“Melrose Place” was known for its ludicrous plotlines, but the cast was always in on the joke.
“Absolutely,” Laura Leighton, who played Sydney Andrews, exclaims in an interview with Page Six alongside castmates Courtney Thorne-Smith and Daphne Zuniga.
“Every week, I was like, ‘Seriously, what the f–k?’ And OK, this is what we’re doing this week.”
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Some of Sydney’s shenanigans included a romance with her brother-in-law, Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro), temporarily becoming a sex worker, blackmailing Michael into marrying her, an affair with Jake Hanson (Grant Show) and starting her own advertising firm with Craig Field (David Charvet), whom she later married.
Oh, and let’s not forget the time Sydney conked her sister Jane Mancini’s (Josie Bissett) abusive boyfriend, Richard Hart (Patrick Muldoon), over the head, mistakenly believing she had killed him. The siblings then buried the body, only to have Richard crawl out of his grave, stalk them and then be killed in a shoot-out with police.
“It was like, OK, change the hair, change the outfit,” Leighton continues. “Here’s what we’re doing this week. I’m a secretary! Nope, I’m not. I’m blackmailing! So like, it was definitely a ride of, you know, open the script and say, ‘What’s it going to be?’ and then go, ‘All right, that’s what we’re doing!'”
Leighton, 55, Thorne-Smith, 58, and Zuniga, 61, have come together for a new rewatch podcast called “Still the Place,” in which they will revisit the show, share behind-the-scenes stories and bring on special guests.
Zuniga’s character, photographer Jo Reynolds, also underwent her share of hardships, including a kidnapping, murder and a protracted battle for custody of her baby.
The actress admits there were times when she struggled to keep up with her child’s whereabouts, but “you just strap in and do it because you’re acting and you have to keep it all straight in your brain as much as possible.
“And it did go everywhere … so you kind of just got used to it, frankly, and [were] like, ‘What’s next, what’s next?!'”
Thorne-Smith played Alison Parker, who, not surprisingly, also had a host of dramas befall her, including a romance with Billy Campbell (Andrew Shue), an attempted rape, a drinking problem, temporary blindness due to Kimberly Shaw (Marcia Cross) blowing up an apartment complex and a marriage to the father of Brooke Armstrong (Kristin Davis) that abruptly ended after he died falling off a yacht.
The “Ally McBeal” alum has a fondness for Alison — especially when she was drunk.
“I love drunk Alison,” she enthuses, “because Alison had been so buttoned-up. I loved playing drunk Alison. I thought she was such a kick. I was kind of sad when Alison got sober.”
Thorne-Smith also appreciated the inherent campiness of the show.
“We knew it was ridiculous,” she confesses. “We tried to bring humor. We pushed as far as we could … which is why I think it worked.
“If we’d taken it really seriously, I don’t think it would have worked as well. Like, we took our work seriously, but we also understood that it was getting crazier and crazier and crazier.”
Thorne-Smith adds that the show really took off when Heather Locklear joined the cast as the resident villain Amanda Woodward.
“She was the missing piece that came in,” she says. “So when she came in, that’s when the show took right off.”
Zuniga marvels, “And the fact that [Locklear] came in and, like, hit the ground running, having no problems being a bitch, it’s just amazing because she’s so nice in real life.”
Even though the Fox soap opera, which ran from 1992 to 1999, was deliciously campy, it also broke ground as one of the first primetime shows to feature an openly gay character, social worker Matt Fielding, who played Doug Savant.
Savant — who, in a “Melrose Place”-worthy plot twist, married Leighton in 1998 and welcomed two children with her — was appreciative of how important the role was, according to Thorne-Smith.
“Doug is such a thoughtful, ethical guy that he wouldn’t discuss his sexuality,” she explains, adding that he was pressured to announce he was straight but Savant, 60, refused.
“He goes, ‘I’m not going to talk about it,'” she continues. “‘This has nothing to do with it.’ … He really kept that blurry because it felt really important to him. … He was very adamant about, like, not making it a thing.”
“Still the Place” is available now on iHeartRadio and everywhere podcasts are heard.
