Julia Montgomery Returns To Daytime
Over 40 years after her last appearance as ONE LIFE TO LIVE’s Samantha, Julia Montgomery will make her daytime comeback as Tanya on Y&R. “You can say I have purposely not done soaps, and although I worked a lot since ONE LIFE, at one point, I completely left the business to have my kids,” the actress explains. “My last job was [1994’s] REVENGE OF THE NERDS IV and now I’m in the middle of a divorce and my kids are grown, so I’m totally ready to get into the full swing of acting again.”
Montgomery started easing back in with commercials and TV appearances, but she was especially thrilled about her new soap gig. “I had gotten my real estate license a while back, and this character on Y&R is an L.A. real estate agent,” she marvels. “In fact, the director allowed me to change around a few words to make it a little more realistic. It felt like I had free rein, which was fun.”
Although it was just a one-day appearance, Montgomery happily reports, “I had a total blast. I’ve been on a lot of sets over the years but I haven’t been on a soap opera set since ONE LIFE and there was something really special about it.”
The actress has mixed feelings about her time in Llanview. “Of course, they were long days, but we had a ton of fun rehearsing,” she recalls. “I was in that group with Judith Light [ex-Karen], Brynn Thayer [ex-Jenny], Gerald Anthony [ex-Marco/Mario] and Jameson Parker [ex-Brad] and we would have so much fun rehearsing. However, Phil Carey [ex-Asa] never worked on scenes and he always used the teleprompter. That’s one of the reasons why I left ONE LIFE. I was so bored toward the end because all of my scenes were with Phil. They just loved the storyline between Asa and Sam, but working with Phil was sort of maddening. I would’ve probably added on another year to my contract if they hadn’t put me with him all of the time.”
Montgomery used her experience with Carey to help shape the cast of the 1982 flick Tootsie. “I was just off the soap when I was interviewed by Dustin Hoffman three or four different times to talk about what it was like to be on a soap,” she shares. “Through talking with me, they based the doctor character, who was always reading the teleprompter in Tootsie, on Phil [laughs].”
Now that she’s found her daytime footing again, Montgomery admits, “I would definitely come back. I loved working there, and Genoa City could use a good real estate agent.”
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