Gina's loves
By Alena Prime, Télé Star, 1992	Home   Cette page en Français

This Gina Timmons is a real bitchy girl, a pitiless ravager girl, all the fans of Santa Barbara will agree on it. But despite adorable, because this is not incompatible, and because her interpreter, Robin Mattson, has a real seduction. For seven years she plays the role, Robin arrived at such a degree of intimacy with her character that she describes Gina by leaving her the words. "Also far I remember, thus tells Gina by the mouth of Robin, my mother insisted on the importance for a girl to marry a rich man. I obeyed her asI could, we can't unearth billionaires as we want, but, finally, two of my four husbands were rich, which is not an unpleasant average !

"My fifth husband on the other hand, will make mom more than happy ! I am going to marry Lionel Lockridge ! And he is authentically rich. Of course, this wedding will not give pleasure to C.C. Capwell, of who I had been previously the wife... To be the ex-wife and the wife of two big enemies like Lionel and C.C. is absolutely not anything, but I find that terribly exciting. Don't you ? So much more I won't stop provoking them. That's after all the best way of fighting daily monotony.

"I besides always fought against weariness, against grisaille. So that when I was 13, I found myself pregnant of the captain of the team of football of my school. At the time, I acknowledge that I was quite saucy. Even if, to tell the truth, this pregnancy is the fruit of a rape. As I was too young to take care of the child, my mother announced to me that he was dead-born. And how I could have known that she lied ! A few years later, I had the desire to be a mother. Then I learned that due to complications which have occurred during my first childbirth I could not have child anymore. With my husband, Stockman DeMott, we made the decision to adopt a little boy named Brandon. We were far from doubting that he was actually the illegitimate grandson of C.C.. Fearing that he wants, thereafter, to assert his rights on the child, it appeared logical to me to marry C.C.... The problem, that was I preferred Mason to him, his son. Fatal attraction, which we resisted during one moment, but not too long, before succumbing. That's then the moment destiny played an unpleasant turn, because, whereas the doctors sweared that I could not have children any more, I found myself pregnant, and being absolutely unaware if the baby was from the father or the son !

"Then, I made a bad fall which involved a miscarriage, which regulated the problem. In the same time, C.C. fell into coma. Of what I was secretly pleased. Because, right before he fell sick, Sophia, his preceding wife, had returned in Santa Barbara and C.C. was going to fall in love with her again. And I did not intend to yield my place to this intriguer. In fact, I had seen well. Just healthed of his coma, C.C. hastened to divorce me to marry this bitchy girl of Sophia ! And with that, Mason had fallen in love with Lily... All that, obviously, is a little complicated, but these stories of family and heart are never simple... In short, to continue my story, I discovered soon that Lily was my daughter, this baby my mother had claimed to be dead-born ! And she was in love with the man whom I wanted.

"But all was going to be arranged. Thanks to a compromising video tape fallen between my hands, I had been able to blackmail C.C. and oblige him to marry me again. After what, Mason was my next husband. Then Keith Timmons succeeded to him. This union was of short duration, the time I realize that he was as treacherous as crafty, and than he liked only wounds and bumps. I already had Ethan in head, but he was married and not question of making him divorce. However, I am not the kind of woman to satisfy me with five to seven extra-marital stories ! Then, misfortunes followed the one after the another. My house burned, I lived a period of blindness. Only the arrival of Lionel could bring back a little of sun in my life..."

Robin laughs very much at the end of this incredible disorder. "I must agree that my private life is infinitely less animated than Gina's one. All I could tell you from me would seem you very finical." She currently lives a passion which makes her very happy. A few weeks ago, she spent several days to News-Orleans, her favorite town in the United States. "Over there, the atmosphere is magic, and the local kitchen is mirific. Architecture has an extraordinary charm, and one continues to feel the French influence there. I have friends who live there and I go there as often as work allows me. "One evening, when she was in a club, she had the surprise to see the boy depositing a champagne bottle in front of her. "From one of your fans", specified he by designating to her a man sitting at a table, a little further. She went to thank him. They exchanged some words and he taught her that his name was Ed, that, like her, he was living in Los Angeles and that he was leaving the following day. They exchanged their phone number... and they didn't left themselves since that. One calls that a "love at first sight".

Last weekend, they spent forty-eight hours in Palm Springs, at one hundred and sixty kilometers from Los Angeles, in full Californian desert, where a considerable number of stars has a property. "It was marvellous and so romantic ! exclaimes Robin. To a few kilometers from the town, there is a rock formation carved and polished by the centuries. Inside, a natural basin supplied by a source goes down in cascade from fifty meters height. The water is clear and limpid and it reigns in this cave with open sky a delicious freshness." She however had to put a term at their escapade to join the studio. Above all because she was going to play Gina and Lionel's wedding. "There were thousand of preparations to do, tells Robin; to choose the wedding dress, the accessories. I have the impression that the writers will marry Gina up until 70 years old !" These televised weddings did not however given to Robin the taste of marriage. "It would be premature ! Ed and I are perfectly happy for the moment. There is no reason to want to go too fast."

Robin has just changed the two rooms which are for her essential in her house : the bedroom and the kitchen. "The bedroom because it is the softer place, the most romantic one, of the house, and the kitchen because I am an accomplished cook." She spends hours above the furnaces of its cooker, a "Viking", six burners, two furnaces, the Rolls of the cookers. "And believe me, this is not too much when I start to cook !" Thus, last week, she invited some friends. "I made come by plane thirty kilos of crayfishes from News-Orleans (one does not find any in California)." She prepared a sauce thermidor, and the shellfish orgy lasted hours. She has got a library full of cookbooks.

Mrs. Mattson mother lives not far from her. That is with her that she changed her room. "I did not make come any workman. I used a new technic. The completion is done with a sponge, a real one, from the sea. The result is surprising. It gives a very soft environment. "It also attacked lighting, the curtains, she installed glazed gates opening on the patio which is, in fact, a kind of terrace leading on a splendid view. "I made it paved with decorative tiles from Spain and I made install a fountain with a small water jet. It is surmounted by a gargoyle in News-Orleans. I love French things and people, one of my dreams is to go to France and see Paris... I do not dare to think of all the things I could buy over there. I would probably need a particular plane to repatriate my shopping."

But her work does not leave her free time and not question, for her part, to leave one day Santa Barbara, as others did. "I am there very fine. The fact that it is a daytime soap does absolutely not disturb me. The prime-time shows do not attract me. You begin one of them, you are very happy and, hop, everything is cancelled after only two or three stories. It is as disappointing as frustrating. Who more is, it is often impossible for you to refind your place in the show because someone had already took your place. No, really, a production as Santa Barbara offers a stability I enormously appreciate."

Some actors have played the same character for more than twenty years and, just like Robin Mattson, do not complain. Quite the contrary. They age with their character, the writers take account of their evolution, that is a little as if their existence was duplicated, semi-real, semi-dreamed. About her, that will make seven years next November that Robin plays Gina. "And with a character of this quality, I really do not have time to annoy me because she really makes me see so much... I am really very attached to her." Robin Mattson joined the show only after its beginning. "The producers had contacted me but their offer was not appropriated to me." It was thus Linda Gibboney who initially played Gina. But not for a long time. The producers returned to Robin and, this time, accepted her conditions. "And everything goes well since." So well that there are big chances that Gina and Lionel become the star-couple of Santa Barbara. And nothing will give anymore pleasure to Robin Mattson.