Donna Mills, best-known to soap aficionados for her iconic 1980-89 run as ice queen Abby on KNOTS LANDING, and more recently, her Daytime Emmy-winning turn as Nina’s murderous mother, Madeline, on GH (2014-25, 2018), has added another ruthless beauty to her roster: Lillian Cutler, the chilling matriarch in Lifetime’s four-part limited series V.C. ANDREWS’ DAWN. Lillian is the proprietress of the Cutler’s Cove Hotel, but has made a second career out of tormenting granddaughter Dawn, for reasons that unfold over the course of the series. “I think Lillian is probably the meanest of all my villains,” says Mills, who checked in with Digest about the project.
Digest: What drew you to the idea of taking on your latest formidable villain, Lillian Cutler?
Mills: I had the very good fortune of being able to read the fifth book [in VC. Andrews’s series], which is about her. It’s called The Darkest Hour. They didn’t [adapt that book for this series], they only did four of the books, but it explains her. It really tells you why she is as mean as she is, why she is so troubled and so adamant about everything, It talks about her upbringing and the things that she went through. That’s a real plus when you’re playing a character, that you get to have that background.
Digest: And you usually don’t have that kind of source material to provide such insight.
Mills: No, it’s very unusual. Usually, you know, it’s just what’s on the written page and you can either make up, the backstory or talk to the writer or something, but you very seldom have a book that kind of explains it. So that really drew me to it because Lillian became human then; she wasn’t just a mean person. She’s human because there’s reasons behind why she is the way she is.
Digest: When you’re playing a villain, as you’ve done so often in your illustrious career, do you feel that it’s important or necessary to have sympathy for the character?
Mills: I think it’s nice if the audience can have some glimmer of understanding her or whatever. And I think that happens a little bit with Lillian when she sends Dawn off to college. I think she’s kind of impressed that Dawn can be as tough as she is. That, in her mind, is a very good quality. When I played Abby, Abby had a lot of soft spots. When you play a character for nine years, you really get to know them and she had a lot of vulnerabilities. I always liked the way they wrote her because they didn’t write her as a caricature, as just a villain or just a naughty girl. She had vulnerabilities of her own and that made her human.
Digest: Once you came aboard this project, how long did you have to prep, and how long was the shoot?
Mills: Not long to prep, maybe about three weeks or something like that, from the time that I knew that I was going to do it until we actually started shooting. And that was good; I could use that time to kind of get into it and all that. And then shooting it, because they shot [all the installments of the series] together, I don’t know how Brec [Bassinger, who plays the lead role of Dawn] kept her sanity. Because she’s in everything and does such a big arc in the four movies. We shot from August through to November because they were doing eight hours. That’s a lot!
Digest: You had quite a lot of material to do opposite Brec. Tell me about the working with her.
Mills: Well, I, actually didn’t meet her until the day that we started shooting. I don’t remember which scene it was, but it wasn’t anything to heavy. And when you meet her, she’s just the sweetest thing in the world in real life. I just kind of looked at her and said, “This is the perfect Dawn!” She’s sweet, she’s nice, but she has some backbone. And obviously she did, Brec herself, in order to do this role. We had a really, really nice working relationship. She’s a lovely girl.
Digest: One thing I was struck by in watching the first movies is how you looked as the character — the costumes, the hair. Did you have any input when it came to creating Lillian’s look?
Mills: Yeah, it was my idea to go white. I thought that seemed right for her — it seemed as though she would have let her hair go white, but it would have been impeccable. There’s no streaks of anything else in it, it’s just white, and very carefully coiffed. I really felt with her that her appearance — because of her being in the public eye with the people at the hotel and all that — that she always had to be perfect. So that was part of the preparation and the costumer was wonderful and found a lot of really good options for her, so I was very happy with that. You know, as the actor, you don’t always know what that’s going to be like. But it was very good. Some [item in Lillian’s wardrobe] were period and I think there were a couple of things that were newer, but they all have that kind of almost military look, suits and things like that, because I felt that Lillian was very regimented.
Digest: You filmed the series in Canada. What stands out to you when you think about your experience on location?
Mills: Well, it was great! I’ve worked in Canada many, many, many times, but actually, I hadn’t been to Vancouver in quite a while and was shocked to see how much it had grown. I used to think of it as sort of a small town and it’s not anymore. But we stayed at the same hotel that I’d always stayed at, and the crew and the director — two directors, actually, both women, who were really nice to work with and really helpful. It was a murderous schedule. It was really hard. They were shooting a lot of pages a day, you know, because eight hours of television is a lot! So, it was hard but it was good. It was a good group of actors. I didn’t get to see all of them. I never saw Fran [Drescher, who plays the role of Agnes Morris]; we never shot on the same day. I think she got her stuff done in a couple of days and was gone. I wish I had, because I like her. But it was really fun and the actors that they got from Canada were lovely, too.
Digest: When you think about the journey you got to portray as this character, was there a day of work or a scene that was the most fun to do or that sticks out in your mind because it was challenging for some other reason?
Mills: Oh, gosh, I mean, all of it was! What was really tough is that a lot of my big scenes, they shot all in one day, which was hard. You know how a shoot is; if you’re in a location, a room, a particular room, it’s lit and they want to do it all at once. So I had a lot of my big scenes all in one day. That was a little tough. It pulls on your emotions and everything else to do those scenes, so that was a little hard. But the others, you know, that were just sort of normal days, where you’d have a scene or two in a day, that was pleasant. We shot in this enormous, incredible house up there, and that was fun. It was very opulent. Everything was covered in gold! It was amazing. We had to be so careful that we didn’t nick the walls or the floors. The house was extraordinary. It was a lot of fun because you’d go around and look at each room, because we didn’t shoot in all of them. We shot in a lot of them, but not all of them, and what was supposed to be my office was just such a magnificent room, with wood ceilings and fireplaces.
Digest: The saga that unfolds over the course of this series has a lot of qualities that I think will appeal to soap fans. But if you had to tell the readers of Soap Opera Digest why you think they might enjoy it, what would your pitch be?
Mills: I think that the people who read Soap Opera Digest and who are devoted soap opera fans love a good story, and they love a heroine who is in distress and then comes through it and wins in the end. This is a story that takes a lot of twists and turns as many soap operas do, and I think they really will enjoy it. When I watched it, I found it very engaging, and I was very in Dawn’s corner and I wanted her to win, and then things kept happening to her and happening to her! I hope [the readers] do enjoy it. I think they will. I think it not only grabs your attention, it grabs your heart because you care about the character. I think that’s really important and I think that’s one of the things that soap opera fans like; they want to care about the people that they’re watching and I think you do with this.
