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All My Children star Susan Lucci turns down Prospect Park’s offer to continue with the series online.
While One Life to Live fans are certainly happy with the recent contract news for four of its stars, All My Children fans may have a little more reason to worry. Nellie Andreeva of Deadline.com reports that AMC star Susan Lucci has declined an offer by Prospect Park to continue on with the show.
According to Deadline, the Emmy winner was offered a deal “identical” to what she has with ABC, but the star wanted more than what the studio was willing to offer. Reports say Lucci’s request for additional perks included “more money while asking to work fewer hours and a commitment for a primetime series.” As a result of this impasse, Prospect Park may be inclined to shelve AMC for the time being and focus its effors on launching OLTL first.
Lucci’s garnered headlines recently thanks to a NYPost story that provides leaked excerpts of a new epilogue in her memoir All My Life. In the new passage, she eviscerates ABC Daytime president Brian Frons for the cancellation of the long running soap, which ended production last week. In it, she writes “I think our being in this position is the result of some very bad decisions by you.” She also blamed Frons for hiring a “subpar” head writer in 2008 and forcing out creator Agnes Nixon. She continues later, “An iconic show was losing out to greed … If Brian Frons could show his bosses that he could save the network 40 percent … he could keep his job even if the rest of us lost ours. … I watched Brian Frons’ decisions destroy the production of our show and the lives of people on both sides of the country… [He] has what, for me, is that fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance. I cannot fathom any network executive choosing to alienate millions of loyal viewers in these economic times.”
ABC would respond to the leak with a backhanded comment, “We have all the respect in the world for Susan, and are sorry she felt the need to write this epilogue to an otherwise incredible career.”
Editor’s POV: This is a lot to take in. I hope Lucci is able to reach an agreement with PP. Simply put, there is no AMC without Susan Lucci. You cannot launch a venture like this without its icon, the draw, the person that will hopefully lure viewers online and maybe to its future home on cable. Fans are falling on opposite sides of the issue, as there are people who support Lucci, while others feel her actions are selfish if Deadline’s account is accurate.
One of our Twitter followers SHADOWUSR said, “Is it fair to characterize Lucci’s negotiations as “gouging” for more money? She took highly publicized cuts at ABC and has been traveling from NYC to do the show. It’s easier for OLTL because it’s still in NYC. I don’t think Deadline is reporting fairly on Lucci. I still see this as an ABC failure. ABC has been screwing with AMC forever.”
What do you think?
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