Ted and Hayley, the new great couple of Santa Barbara
By Alena Prime, Télé Star, 1990	Home   Cette page en Français

They are two little new ones of Santa Barbara : Todd McKee and Stacy Edwards have just made their appearance on our French screens in the roles of Ted Capwell and Hayley. These two Hollywood rising stars have a common passion : they adore Europe and in particular France. "The prettiest girls I saw in my life were on the Riviera, acknowledges Todd McKee. Even in Hollywood, I did not find so beautiful ones." Nice compliment when it is known that this young actor with a playboy appearance tightened in his arms, for some shootings, the most lovely actresses of the capital of cinema. As for Stacy, it is the French Jura which is in her eyes the most beautiful place of the world. "When I was fifteen years old, she remembers, I were going with my school to ski in Lelex, not very far from the Rousses. A beautiful landscape ! I promised to myself to go up one day to the Faucille peak, to contemplate the Leman lake on a side and France on the other."

Because Stacy Edwards, American born in Montana, had an international childhood. Daughter of a soldier of career, she has been led from garrison to garrison through the United States and the whole world. At ten, she found herself in Belgium where her father was working at the OTAN. "At the beginning, she tells, I has been placed in an English-speaking school. But I spent the three following school years in a Canadian school where half of the lessons were in English, the other in French. I believe that I am not too bad in your language." The year of the sixteen years old of his daughter, colonel Edwards returned to the United States with his family. For Stacy, as for her young brother John, it was a shock : the life in Omaha, Nebraska, was so different from what it was in Europe...

But the teenager had a vocation : she wanted to become an actress. Dance and dramatic art lessons, diction : at eighteen years old, after her graduate studies, Stacy left for Chicago where she made theatre at the university. That is where that a talents hunter, in the search of new faces for Santa Barbara, noticed, and proposed her to shoot a screen test in New York. "Then everything went very quickly, continues Stacy. The shooting had taken place one Monday. On Tuesday, I returned to Chicago. On Wednesday, I learned that I had to be the following day in Los Angeles for a new audition. On Friday, my agent taught me that I had obtained the role of Hayley. On next Monday, I started to play. Since, she says, four years passed. And for the first time of my life, I have the impression to have found a stable home. Los Angeles is a town I like and where I feel at home."

Todd McKee did not know the uprooting problems of his lovely partner. 100% American, he had the dreams of the boys of his country, and one which particularly marked him : "Since I was sixteen, I wished to buy a car; not any car : a Corvette 1960, he says with a greedy look. It took me ten years to appease my covetousness. But when I could have enough money to pay the car, I wisely bought a house instead : it should be said that this kind of car cost a real fortune here. Finally, I read an advertisement which proposed a Corvette, but in Texas. I jumped on a plane to Amarillo. When I saw the car, I immediately knew it was it. It is red, splendid. I am so proud that when I do not drive with it, I show its photo to everyone, like a father proud of his child."

Todd behaves in his life as if he was still in college. His happy and enthusiastic personality thus makes him accept all the situations : "I remember a real awake nightmare I made during a shooting of Santa Barbara with Stacy, he remembers with a shiver. We were on a yacht and everything was ready for a romantic and sentimental dinner in private with my partner. But there : at the menu, there were oysters. I unfortunately have an uncontrollable dislike of them. That must have been evident of my face, because Stacy burst out laughing. At the second try, the same thing. It was necessary to begin again the scene twelve times, and I had to swallow a dozen of whole oysters. If I hated them before, now I hate them." Of his recent seven months long turn of the world done with his partner of Santa Barbara Lane Davies, Todd McKee fortunately kept more pleasant memories. "We knew thrilling moments, he says. In Egypt, for example, we did not want to play the luxury tourists. From Cairo, we took a train ticket to Assouan. From there, we went up the Nile on a boat from another age where we were the only two passengers : that took four days and that cost us two thousand and five hundred dollars. We of course stopped in the Valley of the kings, that we traversed by foot, bags on the back."

"In full desert, we fell on a hillock whose opening was closed by a stones heap. By moving some of them, I discovered the entry of a cellar. I beckoned Lane to follow me. It was very dark and a starnge smell was reigning. Once our eyes accustomed to the half-light, we discovered that we were totally surrounded by mummies. It took us only a few seconds to give up. In Switzerland, with Lane, we knew some other emotions, those of parapente, a sport halfway between parachute and hang-glider. You run harnessed on the side of a mountain and then the ascending winds carry you in the sky and you plan above the valley. This is one of the most exciting experiments I lived."

But after these seven months of prank, it was necessary to go back to Hollywood : a new employment awaited Todd there, who has just left Santa Barbara for the concurrent show, The Bold and the Beautiful, a story of top-models stars. "This role was proposed to me just at the return of my world turn with Lane Davies. To give up Santa Barbara was not easy, he recognizes. My character in The Bold and the Beautiful is completely different from the one of Ted Capwell. He is a poor boy, but very ambitious, who begins as a tennis professor for rich persons. He only thinks of making a place at the sun. The writers are polishing the character. Believe me, you will hear speaking about him."

"I like to shoot sexy scenes, acknowledges Todd McKee, but I note that my female partners are always a little embarrassed." "There are reasons for that, answers Stacy Edwards. The day I had to play my first erotic scene, I arrived at the studios completely terrorized. I was so nervous that I was trembling from the head to the feet. Fortunately, Todd was perfect. He managed to make me laugh to make me being cooler. But these intimate scenes are always very difficult with somebody who is only a friend of work, and especially in front of the cameras and the technicians. I always wear a color of flesh leotard. Except the shoulders and sometimes the back, there is no real nudity. But it is still hard for me to overcome my reserve, even with time." A decency which, obviously, amuses Todd a lot : "Let us go Stacy, that is not so terrible. You well know that most of the time, under the sheets, we wear shorts and sport shoes !"

Stacy Edwards left also a little of her heart in Europe, and nothing pleases her more than the idea to go back there soon. "Three years ago, she tells, my father made me a divine surprise. He called me on the phone one evening. He first spoke about many things before asking to me if, for Christmas, instead of a reunion at home with my mother and my brother John, I would not like to go to Monte-Carlo to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary of marriage. We did the anniversary meal at the famous Colombe d'Or in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. It is a memory I will not forget." It is also in France that Todd McKee could meet in flesh and bone his big idol, the ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. "Incredible ! He acknowledged me that he was a fan of Santa Barbara, he says while laughing."