FIONA FEST 

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Marlena on Fiona 


Marlena's Bests & Worsts for 1992 (Part II)
By: Marlena DeLaCroix
Dec 1992, SPW

Fiona Hutchison made one of the years best rebounds when she landed on GL as Jenna.  She proved an ideal partner for Michael Zaslow's Roger.

Best Rebounds:
Fiona Hutchison (formerly Gabrielle Holden  on OLTL), now Jenna on GL.  Hutchison is gorgeous, fiery and displays great warmth and humor as Jenna.  Plus Jenna makes the perfect partner in crime for Michael Zaslow's Roger.  Roger is not the easiest character to match up with a partner!  Thank goodness, GL hasn't made Fiona cry on-camera more than once; as Gabrielle, she bawled daily and bored moi to tears!


Postmark: Springfield:
"Don't Hate Her Because She's Beautiful"
By: Marlena DeLaCroix
Dec 1993, SPW




REMEMBER GOING BACK FOUR YEARS or so when everyone scoffed that the total of Fiona Hutchison's talents was to cry, cry, cry every day on OLTL?  She did it so well as Gabrielle Holden, that's all the show gave her to do!  While Guiding Light was smart enough to cast Hutchison as Jenna Bradshaw for a long while she had very little to do (Save for Jenna's daughterly "romance" with William Roerick's Henry--divine!)  Now Hutchison finally is coming fully into her own.  Jenna has lost Spaulding, is pregnant but has shed her husband, Roger, and is subtly falling in love with Buzz.  Given meaty material Hutchison has been just glorious.  Always brimming with vivacity and spirit, she can enact any shade of emotion.

For years. the actress' talent has been explained away by her beauty, that long hair, that theatrical English accent.  Just like Jane Seymour was before she did brilliant work in the miniseries War and Remembrance!  I'd dub Hutchison "the Jane Seymour of daytime" --- only she deserves more direct recognition for her most direct accomplishments.*


"20 Pre-Yuletide Questions"
By: Marlena DeLaCroix
Dec, 1994 , SPW
Excerpted:




15. Wouldn't Fiona Hutchison (Jenna, GL) have made a much better Scarlett than the badly miscast Joanne Whalley-Kilmer in the recent CBS miniseries?  Fiona has exactly the beauty, fire and mercurial range of talent required to play literature's most infamous Southern belle.  And isn't the soon-departing Ms. Hutchison's loss to GL just an incalculable one?


GL: CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES
By: Marlena DeLaCroix
Feb 1997, SPW
Excerpted:




Hasn't [Fiona] Hutchison been just luminous in her recent return, totally in control even as Jenna was given the reception of Cleopatra arriving in Alexandria?  Her character was even given her own remote (done in a real airport, where Jenna introduced former lover Buzz to Henry, the baby he doesn't know he fathered) just a week or two after returning to the show.  Funny, I don't remember Jenna (always a Springfield outsider) being so beloved, even though an actress as popular and powerful as Hutchison deserves the fanfare.  Welcome back, Fiona!  You have always given us our money's worth of soap entertainment.


Soaps Today: Where Is The Love?
Where Is the Passion?
By: Marlena De La Croix
1997 (SPW)

Back in the good old days. OLTL's Max (then played by 
Nicholas Walker) and Gabrielle (Fiona Hutchison) 
shared such heat, they set his bar on fire making love.

I'm sorry, but I miss soap sex!  I know those people at the Soap Summit say there are approximately 5.2 occurrances of sex on soaps every day.  So how come I'm not seeing any of them?  I'm not talking about the mindless kind, still shown 100.2 times per hour on prime-time soaps Melrose Places and Pacific Palisades.  I'm talking about the sex we used to see on daytime soaps -- sex used not for titillation but to underscore the passion and emotion of soap couples, upping a relationship's stakes....  How about the time OLTL's Gabrielle and Max literally set his bar on fire during a tryst?  These days sex-- the ultimate expression of romantic passion-- is sacrificed for dopey plots.... Nutty plots aren't exciting; passion is.  Give us back the emotion.


ABC Soaps Need Leadership
By: Marlena DeLaCroix
Jan 1999 (SPW)

OLTL:  Bring back Fiona Hutchison.  Fiery Gabrielle is the only thing on earth that could make the waxlike Max interesting!


 Postmark: Llanview -
OLTL Gives Great Customer Service!
By: Marlena DeLaCroix
June 19, 2001 (SPW)

“I would like the than the new production and writing regimes at OLTL for providing veteran fans like me with something we hardly ever get in the soap opera realm these days: customer service! It's as if the new regime sensed just how angry and alienated we OLTL fans were after two years of awful plots and having a new front-burner family forced down our throats day after day. So far, the team has been right on the money with the changes it has made - changes designed to soothe our pain and win us back. In fact, I feel so indulged and refreshed by what I've seen recently on OLTL that it's as if I've been to a spa! 

....

And talk about sheer entertainment with a touch of sentimentality! It was genius to bring back Fiona Hutchison as Gabrielle Medina-now-Buchanan. Many fans used to feel that Hutchison chewed the scenery a bit too much, but these days I find myself loving the hyper-emotional Fiona Show. In this role, Hutchison is all passion and tears (Gabrielle's trademark). She is just so gutsy and real in her emotional frenzy that she, too, gives one of the greatest shows on earth. I know I'm not the only one to say that Gabrielle is the only character who has ever made the obnoxious Max (her once-husband) palatable! I also like Michael Tipps - the actor who plays Gabrielle and Max's SORASed son, Al - very much. In a sea of perfect-feature soap hunks, Tipps looks and acts like a real teenager. And it was a hoot to see Tonja Walker back again briefly as Alex to jump-start Gabrielle's return. 

....

Thanks, Executive Producer Gary Tomlin and head writers Lorraine Broderick and Chris Whitesell, for giving the real OLTL back to us!” 

 




 
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