Y&R’s Jess Walton Has Conquered Drugs, Alcohol and Jill
She’s cautious and she should be. After all, few replacements in soapdom have been anywhere near as spicy or as explosive — and Jess Walton’s not saying anything more about it than she absolutely has to.
Formerly much-loved ex-hooker Kelly Harper on CAPITOL, Walton stepped overnight into the seemingly unfillable shoes of the busty and beautifully comedic Brenda Dickson on THE YOUNG AND RESTLESS. The latter’s performance in the vampy, vitriolic role of Jill Abbott not only earned her millions of admirer’s, it also proved to be the campiest creation on the tube, daytime, prime time, bar none. Whether Dickinson voluntarily quit or was royally canned remains to be settled by the jury (the star is currently suing Y&R Executive Producer Bill Bell, the entire CBS-TV network, in short, just about everybody but the postman) and just how long it’ll take the sometimes amusing, sometimes painful gossip about Dickson’s last tempestuous, tantrum-filled days on the set to abate is anybody’s guess. But there’s no doubt about one matter. Jess Walton, on a moment’s notice, tackled the broad and brilliant part, well, broadly and brilliantly — and with a bloody vengeance.
“One Monday morning I was out of work,” she says, recalling the day in June, 1987, when all hell broke loose. “They let Brenda go, or whatever happened, and by the afternoon we were hashing over the terms of the contract. At four o’clock, they said, ‘Get over here and get into wardrobe because tomorrow morning you’re starting.’”
It happened that fast, and despite the fact that Bell had never met Walton, Walton had never met Bell, and that the ascendant to the throne had never seen her predecessor’s performance (Jess had to bone up that night via selected video tapes of Brenda’s most recent key scenes), the new Jill Abbott was nearly a scientific recreation. In order to avoid sending loyal viewers into shock, Walton turned up on Day One with a skillful interpretation that was a fifty/fifty portion of old and new. The fans still got plenty of those outrageously inappropriate hairdos, the hand-on-hip, Mae Westian swagger and the completely unnecessary but oh-so-delicious eyeball rolling that were Dickson’s trademarks and — lo and behold — a few touches that had never been associated with the part. Like depth. Like finesse. Like infinite possibilities.
And the best thing about Walton? She makes the best actors on the show even better. Jess works wonders with the lesser lights on Y&R — their talents grow perceptibly greater whenever it’s time to play a scene with her — but the real homage must be paid when the actress goes one-on-one with the truly extraordinary players on the show, namely Jeanne Cooper (Kay Chancellor) and Tricia Cast (Nina Webster). They constitute a threesome that is unbeatable, both in electricity and hilarity, and the writers on the top-rated sudser are having a field day.
Who could imagine the day, prior to the arrival of Jess, when Kay Chancellor would slam a sloppy deviled egg into Jill Abbott’s puss? Or that Jill would be low enough to steal the toilet paper out of a stall in order to “inconvenience” Kay? Expect lots more of these left-of-center scenes, and increasingly rich characterizations now that Walton’s on board.
“Everybody’s adjusted well to Jess,” says Tricia Cast. “She brings a lot of color to the role. She gives you more to bounce off of. The character finally has some levels.”
“She and I just have a blast together,” says her co-star Michael Corbett, who plays her male secretary, David Kimball. “Now, David’s almost like a confidante for Jill, which is a reflection of my relationship with Jill. So far, to date, she’s my favorite leading lady.”
Corbett also notes, “She’s very un-show bizzy, if show bizzy is to be defined as affected and phony and a little pompous. Jess is just really down-to-earth and warm and sensitive and oftentimes puts other people’s feelings and their sensitivities before hers. She always takes care of those around her.”
No, Jess Walton’s not much like other stars. Her bravura, barracuda attack on the Jill Abbott role is hardly indicative of her off-duty style. She’s real people. Instead of tossing her bucks into a million-dollar mansion, she and husband John W. James, a grief therapist, and seven-year-old son, Cole, live in a modest, decidedly un-plush apartment near the studio. Frills? Who needs ‘em. And publicity? Forget it.
“Excellency at your craft and your name and face in The National Enquirer are two different things,” she maintains. Instead, her priorities are these: “The first is spiritual. It is to myself and to my oneness and to helping other people with problems that I’ve gone through myself. Then comes my family, then comes my work.”
Walton admits to several years lived under the influence. You name it, she did it: uppers, downers, mescaline, acid, cocaine, heroin, and a whole lot of cocktails. Though she’s been on the wagon for eight years, she’s only recently chosen to tell her saga to the press. Sometimes it’s been with lurid results (Jess did not appreciate the headline in Star magazine which blared, “I’m the luckiest ex-junkie alive!”) but, by and large, she’s still determined to aid others in the same straits.
“You know, a lot of people, when they’re at the bottom, when they’re in their hell, watch television. It’s their escape from those four walls, and soaps are among the things they most watch. My drug story line on CAPITOL helped a lot of people.” To a press agent’s eye, revealing her own druggie past while playing out a similar plot on the air would have provided a mouth-watering media angle, but Jess plain wouldn’t. “I don’t think I would even have considered talking about such a thing then,” she says. “No, I’ve gotten more courage as time goes on.”
And more satisfied. Walton’s eyes don’t twinkle at the prospects of her own primetime series, TV movie or a feature film, like those of virtually all other soapsters. “That’s the thing I’m really not into. I am truly happy here. I mean, if THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS goes on forever, I’ll be real happy. If I were twenty maybe I’d feel differently. But I’m around thirty-fiveish — I’ll just be real hazy about that, OK? — and, right now, the family and the job work together hand-in-glove. I have a nine-to-five job, I never have to go on location, everything fits together perfectly. And what else would offer me this security? And where else, at least four days a week, would I have big, meaty, chunky scenes to play?”
Walton has a marriage many might envy. She met James at a party when they were introduced by TV Guide writer Mary Murphy on the front lawn, but neither can remember whose house it was. They had their first date at the Ringling Bros. Circus (just divorced, he was awkwardly entertaining his four-year-old daughter and needed Jess for a little adult company) and, somewhere between his fourth and fifth marriage proposal, she accepted.
Eight years ago they wed. When James, then a contractor, accidentally sawed off a thumb, he turned to dabbling in grief recovery. His first book, published by Harper and Row, has just hit the stores — but the going wasn’t always so swell. Remembers Jess, “John came to me when he was about to enter this new field and said, ‘Honey, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how the money’s going to be.’ That’s always been my attitude with him and that’s his with me. We want each other to be happy and fulfilled the most we can as human beings.”
Ironically, by not planning a future, they’ve wound up with a rather rosy one. “We don’t have much of an attitude about building toward anything,” says Jess, “because we are so intensely into today. All we do is concentrate on doing the very best we can and living life to the fullest every day. The building happens all by itself. I used to think I was running this show that is my life. Now, I’m not even shaping it. I just show up and do it.”
This interview originally appeared in the July 12, 1988 issue of Soap Opera Digest.
