actors have played them is excellent."

She is more willing to voice an opinion in the long, unsettled dispute between Bridget and Jerome Dobson, creators of Santa Barbara, and New World Television, which produces the show. Dobson vs. New World centers around who had ultimate control of the series, down to the ability to hire and fire. "My loyalties are certainty with Jerry and Bridget Dobson because I like them and I think they are talented and they hired me. My loyalties are as well with the people with whom I am working because I'm working for them and they do an excellent job, and, again, unless you're God, who can determine who is better ? My life on the set and my life in my dressing room and with my fellow actors isn't that altered. What I had found in both groups is that they are accessible, which is the most important thing for an actor. They listen, but you can complain. You have an ear when you need one, and support, too."

McConnell's experience on Santa Barbara offers a picture of the way soaps have changed. "The other shows that I have worked on really didn't have any offbeat nature when I was on them," she reflects. "I think everybody is trying to do it now. Comedy was unheard-of in daytime television. Any kind of craziness was unheard-of. It was all this slow, ponderous suffering. I threw my birth-control pills in the garbage on General Hospital and of course twenty-four hours later I was pregnant. When I was on As the World Turns, we didn't have any craziness, or on Another World. Even then they weren't doing those kinds of things. Then I got the job on Santa Barbara and my first appearance was in a beard."

She is referring to Sophia's masquerade as Dominic, when she came back to Santa Barbara to meet her family. Since than she's had many zany scenes to play, even as the straightwoman. One that comes to mind is "one of the many times C.C. (Jed Allan) and Sophia got married to each other, and Gina (Robin Mattson) is up in the balcony with a hibachi and she is grilling hot dogs." She also enjoyed her older woman / younger man romance with Chip Mayer (ex-T.J.). But her favorite story was the one that launched the show - the "Who Killed Channing ?" story. "It was brilliantly plotted," she said. "It was a mystery and lasted well over a year. It was the Medea story. Sophia had killed her own son and didn't know it. It was so complicated and yet understandable. It was really well done."

Santa Barbara has won a slew of Emmys in the past two years for its writing, direction, and acting, but in the greater scheme of things it's still daytime television, and Judith McConnell still finds that people consider the medium low-rent entertainment. "There is still in the industry a negative attitude about actors who work in daytime television," she says. "People still say to me at my age and with my ability, "Oh well, it's a good training ground." That I dislike. I dislike that the enormity of work we do is not respected as it should be. It is in some areas, but not completely and not as it should be. If I ruled the world, I would watch daytime very carefully and cast people who can work under this kind of pressure." Still, she has seen some stars born on daytime - and told them to move on. Ray Liotta, who played Joey Perrini on Another World for three years and appeared in the films Dominick and Eugene and Field of Dreams, was Judith's star candidate. "We worked together on Another World," says Judith. "He's wonderful. I told him to leave the show and to go to Hollywood."

If she has any regrets, she has a hard time recalling them. And despite the cold feet she gets from thinking about marriage, she is confident that there is a suitable partner for her. "I have no doubt that there will be someone someday that I will spend the rest of my life with forever," she says. But she won't be looking for him in the personals section of Los Angeles newspapers. "Too many people who write those ads are looking for someone to walk on the beach with them," she thinks. "If I hear one more person say that they love to walk on the beach…" she sighs "I have never known so many human beings that like to walk on the beach. Have you ever ? It's the funniest thing. Everyone wants to walk on the beach. If all the people who wrote the personal ads walked on the beach, you couldn't get near the beach. "Moonlight walks on the beach." Oh, give it up."