A Desperate Housewives actress is taking a producer to court forkilling off her character. It could lead to a power shift in soaps.By Arifa Akbar
A post-modern moment for television will arrive next month when areal-life jury convenes to decide if Edie Britt, a DesperateHousewife among Wisteria Lane's gaggle of fictional spouses, wasunfairly killed off in the fifth series of the American soap.
Nicollette Sheridan, the Desperate Houswives actress who playedEdie, the character who died in a car accident, appeared to havebeen triumphant after a recent court ruling which deemed her caseagainst ABC and the show's producer, Marc Cherry, substantial enoughto go to trial for wrongful termination, although a judge at the LosAngeles court hearing threw out claims of sexual harassment andassault.
Some might say the case represents a typically Californian,trigger-happy attitude towards litigation. But an actress accusingtelevision producers of fictional murder and taking them to a realcourt must have a bearing on the producers' creative autonomy.
The exit from a soap of any character - be it through Edie'saccident or Nigel Pargetter's fatal fall in The Archers - posesserious questions for producers and writers. How far can storylinesbe challenged by actors or viewers, if they can be contested at all?Do the intentions of potentially grudge-bearing writers or producersmatter if a high-profile character's death, or other exit, enrichesplotlines and drives up viewing figures?
A world in which an actor can legally disapprove of the fate ofhis or her character may see teeming courtrooms and, in worst-casescenarios, turn scriptwriting into a Pop Idol-style popularitycontest, in which actors and perhaps even viewers have input intowho stays and who goes.
Of course, viewers and actors have every right to complain when acharacter is flung off a cliff or run over by a spurned lover. Butthere have been great "event television" moments in which the mostpopular characters have vanished from the screen. Take the suddendeath of Tiffany (Martine McCutcheon) in EastEnders; thedisappearance of Dirty Den (Leslie Grantham) in the same show; orthe demise of Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) in Dallas.
It can be argued that writers who kill off the most charismaticcharacters are being creatively daring, as is the show which takessuch ratings risks. EastEnders scriptwriters have provedparticularly ruthless when disposing of characters and such anapproach appears to have worked in their favour, as the enduringpopularity and critical success of the show attests. Last April, sixcharacters were written out of the BBC soap, on the instruction of athen new executive producer, Bryan Kirkwood.
Despite protests from disgruntled actors or viewers, deaths anddisappearances have often proven to be crowd-pullers. A recent casein point is Nigel's demise in The Archers, in early January thisyear. A maelstrom of criticism overthe death of one of the bestloved characters from the BBC Radio Four series raged for months oninternet noticeboards and radio phone-ins. Some argued that althoughNigel's end gave the programme's plot dramatic momentum and saw inthe 60th anniversary of the series with a bang, the strategyrepresented a cheap form of crowd manipulation. People tuned in in astate of disbelief and carried on listening in that state, thoughmany claimed to have boycotted the series after Nigel's rooftopfall, seeing the death of the veteran character as a brutal clearingout of the old guard. Graham Seed, the actor who played Nigel, stillreceives letters of protest.
Yet the controversy was excellent for ratings. Radio JointAudience Research (RAJAR) figures show that the surprise thatproducers had promised would "shake Ambridge to the core" did whatit set out to do: create a heightened sense of drama and draw inmore listeners. More than 5 million tuned in to The Archers everyweek in the first quarter of this year, compared to 4.88m in theprevious quarter. Lunchtime listening was at record levels.
Keri Davies, a scriptwriter on The Archers, says that far frommanipulating listeners, the death of Nigel Pargetter was anopportunity for narrative creativity which energised the drama. Thestrong listener response was no bad sign either.
Davies says: "If we killed a character and nobody cared, whatwould be the point? I genuinely believe that just as there is anelement of bereavement for the actor who is killed off, so there isfor the listeners as well. The death of any major character is goingto leave a bit of a hole in the lives of the listeners for whom thischaracter might have almost become a proxy friend. So we saw peoplegoing through the classic stages of bereavement - anger, denial,sadness."
Seed, the Rada-trained actor who played Nigel, says that hesuggested ways in which his character might face a lesser fate thandeath, but that the scriptwriters had imagined the story strands toofar into the future to save him.
"I have no axe to grind but I was very, very sad, and quietlyhorrified, to be written out," Seed says. "It was a very upsettingthing. I was notified three weeks before I recorded my [dying]scream. I said, 'Why don't we make him a paraplegic?' It might havebeen an interesting storyline to have him in a wheelchair. Thereason my editor gave me for writing him out was that it wouldintroduce wonderful new storylines - to kill off a popular character- and I suppose in a way the uproar did exactly as the editorwanted. It was a big story, very 'soap'."
In an ideal world, Seed says, it would be nice if characters'destinies were up for discussion. "Sometimes the actors have betterjudgments of their characters than the writers. Sometimes you have afantastic idea which you share with the writers."
Yet Davies says that a death provides rich opportunities, sendingripples over plotlines for some time to come. "An event like Nigel'sdeath will change the drama and have repercussions for decades. Theactors know it could happen, that they could be go under a tractorat any moment. Deaths written in years ago are still havingrepercussions now, and creating tensions between characters."
Just last week, listeners were gripped by a dramatic altercationin The Archers after David admitted to Nigel's wife, Elizabeth, thatit was he who had sent her late husband up to the roof from which hehad his fatal fall.
Ironically, Nigel's death has boosted Seed's career. In July, hewill launch a one-man stage show, Don't Call Me Nigel, and he is dueto tour in a play alongside Nigel Havers this summer. "[NigelPargetter's death] was fantastic publicity," Seed says. "A castingdirector told me it was the best thing that could have happened tome."
Because The Archers exists in a fictional world, there is alsothe possibility of a comeback. Some are calling for Seed to re-emerge as "Nigel's long-lost brother, returning from Zimbabwe". Butnot every re-entry, or indeed every exit, pays off. In the case ofBobby Ewing's death at the end of the 1984-85 series of Dallas,after Duffy expressed a desire to leave the show despite his stellarprofile among its fans, producers persuaded him to return in the nowinfamous "shower scene". Viewers were outraged by scriptwriters whopassed off Bobby's demise - and an entire previous series - as adream. One of Duffy's co-stars, Larry Hagman, spoke afterwards ofhis regret over the storyline; some blamed it for the show's death.
Ben Preston, the editor of Radio Times, says screen deaths are amust if ongoing series are to be kept fresh. But writers must treada careful line. "Hatching, matching and dispatching soap stars is afine art that requires a deft touch," Preston says. "Do it too oftenand you end up with Bobbie Ewing in Dallas - or Dirty Den inEastEnders - coming back from the dead, a sure sign of creativebankruptcy. Do it in character and viewers feel it like a death inthe family. When Jack Duckworth died, dancing around the living roomwith the ghost of his wife Rita, it may have been the first recordedinstance of magical realism on Coronation Street but it wasperfectly in character. And there wasn't a dry eye in the nation."
So what about intentionality? Is it acceptable to write out acharacter because of a grudge against an actor? In Sheridan's case,a Desperate Housewives scriptwriter claimed in a written testimonyin court that Cherry asked the writers to kill off her characterbecause of an "increasing frustration with Ms Sheridan".
A commentator for The Wall Street Journal, Eric Felten, haswritten of "umpteen reasons for producers killing off soap stars,the biggest usually revolving around money". He adds: "It's hardly anew phenomenon. There's reason to believe that no less a dramatistthan Shakespeare knew how to write inconvenient actors off thestage.
"The star comedian of Shakespeare's troupe was Will Kemp, whosequick-witted buffoonery was as famous as his rowdy dancing. It wasKemp who introduced audiences to John Falstaff, and those audiencesclamored [sic] for more of the scoundrel. Maybe the success went toKemp's head, but he seems to have had a falling out with the manpenning his lines. No one quite knows why Kemp left the company, butthe comedian was later known to gripe bitterly about 'Shakerags'."
Perhaps untimely deaths and sudden disappearances are not justpart of the shock and delight of fiction, but long-held prerogativesof the mercurial writer.
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