Star: CHARLES SHAUGHNESSY Role: Maxwell Sheffield, THE NANNY aka: Shane Donovan, DAYS OF OUR LIVES Brithday: February 9 Wife: Susan Fallender Children: Jenny and Madelyn MAXWELL'S SMART Charles Shaughnessy talks about DAYS, clothes encounters at the dry cleaner, and why he doesn't mind playing second baNanny to Fran Drescher! DIGEST ONLINE: When are Fran and Mr. Sheffield finally going to get together? SHAUGHNESSY: It's so funny. We consider ourselves very modern and 90's and a little bit of flexibility is the rule of the game; and yet, when it comes right down to it, we all crave order. Like everybody, you know, should be together. It's like there's the guy [Sheffield] and the girl [the Nanny] and the kids. Why aren't the guy and the girl together? The trouble is, when they get together, that's it. It's like with "The Sound of Music." You had four fifths of the film go by, and then Maria and von Trapp got married -- they climbed a mountain, they escaped from Nazism and they rolled the credits. DIGEST ONLINE: You two could always escape to Queens. SHAUGHNESSY: Right, that's it, but you've got to roll the credits after that. There certainly wouldn't be THE NANNY anymore. So they've got to find a way of bringing [Fran and Maxwell] together, of playing that chemistry and playing that teasing, and then pulling them apart again. It's like a soap. It's exactly the same dilemma you have on soaps. When are Shane and Kim going to get together? Then you put them together and everyone's like, "Oh, it's so tiring!" DIGEST ONLINE: So, after all those years on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, you went into prime time only to be part of a super couple.... SHAUGHNESSY: Exactly. I ended up in the same dilemma. It's very ironic. DIGEST ONLINE: What have you learned in daytime that's helping you on THE NANNY? SHUAGHNESSY: I think just being comfortable with the four-camera setup, although we do the show with a live audience. It's a mixture of doing a soap and doing live theater. So I think that helps. Also, you're learning to work very fast on a soap. The great thing a soap has to offer is this: It teaches you a facility to come up with [acting] choices very fast, and to be able to change them very fast, and not get too stuck on a particular thing. If you're rehearsing a play for 5 weeks , you can really get something ingrained, and then suddenly someone says , "We've rewritten that scene. You've got to throw it all out the window , and [you] watch the actor come apart at the seams. Whereas on a soap, they'll often throw you a whole different set of dialogue just before taping. After dress rehearsal, you're doing notes and makeup, and they'll throw you a different scene, and you've got to just quickly adapt to that. DIGEST ONLINE: Is there much rewriting on THE NANNY? SHAUGHNESSY: They rewrite all the time. You go in on Monday, read the script and start blocking it. Then, on Tuesday, you continue blocking it and you do a run-through for the writers. Tuesday night the writers go away and rewrite the whole show. So you come in on Wednesday with a new show, and you start from scratch. You start reblocking it, you start rewriting it, you start reworking it. Then they do a run-through for the producers and the network and the studio, and [the executives] all have notes, so the writers go away and rewrite the script again. So Thursday, you're doing your camera blocking as well as doing new stuff all over again. And that goes on right through to Friday night. There will be some [script] changes on the floor even during taping. DIGEST ONLINE: Do you tape the show twice? SHAUGHNESSY: We tape it once in the afternoon just for us. Then we tape it in front of an audience in the evening, straight through. The advantage of that is that the afternoon stuff gives them [extra tape footage] to go back to [if necessary]. If they need to get a pick up or a cover shot, it's covered in the afternoon taping, so you don't have to do as many pick ups at night with the audience. You can try and blast right through like a play as much as possible. DIGEST ONLINE: Do you spend the weekend looking over the next week's script? SHAUGHNESSY: No, I usually look at the script just before the [first] read through. Because it changes. Even after the reading on the Monday, there are still some changes. Besides, it's not like a soap where you're learning 30 pages of closely typed dialogue. There's not that volume. The scenes break down to shorter scenes, and there's not the volume of dialogue to learn. DIGEST ONLINE: Which do you enjoy doing more, the soap or the primetime show? SHAUGHNESSY: It's really hard to say. I really enjoy different things about each. Someone said something very interesting to me and it's quite true: On a soap, you spend all day working on a show that in the end is mostly very dramatic and very serious, especially Shane, the character that I played. Usually, there was not a lot of humor. Digging your way out of collapsed tunnels or whatever it might be. And we used to just have such a blast during the day, working on the stuff. I mean, it was always a lot of fun. I just remember laughing hysterically most of the time [during rehearsal]. Because you've got this melodramatic sort of dialogue and there's a bunch of people wiping sleep out of their eyes [during early morning rehearsal] going, "Omigod, Omigod, we're all going to die!" And there's some prop guy throwing handfuls of earth at you. So it would just be hysterical. I remember some days just crying because we were having such fun, and this poor director was trying to keep us in line, because they had this enormous show to shoot [and we were clowning around]. And then you'd do it, and it was all terribly serious. Whereas on the sitcom, the end result is meant to be very funny, and the work is infinitely more serious. We have a lot of fun, but it's a much more serious work [atmosphere], more intense -- it's not the goofing off that we used to do on DAYS. DIGEST ONLINE: And yet time was more compressed. SHAUGHNESSY: Right. Time was more compressed on the soap. [On DAYS], you'd go in every day. You kind of got to know it all very well. It was comfortable. You knew what was required. And everything is very heightened on a soap, there's a kind of big dramatic climax, almost every scene ends on a pushed-in close-up as the music goes DAH DAH DAH DAH, etc. And it's just hard to keep a straight face doing that all the time at six o'clock in the morning and through the day. DIGEST ONLINE: Not to mention having to deal with all of Shane's in-laws who kept coming back from the dead.... SHUAGHNESSY: Right. And you'd have these ridiculous lines. I remember this whole time when there were two Romans running around. I had a line where I had to say, "I've got to go over and check with the Romans." It was ridiculous. How can you keep a straight face? DIGEST ONLINE: We always hear about huge gaps of free time -- while the cameras are being set up -- during the filming of primetime shows. How do you fill those long breaks? SHAUGHNESSY: There really isn't [a lot of free time on this show. On an hour show, I guess there would be. I'm in almost every scene. If there are 10 scenes in the show, I'll be in eight of them. So you're down on the floor for those eight scenes. There may be just two scenes that you're not in. That's the time to make the phone calls you need to make and take care of whatever business there is. There's a lot less hanging around than there was on a soap opera. On a soap, you'd hang around for hours. You'd do your block of scenes, and then there'd always be three different storylines going on. So you'd do your scenes, and then there'd be two other stories being dealt with that day, and you'd just be sitting about. On DAYS, there would be large blocks of time most days when you'd sit about. There's less sitting about on THE NANNY. DIGEST ONLINE: Was it nerve wracking for you during THE NANNY's first season because the show wasn't an instant hit? SHAUGHNESSY: We were always the little engine that could. We started out as just this small pilot. At the same time, there was a new show with Faye Dunaway, and one with Chuck Norris. I think Bob Newhart had a new one then, too. So there were a lot of big name shows happening that got all the publicity and all the noise and all the buzz, and we were just the little engine that could. We were just a cute idea with a girl that had a funny voice. So no one had any expectations for us. We just knew it was a fun show. We kind of plugged along, enjoyed it and thought it was a good show. No one was nervous as such, because there weren't the expectations. It was like no one dared to dream it would go on and on and on. Then CBS switched our time slot in the summer. They gave us two nights a week -- not just the Wednesday night slot that we originally had, but a Monday night slot at 8 p.m. as well. That's when things caught on. That Monday night hooked an audience. DIGEST ONLINE: What is it like working with Fran Dreschner? SHAUGHNESSY: She's something else. She's an amazing woman. I have nothing but respect for her. She's very focused. This is a woman who had an idea. She wanted to do a show for herself. She had a kind of vague development deal. I think CBS said if you ever have an idea let us know. Which they kind of tend to do to actors to keep the actors satisfied. But it very rarely translates to anything. In fact, I think Jeff Sagansky [former head of CBS Entertainment] said to her, "You have no idea how rare it is for an actor to come us with an idea, and for us to actually develop that idea for the actor." It just doesn't happen, even if you're a big star. It's very rare that an actor gets to make his or her own show. And it's not that Fran had a very big track record on TV. But she had this idea. She took it to them. They developed it and made it into a pilot. Fran is involved in every aspect of the show. You'd be amazed. She's checking the lighting, she's talking to the people about the color of the drapes in the living room. She [lets them know if she's ] not happy with the props in the room. She's checking what the food looks like. Is that the kind of food the Sheffields would be serving?. Maybe we should do something else. What about this person's hair? This is out of light. She's on target every time. 99.9% of the time I will say she's right. Unlike a lot of stars, who get involved in producing and meddle in everyone else's business and drive you crazy, Fran is usually right. She's always got a good point to make. And people tend to listen to her when she's sort of going, "This isn't right." People may groan and moan a bit, but they'll listen. She's usually right. I'm always amazed that she's able to focus on all that and do the performance. She's able to keep her performance going and keep this character developing, while wearing about 50 different hats. And in the middle of rehearsal she's taking phone calls from Sony Pictures about some upcoming promotion thing that she's having to do in Texas. Then there's a phone call from CBS; they want to know whether she's going to be at the affiliates dinner. She's a one-woman publicity show as well, for THE NANNY. She's always doing talk shows, radio shows, magazine articles and covers of magazines and fashion layouts. You name it. She's everywhere. And she's indefatigable. She just doesn't stop. DIGEST ONLINE: In casting THE NANNY, did Fran Drescher know you from the soap? SHAUGHNESSY: She knew that I had been on DAYS [but she didn't specifically watch the show]. She and her husband were very impressed when I told them that my brother, David, produced YOUNG AND RESTLESS. They've always enjoyed Y&R and they used to watch. Fran and [her husband ] Peter would watch the soaps; they knew the soaps, and they had a healthy respect for the soaps. They certainly didn't have any of this kind of negative baggage that people have about them. They have a lot of friends who work in soaps and they've used them on the show. That's another thing about Fran -- she's amazingly loyal. She's in this position of power, and she's always employing friends. There's are people constantly coming on the show -- wonderful actors -- not employed just because they're friends. They're all excellent at what they do. I think that's a really wonderful thing to do. It's a great opportunity to be in that position, and to be able to give your friends work. DIGEST ONLINE: Would you ever hire a nanny like Fran Fine for your own kids? SHAUGHNESSY: The funny thing is I was brought up with the classic nanny [in London]. I was brought up with nannies in uniforms and pushing baby carriages through the park with a little hat on. Fran was not something that I would have thought of as a nanny at all. But actually she's ideal . She teaches the Sheffield children a kind of streetwise wisdom. They call it Queens logic. She's got a big heart. DIGEST ONLINE: Do people look at you differently because you're starring in primetime now? SHAUGHNESSY: Yeah. One of the big differences is just a bigger audience -- I think about six or seven million usually watch Y&R, the top show. We get 12 or 13 million and we're not even a top [10] show. You get whole families. You have simply a bigger audience. People watch TV in the evenings in a different way; they sit and they watch. With the daytime shows -- you're making your lunch and you're doing the laundry and watching your soap. And you're living with these people every day. It's a much more personal relationship. I think in a way it's like that old phrase "familiarity breeds contempt." I think there's a kind of familiarity with soap characters and the whole soap world that breeds a contempt. Soap fans would be more inclined to call people by their first name. That's an interesting point. I've noticed when I was on a soap, people would come up and say, "Charlie, Charlie"or "Shane, Shane." People come up to me now and go, "Mr. Shaughnessy, we really enjoy your work." I think that's a big difference. Somehow in nighttime, because you just tune in once a week, you're not as familiar -- you don't feel as close -- it's like you're watching them in a movie on a big screen. You're enjoying them, admiring the person, but you don't feel as cozy as you do with the soap people. When you watch a soap, you're watching your favorite characters -- your story. You feel like you know these guys. Like Shane's a buddy. So people will come up and go, "Yo, Shane, how's it hangin?" No one would come up to me and do that as Mr. Sheffield. DIGEST ONLINE: Is it harder to go the dry cleaner now? SHAUGHNESSY: No, it's easier in a way. Because people look at you with a certain kind of distance and respect, whereas on a soap people would say , "I feel like I know you, I feel like you're my best friend -- I watch you every day." So there's no difference, they just come charging up. When you're on the soap and you go to Disneyland, people will just charge you. DIGEST ONLINE: It's so hard for actors to make a successful transition from daytime to primetime. Aside from talent (which is a given), what made the difference in your case? SHUAGHNESSY: I've said this a long time ago. I don't think there's any [difference].It's not hard to get a job, because if you're right for it, you get it. It's like winning the lottery. Is it hard to win the lottery ?. It's not hard to win the lottery. If you pick the right numbers, all you have to do is get a pencil and scratch the right boxes and you win. It's very easy. It's just it's not often you get the right boxes. But there's no hard work involved. It's just luck. If luck is on your side, it's incredibly easy. Getting a job, period, is like that. The odds against getting a job period are enormous. I don't think it's any more hard or less hard for someone who's coming from daytime. It's just that when you've been on daytime, and you've been very successful, it looks like a kind of failure. It looks like you've been successful, and now you can't get into night time. Therefore, the people that do get into night time have sort of made the grade and have done something better than the other guys. The fact is it just looks that way because you've been successful in one medium. But you start again on a level field. It's just like you start over again. You do your daytime job and everyone knows you in that [medium], but the people in night time just see you as another actor.Most of the time, you just start again. I think that's what happened with me. I did the soap. Then I started again, and it just happened I went for MUPRHY BROWN, which I was right for, and I happened to get that job. The woman that cast me [in that guest spot] didn't even know I was on DAYS OF OUR LIVES. I just happened to be the right guy for the job; and I just happened to be the right guy for the job on THE NANNY. It's just luck. It's not so much making a transition. I think there's a kind of assumption of some sort of a doorway between soaps and night time for us pushing to get through. There really isn't. There's no door, there's just a wall. You have to get out of the soap and start again.
(Thanks to Dana Dietz for sending me this Q&A)