Alison Sweeney's AOL Q&A (1/28/97)

Star: ALISON SWEENEY
Role: Samantha Gene "Sami" Brady, DAYS OF OUR LIVES
DAYS Debut: February 1993
Birthday: September 19
We Did Lunch At: Campagna (in N.Y.'s Flatiron District)
She Ordered: Linguini with clam sauce and raspberry sorbet

DISH YOU WERE HERE
Over lunch, DAYS's Alison Sweeney dissects everything from backstage shenanigans to Digest features (and dishes everyone from Austin to Viv!)

DIGEST ONLINE: We heard that you and Austin Peck [Austin] had a mishap at the airport during a recent trip to New York.
ALISON SWEENEY: [We flew in] for Martha Byrne's St. Jude Hospital charity event, at the Hudson Theater. Austin had to come on another plane -- he missed the plane. Our flight like at 8 o'clock at LAX, and the traffic inside the airport was so hectic. They had this huge line at the security place, that was like a 6 or 7 minutes, then the line to get your tickets, because we had vouchers from American Airlines, the line to get those tickets was very long too, and I luckily got there 15 minutes before Austin. He came up to the front of the line where I was, while I went straight to the gate and I barely made it on the plane. I said, "Well, I have two friends coming," and the steward said to me if you don't take your ticket and get on the plane now, you will miss it, too. They were full -- "Goodbye, Austin," I thought."Austin, you're a big boy, you can find your own way."

DIGEST ONLINE: So he made the next flight?
SWEENEY: Yes. Luckily, I got a message when I got here, I was a little worried. I spent all that time on the plane just feeling guilty. But I got a message when I got here from the woman who was in charge of us, saying that he made the 9 o'clock to JFK.

DIGEST ONLINE: How did you hook up with this event?
SWEENEY: I'm always on the lookout for P.A.'s [public appearances] in New York, because I have family here and I just love the city. So any event that's gonna be in New York, I tell Charles Riley and Paulette Cohn [DAYS's publicists] to keep an eye out.

DIGEST ONLINE: What family do you have in the NYC area?
SWEENEY: My aunt and my uncle and my two cousins.

DIGEST ONLINE: Do you like to fly?
SWEENEY: At first, I was a really bad flyer. It wasn't that it was uncomfortable. I just couldn't sleep, so I would read and I would work. There was no chance of me sleeping, so I might as well bring two books and I would finish the books. Now I've done so many P.A.'s in the last year and a half, that I go right to sleep -- it almost just lulls me to sleep, and it's been a really big difference. I'm just so much more refreshed when I get to events that I can [enjoy them more].

DIGEST ONLINE: What color are your nails now?
SWEENEY: Right now I have midnight sky on; it's kind of [a cross between ] dark purple and black. I change colors like every two weeks. I just have fun being really adventurous with the color.

DIGEST ONLINE: Do they care on the show?
SWEENEY: I've kind of almost made them a signature for my character. Sometimes Jeanne Haney, one of the producers, she'll tease me about it. She's like, "Ally, every time you have some crying scene, I flinch because your hands come to your face and you've got these bright green nails!" She always kind of teases me about that. But from what I understand Tom Langan likes them.

DIGEST ONLINE: Are they yours?
SWEENEY: They're mine, but they put silk on top of them to make them stronger, because the worst would be to break a nail. I've done that once at work in the middle of a scene -- I have to say I was very proud of myself -- it was when the rape trial was going on, and I had this scene in the bar after my picture had been on the cover of the magazine -- oh, no it was after I had shot Alan -- and I was at the Cheatin' Heart after Austin had turned me down and the guys were heckling me, and this one guy pushed me up against the pool table, and I went to grab the pool table and my nail just broke in the middle of the scene, like really deep too, and I started crying. It hurta lot.

DIGEST ONLINE: Did they have to stop taping?
SWEENEY: No, we finished the scene. It was great.

DIGEST ONLINE: In another words, we might say you nailed the scene.
SWEENEY: Oh, bad, bad. Very bad. We have this one stage manager at work who is so funny. He is on top of puns, like no matter what you say he has some really bad line and it's like his goal to make you hiss at him. He does it, it's just a natural reaction for him. No matter what you say , he can just come up with a comeback that is so bad and cheesey.

DIGEST ONLINE: Bet it wakes everybody up in the morning?
SWEENEY: It does.

DIGEST ONLINE: Do you still have those 6 am calls?
SWEENEY: Oh, yeah. Sometimes you have a really easy day where you come in at like 6 and you're done by 10:30 or 11 am, and then some days you come in at 6 and you don't leave until 8:30 or 9 at night. It's all sort of a give and take. It's pretty tough sometimes.

DIGEST ONLINE: How do you keep busy at the studio during rehearsal breaks?
SWEENEY: I take classes and I do my best to keep myself occupied with some schoolwork. If it's something I'm enjoying reading, then yeah I'll definitely do it, but when I'm at work, I guess I do productive things. Usually, I'm memorizing my lines while I'm not on stage, and then when we're on stage for hours on end, there's nothing you can do. You can ask my family, they'll say she doesn't call us; she doesn't talk to us.

DIGEST ONLINE: Is there much script revision during the course of a day?
SWEENEY: The script usually stays pretty true. They have these things called "tentative cuts" in the scene. In case of a time problem, there are certain parts of the scene that they know that they can pre-empt, they can already cut and it will still follow, so the stuff that needs to get across will still get across. And you have to know the scene so well that when they say, "Okay, we're about to tape now; we're gonna take a tentative cut that goes from here to here," then you can do it and it's not a problem. So that's a measure of how well you know the scene. You don't get to get away with it. You don't really have time to work on your script days in advance. [If you start working on scenes] when you first get your script , you're just throwing yourself off, because on soaps what's important is the information you know about the other characters. If you haven't had that scene with Marlena yet or whatever, and you have some scene that you do prior to that, then you get yourself all confused, because you need to keep the timeline true. So it's usually easier to work on the script the night before you're going to do it; that way you're sure not to mess up and you don't get ahead of yourself.

DIGEST ONLINE: So what courses are you taking this term?
SWEENEY: I'm taking a class on Greek history. It's ancient Greece through Homer and the Trojan War and all that. I haven't chosen a major yet. I am just taking general [electives] to get them out of the way.

DIGEST ONLINE: The classics are often soap like, don't you think?
SWEENEY: I say the same thing about Shakespeare. If you think about it, you're talking about [a playwright] who everyone respects, and he basically wrote about people having affairs with their husband's dead brother, and princes going around pretending that they're suicidal -- and for fun. You get the murder and the mayhem and the death. It's really kind of parallel.

DIGEST ONLINE: Although Sami was born on DAYS, you're the first adult actress to handle the role. In some ways, you've almost created her.
SWEENEY: I would say [head writer] Jim Reilly created my character, he built my character. He could have done whatever he wanted and he started very methodically from the beginning, creating a background for my character to become a villain. I hate to use this as an example -- but it's not Stefano. We don't know why he hates the Brady's, we're not really sure. We have no idea why he wanted to kill Roman Brady and John Black. It's a bizarre obsession since he came on the show; but other characters, some of those villains, like mine, really have a background and a history. You' can be in storylines on other shows, with situations where the mother doesn't talk to the kids for weeks at a time. On our show when that happens, it's on purpose. When Marlena doesn't talk to Sami it's like, "Hello, I'm your kid, and you wonder why I hate you!"

DIGEST ONLINE: Are you up on DAYS history?
SWEENEY: At the DAYS OF OUR LIVES luncheon this past year, they had a contest where you won a free shirt or whatever. The question was: how many grandchildren does Alice Horton have? It was like nine, but no one could figure it out. And how cool is it that we got all these actresses to come back for [Bo and Hope's recently botched] wedding? You know I used to watch DAYS.

DIGEST ONLINE: Who were your favorites?
SWEENEY: Bo and Hope. Actually I watched Bo and Carly, and Jack and Jennifer were my favorites, too -- and the Cruise of Deception, that was my summer -- so it's really fun for me to meet Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes.

DIGEST ONLINE: Was taping the Bo/Hope wedding a chore?
SWEENEY: The wedding was fun to tape and we were all laughing [about the moment] when Bo doesn't show up. We're all standing in a big circle in the outside room of the church -- and basically everyone knows what Sami's done [in the past]. We're all talking about how a boat was stolen from the rental place, so we think that they're out in the islands, and well he'd love to come back if he could, so they must be stranded. Sami says, "Well, why don't we all go start to look for him?" and then John says, "Sami, the cops know how to do their job," or Marlena slams her, "I think the cops know how to do their job, why don't you let Abe do his job, Sami?" and Sami's just like "Okay, I'll shut up." In the next scene, Sami says something like, "You know maybe we could all get boats and go look for them," and John starts to say no, "Sami -- we have people looking." Then Sami says, "Well, the more people who are looking, the better chance we have of finding them, right?" and he goes, "Why don't you leave that to the professionals" -- something like that. Then they immediately turn around and say, "Why don't we go look for them?" and everyone's like okay, let's go look. It's so funny, it's like straight out of that Brady Bunch movie, where Jan has the idea and everyone's like, "Oh, that's a stupid idea," and then Marcia says, "Let's do it," and everyone's like, "Okay, good idea, Marcia."

DIGEST ONLINE: Jan and Marcia -- that definitely describes the Carrie/Sami relationship.
SWEENEY: I love that article that just came out in Digest about me and Christie -- the Brady sisters. I love that writer, he's so funny, he was a real good interviewer. [Alan Carter] As much as I would love to interview celebrities, like movie stars and stuff, and love to meet them , I have to say you gotta have much more interesting things to talk about in soaps. Bryan [Dattilo, Lucas] and I talk about having a normal job all the time. And I mean I don't think I could handle it.

DIGEST ONLINE: Do you ever fantasize about what kind of normal job you'd choose?
SWEENEY: If I couldn't be an actor, if for whatever reason I could never act again, I would want to be a director and a writer. I'd want to do some creative writing, but I'd really want to do a little journalism stuff. Bryan's done everything. He used to be a bus boy at a restaurant, and he said if ever has to go back to that, he'd rather like pound the pavement.

DIGEST ONLINE: Was DAYS the only soap you watched?
SWEENEY: I watched ANOTHER WORLD, too. I came on DAYS right as SANTA BARBARA went off the air. I saw it a few times, but never really more than in passing. I remember somehow Sydney Penny dressed as a boy or something, that was sort of the end. That's maybe another positive aspect of soaps [as opposed to] primetime. On a primetime show, except maybe for BEWITCHED and ROSEANNE, if you're a main character and you decide to leave the show, they're gonna have some problems either writing you out or most of the time they're not gonna recast. On daytime , if I got sick or I decided to pull a star attitude for whatever reason , oh, they wouldn't think twice, I'm outta there so quick. I have to say [laughs] no matter what is in my future I am going to watch who ever plays Sami and be bitter! Hey, I would have done that better. I love that on Krista Allen's first day [as Billie] Lisa Rinna sent her flowers , saying good luck -- that was really sweet.

DIGEST ONLINE: So many people on your show go on to become names.
SWEENEY: And so many people on our show go on to be on GENERAL HOSPITAL!

DIGEST ONLINE: So do you ever make fun of the things your character does?
SWEENEY: We always kind of make jokes about Bryan's character Lucas, like he always wants to be part of the sports team, and Bryan jokes about it too. In the Kiriakis mansion where it's like Austin and Carrie are on one side of the room, and then Vivian, Ivan and Lucas and Sami have all been plotting until they came in the room, and Austin says something like "What are you guys all still doing here? You don't belong here," and Lucas says, "Hey, I live here" and Austin goes, "I don't mean you, Lucas!" Of course he's talking to Vivian and Ivan and me, and it's so funny. Lucas's like "Hey, I live here" and Austin goes "I wasn't talking to you." And it is so funny -- I laughed for like a day. It wasn't really a line inasmuch as it was a situation in that scene, the confrontation in the Kiriakis mansion with Kate and everyone. When everyone came in and talked about all the terrible things Sami had done, it was so funny; it was like Austin and Carrie and Kate on one side, and Vivian and whoever was busily chirping about what I had done and then me in the middle. I remember when we were rehearsing it. I just was watching -- I guess I had never really read the script because I didn't have any dialogue, I was just standing there watching, so I didn't really read in detail or understand exactly how this was gonna go -- so all of a sudden in rehearsal I just sat down and said "I'll just wait." The scene went on, it was like a six-page scene, and it didn't even describe everything Sami had done -- it was so funny. Having to quantify it cracked me up -- it was like a timeline of some of the more major events that Sami's pulled off and it was so funny. It was all accurate, but it wasn't detailed, all the little things. And to me the little things are almost worse, because it's not like I planned three major events, it's like all along the way I've done all these little things just to traumatize people.

DIGEST ONLINE: Do you read fan comments online?
SWEENEY: Some of the stuff is ridiculous [on message boards]. I stopped reading it. I think like 30 percent of all the comments on all the bulletins are about me and how much they hate me -- I'm not joking. You get stupid comments like "God, I can't believe Alison Sweeney -- she has freckles." Also I think the difference is if you're gonna go to the effort of writing down [your opinions] on a piece of paper, putting on a stamp, finding out what the editor's address is, and sending it in, you better like them. If you're online and you're hanging out, you kind of feel like you want to have your say. When you start to get catty or petty or spread rumors about actors, that's where you want to draw the line -- someone came up to me and said they'd heard a rumor that I was really pregnant and really had a baby and was really married -- I thought really, that would be a no. DIGEST ONLINE: Do you ever wish you knew storyline in advance?
SWEENEY: Sometimes I wish I knew a little more what was happening than I do. I mean the actors are always sort of the last to know. You read the script and that's how you find out. I had an interesting story when I changed the test results of the baby [Belle]. I had the scene where I'm typing out the thing and I figure out who the baby's father is -- they wouldn't tell me, the producers wouldn't tell me who the baby father's was. We don't want you to give it away, so we're not telling you. I suspect they really didn't know, they weren't sure yet -- and I didn't know until I was writing it in my diary or something, somewhere way down the line.

DIGEST ONLINE: Do you like to read the scripts to find out what's going to happen in other storylines?
SWEENEY: Yes. I mean I was really was a fan. And I love reading the Vivian and Ivan stuff and I love watching them, they're so talented. It's so funny to watch them, and to work with them is so fun -- I would love working with Louise Sorel. Ivan cracks me up, because he'll always toss in some random line that you'll have to laugh. A while ago we had a scene in Austin's apartment, it was me and Lucas and Ivan and Vivian, and I was getting her to help me with something. And Vivian was saying, "The three of us can do something," and Ivan goes, "Four!" So we all stopped and just looked at me. He makes me laugh. It cracks me up.

DIGEST ONLINE: Considering your long days at the show -- plus college classes at night -- do you find yourself drinking a lot of coffee to stay awake?
SWEENEY: I can't drink coffee. It's been this transition. I've been acting since I was four or five, and I've had coffee all my life. I've always had a lot of coffee; and then suddenly like two years ago I just slowly started not having so much coffee, and then I started drinking those ice blends. Now I can't drink coffee at all. The acidity of the bean makes me sick. I can't even smell coffee. At work, you don't have a chance to leave the set, except for like the specificied 25 minutes that you have for lunch, so all that's really open to you is like nothing and diet coke. I'll have four or five dietcokes a day, and then I come to a day when I don't, I'll have withdrawal. Every once in a while, when I start to feel myself starting to get addicted, I'll make myself go at least a week without any diet coke or any caffeine at all. I'll be like I'm not letting myself get addicted to this stuff. When I'm feeling adventurous, I'll have Dr. Pepper. From my closest friends, my birthday presents would be like cases of diet coke. In fact, one of my friends gave me a coca cola lap blanket.

DIGEST ONLINE: Do you ever check out your horoscope?
SWEENEY: I'm not really into astrology, but my rising sun is Virgo. I'm a Virgo [sun sign] and I was born in the year of the Dragon, which really [expresses] Virgo qualities.

SWEENEY: By the way, before we go off the subject of food, I cooked myself like 3 meals last week and I'm not a cook by any stretch of the imagination. But I bake -- I can bake brownies and cookies, stuff like that. Honestly, I've ruined many an easy meal. I've had some issues with mircrowaves. I've set a popcorn bag on fire. You press popcorn, it says two minutes or whatever. I thought, that can't be right, so I put on five. I just decided the microwave was wrong. The first night I made spaghetti with marinara sauce; the second night I made spaghetti with this really yummy mushroom cream sauce that my mom makes; and the third night I made for my friend, who happens to be a vegan, I made linguini with mushrooms and onions sauteed, and then I made a salad. Oh, and I made a baked potato that first time. It's not so much that I don't know how to follow directions as much as it is that I forget. For instance, my little incident with spaghetti I tried to make the first time. I put it in the pot, and the water started boiling I turned it down and did everything right, and then I went in and started watching like SEINFELD or something, and then you come back after the show's over only to discover that there's a flash flood.

DIGEST ONLINE: What are some of your favorite DAYS moments?
SWEENEY: I remember, when Matt Ashford played Jack, any time he was on the pier, he would check the pay phone coin drop and keep running. Like somehow that was so funny to me. Did you ever hear that story when Stella Lombard died on the show in the hospital room and her son Jesse had this really serious moment, he's got tears, and Deidre Hall. snuck on stage. After they like whispered to her that the scene was clear, she burst into the room -- she goes, "Stella, Stella, you can't die yet, I need your turkey recipe!" It was so funny, we never laughed so hard. What I really like about Sami is that she's got a bunch of different sides to her-- like she really does love her son. I almost started crying [in the scene where Will fell asleep on her shoulder], the twins are so cute. People tell me that DAYS characters talk to themselves more than characters on other shows. Sometimes I feel like Sami needs to have some long mustache that I can twirl. For a while, Sami would have that one friend that I would tell my secrets to. But for a villain, it was so stupid -- she betrayed me twice, so it makes no sense for me to tell someone else my plans or my concerns or whatever.

DIGEST ONLINE: People seem to lead charmed lives in Salem.
SWEENEY: The prop guys and I would joke. In Salem, there's basically two kinds of characters. When you come through the City Limits, everyone's given a cell phone. Half the people are given the keys to the city and the other half are given lock picks. So you've either got the keys to the city or a bobby pin that'll get you in anywhere. Sami's defnitely one of those bobbypin types.

DIGEST ONLINE: Carrie goes anywhere and the doors just open for her.
SWEENEY: Some characters are just like that. You gotta just go with the flow; you can't overanalyze it. Sami doesn't have a job -- and she wears clothes that are like, she has great style in clothes. I was reading in Digest those "Classic Lines" from shows and they crack me up. I'm always kind of bummed because they don't have a lot of classic lines from DAYS.

DIGEST ONLINE: What else do you look for in Digest?
SWEENEY: I always like reading "Performer of the Week," and I like an article that's about someone I know. I'll read that, or "Casting About," and I love reading "Ask Us" and "Sound Off." I read "Eavesdropping" and try to figure who it is. Sometimes I hear situations that sound like something I've heard before, but still I'm lost.

DIGEST ONLINE: Any other Digest favorites?
SWEENEY: You know what else I really liked in Digest that I miss -- "What Actors Say vs. What They Mean." I have a bulletin board in my dressing room -- shots from different events that were in the magazines, or a picture of me and my friends, I'll cut it out and put on my bulletin board; one soap magazine two years ago had New Year's Resolutions for characters. Mine was: "I Sami Brady hereby resolve not to torment my sister." I also have the entire "What Actors Say vs. What They Mean" things up on my bulletin board, because it made me laugh -- it was so funny.

Thanks to Dana Dietz for sending me this chat.

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