"When you throw that many people into the mix, and everybody (wants
the final say), sometimes the story falls short. At one point, the network
wanted to have Taylor Stanley's character, Remy, turn out to be alien. The
writers just had to put their foot down that time. They were like, 'We will
not do that.'"
Today, a year after AW's cancellation, Macdonald is confident that his storyline,
however popular or unpopular it may have been, did not hasten the show's
demise. "It would be unbelievably arrogant for me to say that. I've jokingly
said it a few times--'Hi, I'm David Macdonald, the man who killed ANOTHER
WORLD'--but it's ridiculous. You can't make seven months of story (the scapegoat)
for a show that's been around for 35 years. There are plenty of other shows
that have absurd storylines, if that's all we can say the Lumina story was.
But storylines are small, compared to the things that happen at the corporate
level," he continues. The real problem, he says, was that AW spent its final
years "dealing with a relatively hostile network. I think if different people
had owned us or held investments in us, the show could have survived. But
as it was, I think that even if we had had the (high) ratings of DAYS OF
OUR LIVES, someone might still have been trying to get us off the air. It
just wouldn't have been as easy."
Like many of his former co-stars, Macdonald found another chair on daytime
when the music stopped. "Of course, I wish (AW) could have continued," he
sighs, "But I love GUIDING LIGHT now. God, I'm a prince on an island that's
higher than it is wide." Moreover, the dastardly Edmund performs an important
public service. "I know what he does to Richard and Cassie is awful, but
people write to me and say, 'Thank you so much for giving that self-righteous
bitch her comeuppance," he laughs. "And it's true! It's like, 'Well, excuse
me, Miss Perfect.' Same goes for my brother."
Never having met an actual prince ("As a good ol' Irish-Scottish revolutionary,
I don't really go for the royals"), Macdonald doesn't have anything concrete
on which to base Edmund. Luckily, the character's not that much of a stretch.
"I come from a fairly well-off, white-collared background, so I think my
personal experiences are probably much closer to Prince Edmund than to a
construction worker. I would have to do a lot more research to play the
construction worker."
Not that he couldn't play blue collar just as well as blue blood. "I
hope I could, at least, because that's what I'm trained to do as an actor,"
he notes. So is there anyone he absolutely would not be able to play? "You
mean, like an illiterate black man living in Mississippi in 1920? That would
be a stretch," he muses. "Obviously, I'm not black, but I am a man. And even
that...does that mean I should never play Lady Bracknell in The Importance
of Being Earnest? She's a great character. With enough research, I should
be able to play her, if you're thinking theoretically. I'd be a 6-foot-3,
220-pound gigantic Lady Bracknell, coming in like a frigate in the harbor.
It would be a blast. But at some point I might say, 'You know, there are
plenty of women who could do a better job at this more quickly than I
could.'"
Of course, there may come a day when he has all the time he needs to practice.
With a new head writer (Claire Labine) now settling in at GL, conventional
wisdom says some characters will be axed to make room for new ones--and
unattached meanies like Edmund often go first. "It's definitely something
I've thought about," admits Macdonald, who has more than two years left on
his contract. "But I feel fairly secure. I'm sure many people out there can't
stand me, but I think I've garnered just a modicum of popularity, and Edmund
is involved with a lot of other really popular people. And I think I've done
a pretty good job with what they've given me. If I thought I had screwed
up, I would admit it."
All that being the case, he's prepared for anything. "If they came up to
me and said, 'We can't use you anymore, it's an artistic and business decision,'
I wouldn't take it personally. I'd just say good-bye to everyone, go have
a drink, regret the fact that I just purchased a house--maybe from the top
of the Brooklyn Bridge--and then I'd do what all actors do, which is go out
and look for more work." |
