What It’s All About, Erica, Redux

Marlena says: Susan Lucci’s new autobiography “La Lucci” (Ballantine Books) is everywhere this week as she does a media blitz, launched with a cover story in this week’s People magazine.  I will review the book here as soon as I receive my copy.  But I just can’t wait until then to revisit one of my favorite subjects. I’ve been a staunch fan of Susan’s since “All My Children” debuted on Jan. 5, 1970.  I’ve done dozens of interviews and stories about her over the years, for Soap Opera Weekly, for United Features Syndicate and for major publications including USA Today and The New York Times.  I was the soap columnist for her hometown Long Island newspaper Newsday through the 90s.  When she won her long awaited Daytime Emmy in 1999, I wrote the next day’s front page story in Newsday, headlined “Susan Lucci Wins the Emmy.”  

Here’s another story from the past that I especially enjoyed writing for Newsday. The headline was “What’s It All About, Erica” and the occasion was “AMC”’s 25^th anniversary, Jan. 5, 1995.  Lifelong fans don’t need to be told that the Erica named in the head is the glamorous Erica Kane.  The subhead explained “Susan Lucci’s soap character has triumphed for 25 years.” What fun I had examining the appeal of the superstar character whose name, then as now, is indelibly linked to the superstar actress who brought her to life.  For my story I obtained revealing interviews about the Erica phenomenon with the show’s creator, the late Agnes Nixon, and the then “AMC” executive producer Felicia Minei Behr. Publication coincided with broadcast of an ABC  25^th anniversary special on Erica. Simultaneously, the network released a superb video “All About Erica,” narrated by Lucci.

__________________________________________________________________

By Connie Passalacqua

Reprinted from Newsday, Jan. 5, 1996, with permission.

She’s gorgeous and a flirt, the central character on the hit ABC soap “All My Children.” But in a clip from 1983, she reiterates her experience as a supermodel and all-around celebutante to Mike Roy (Nicholas Surovy), the prospective ghostwriter of her autobiography andsoon-to-be lover. He asks her foggily just who she is. “You’ve never heard of me before?” she retorts haughtily. “I AM Erica Kane.”

And not just that! For 25 years the gloriously self-centered Erica, as played by Susan Lucci, has been the most popular character on daytime soaps. A newly released retrospective video “All About Erica,” asks not just who Erica is, but why Erica  is. Why does Erica do the things she does? Why have millions of viewers loved to hate this character for 25 years, making Erica an American TV icon?

The first place to go to for that answer is actress Lucci, who also narrates the video. Because before the Ford commercials, before her TV movies such as “Mafia Princess,” before the bad jokes about all those Emmy losses, there was Erica. This is the role in which Lucci was cast straight out of college in 1970 and still plays on the soap, which celebrates its 25th anniversary tonight with a prime-time special..

“I think Erica’s the greatest role ever written for a woman,” Lucci recently announced at a premiere party for “All About Erica” held at ABC’s Manhattan headquarters.

But let us fill in the background data: The character of Erica started as a villainess in a teen romance at the soap’s premiere. But as the years went by, Erica evolved way beyond the realm of soap vixen. She became funny and campy, at times appearing to be — most deliciously so — a parody of a soap character. Unlike characters on otherworldly soaps, Erica paralleled and spoofed contemporary society. In the ’70s, she had her own disco; in the ’80s she was an international superstar model. Now, Erica is almost as famous as Lucci, the first daytime soapactress to break into TV movies and commercials without cutting her ties to daytime.

Poor or rich, Erica has had the same motivation all of her 25 years on “AMC”: She has been grasping for love and security. Deserted as a child by her father, all she wants is the perfect man. In that search, Erica has spent her soap life doing immature things that frequently left the soap’s viewers wanting to wring her neck. But even while disapproving of Erica’s behavior, millions of fans simultaneously rooted for her. And her larger-than-life quality has made Erica a particular favorite of more sophisticated soap viewers and college students. Last year, Chicago-based alternative rockers Urge Overkill paid homage to the character in the song “Erica Kane” on their hit album, “Saturation.”

But what is it about Erica that has evoked such strong reaction from so many different kinds of people? The producers of “All About Erica” set out to answer that question in the video. Says Regina DiMartino, the tape’s executive producer, “We thought it was a disservice to Susan to just present Erica’s life chronologically. Probably the question that is most asked about Erica is how many husbands has she had (Eight!). But it would just be boring showing all the scenes leading up to the weddings and then to the breakups and reconciliations. We wanted to explore why Erica does what she does and why viewers relate to her so strongly.” DiMartino and her staff spent six months in a network editing room, culling Erica clips from thousands of daily “AMC” episodes.

And so “All About Erica” does match its ambitions by turning out to be more than just a Lucci-fest of ever-changing hair and makeup styles or just a parade of Erica’s lovers. It includes generous moments of camp (Erica, circa 1980, “I am Erica Kane. Men flock to me like moths to a flame!”). There’s Erica bitchily jousting with romantic rivals, Erica dressed as a French maid, Erica standing up to a grizzly bear (“I am Erica Kane and you are nothing but a dirty, filthy animal!”). But there are many heart-rending dramatic scenes, too, like Erica praying for the life of her critically ill daughter Bianca.

And tape hostess Lucci actually answers the question of why Erica is the way she is, while introducing the clips at the beginning of the video. “But for all her ego and self-confidence, Erica’s just as insecure and vulnerable as you and I.”

“Oh yes,” said Agnes Nixon, who created “AMC” and is still the show’s executive head writer, “Erica suffers, quite as much or more than she makes anyone else suffer. Erica is grounded in reality and is afull-blown character. The more three-dimensional you make a [soap] character, the more lifelike it is. That’s why people empathize with Erica. It’s also the key to character longevity” on soaps.

Nixon, who has been married to the same man for the 40-plus years of her soap-writing career, said with a laugh, “I’d love to be Erica, if I were 20 years younger and better looking.”

And who wouldn’t? If soap operas are the enactments of female fantasies, then to be Erica may be the ultimate female fantasy. Erica is so beautiful, men fall at her feet. But even so, the thorny realities of romance regularly thrash Erica. Can women relate!

And we should all look like Lucci. “Don’t forget Susan’s even more beautiful than she was 25 years ago,” says Freeman Gunter, a managing editor of Soap Opera Weekly. “Other actresses are pretty, but Susan has something more – a liveliness, a life force. There’s something magical in the way she communicates and how people respond.”

But it takes more than just magic to spend 25 years in front of a camera, day by long taping day. Says “AMC” executive producer Felicia Minei Behr. “The general public doesn’t realize how hard Susan works.” Although the actress has yet to win that Daytime Emmy, the work represented on the “All About Erica” tape illustrates why Lucci’s comedic and dramatic talents have made Erica a soap phenomenon. Says Behr, “I meet so many people who have never heard of `All My Children.’ But they’ve all heard of Susan Lucci.”

Connie Passalacqua writes “The Soaps” column for this newspaper.