Stardate 20010824.1630 (On Screen): It's amazing the way that people who should know better tend to confuse actors with the roles they play, and tend to project their feelings about a character onto the actor.
Susan Lucci once received, in a rather indirect fashion, feedback from a fan about just how effectively she plays the part of "Erica" on the soap opera "All My Children". "Erica" is a villain, a scheming evil witch. Once while out walking, an older woman saw Lucci, walked up to her and slapped her on the face. Of course, the fan was slapping Erica, not Susan. It must have been an interesting experience for Lucci. (After
nineteen nominations for an Emmy,
she finally won in 1999.)
My favorite example of how easy it is to make this mistake is in how well Larry Linville played the character of Frank Burns on the TV show MASH. I did and do despise the Burns character, but I'm supposed to. There was a documentary done for PBS about the series during the second-to-last season, and various cast members were interviewed. And as they talked about their characters and how they interacted in the series, the actors would sometimes use "I" to refer to the character and sometimes refer to the character in third person. All, that is, except Linville. Linville invariably referred to Burns as "he". The difference was striking. It was clear that unlike the others, who projected parts of themselves into their characters, that Linville felt no identification with Burns at all. And by all accounts, Linville was really nothing whatever like Burns. As I have come to realize this, my respect for Linville's performance has grown. I now despise Burns but respect Linville enormously.
With respect to Wil Wheaton, cut the guy some slack. He's young yet; who knows what he'll turn into? I recall another child actor who starred in a shlock TV science fiction series, and yet as an adult he turned out rather well. "Fish heads fish heads eat-'em-up yum." (discuss)
