One Life to Live fans celebrated the hit ABC soap opera’s 57th anniversary on July 15. Now one of the series’ biggest stars is reflecting on the series cancellation, her characters short return to a sibling soap, and the romance that kept viewers tuning in week after week.
Kassie DePaiva was recently interviewed by Stephanie Sloane for Remind Magazine where the Blair Cramer actress reflected on her time on the fan favorite soap opera.
After months of speculation, on April 14, 2011 ABC brought the cast and crew together and made the announcement that they were cancelling not one, but two soap operas, All My Children and One Life To Live. DePaiva reflected on this moment, sharing, “We were brought onto the stage of The View, and it was One Life to Live and All My Children, we were fully expecting for them to make the announcement that All My Children was being canceled, but then they did both and it was just awful.”
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The actress explained that for the cast and crew the show just had to go on, adding, “then we had to go back on set and work, and I just remember going down to my dressing room and calling my mom. It was really sad, and it was just so bizarre that it was canceled.”
One Life to Lives cancelation came as a shock to both the fans and the cast, as DePaiva explains “It was doing so well, and our numbers were really good. I just didn’t understand it and I missed it. I had to mourn. It took me two years to get over that, to grieve that loss.”
After the cancellation of One Life to Live some of the characters moved from the fictional town of Llanview to it’s sister soap town of Port Charles on the only remaining ABC soap opera General Hospital. One of those characters was Todd Manning (Roger Howarth). To facilitate this introduction, DePaiva crossed the character of Blair over to call it quits with her on again, off again, husband. “I was just a lucky, lucky girl to walk into that part and I feel like I made it my own, and it was something that I protected. So, when One Life to Live ended and they took me to General Hospital for those three or four days to break Todd and Blair up so Todd could be with Carly, it was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever done.”
The actress shared how protective she was of the role, adding, “That’s how emotionally attached I was to it, because I felt I’d worked 20 years to build this brand, and you’re gonna give me three days to be pissed off at Todd, and that’s gonna be it? That would never ever happen. Not in a million years. So that was hard.”
In 2013, One Life to Live was given a, short, second life, as Prospect Park revived the series for Hulu, and DePaiva was able to once again return to the role she made her own. The actress shared her thoughts on the reboot adding, “Then when they rebooted the show with Prospect Park, that, in and of itself, could have been much better, but it just happened very fast and they weren’t ready. That’s all.”
DePaiva looked back on her relationship with Todd, “Blair was addicted to Max and obsessed with him, but she fell in love with Todd, and Todd understood her. I still shake my head how that worked, but there was something really magical between Todd and Blair that I was like, ‘OK, I don’t really get this, but fans like it.’
Discussing the writing she received on the show the actress shared, “I was just picking up scripts and keeping the story going, but if you go back and watch some Todd and Blair stuff on YouTube, it’s really well written and it’s complicated, so it’s not just fluffy stuff. These people were really trying to figure out their relationship, their dark, broken pasts and now I get it.”