Interview: Soap Opera Queen

Jean Passanante heads the Emmy Award-winning writing team from As the World Turns. The soap takes place in Oakdale, Illinois, a town so small that everyone is either related or acquainted, and yet so cosmopolitan that it contains skyscrapers and an international airport.

Passanante and her team must fill five hours a week with plot twists that grow out of the characters' entangled pasts. Historical knowledge of characters is a must, if only to avoid creating incestuous relationships (an occupational hazard for a soap writer). One prominent Oakdale resident's name says it all: Lily Walsh Mason Snyder Grimaldi Snyder.

A former actress and theater administrator, Passanante keeps viewers emotionally satisfied and on the edge of the couch.

Soap opera characters can seem one-dimensional.

I think it is a misconception. For a character to have any longevity, we have to understand why she is doing what she is doing. Our most successful villains are the ones about whom you understand why they've gotten to where they are.

Have you had the experience of writing a villain who has become a nicer person?

That happens all the time. For example, Carly. She came on as "the bitch." Now she is a nicer lady, has kids and is married to the upright police detective. But a lot of people on the show still distrust her. The best characters are struggling with their dark side. You hope that romantic love or love of a child will pull them out of the mire.

Why do you think soaps are so addictive?

We all want to be told a story. There is also a constancy that's comforting. You moved away from your mother, you divorced your husband and your kids live with him half the time. But if you tune in every day, you'll still see Nancy and Lisa and the people you've always seen.

What do you think is the oldest trick in the book?

I hate to think of them as tricks. All of the great soap opera stories have romantic complications. [The viewer] is yearning for the couple to find happiness at last. As writers, we try to prevent that happiness for as long as possible.

The surprise pregnancy seems to really shake things up.

Pregnancy is very high stakes. We're always looking for things that have high-stakes consequences and long-term consequences. And for viewers, most of whom are women, that's an experience that many have had or can anticipate having.

How important is glamour?

There's an aspect of fantasy in a viewer's appreciation of any television show. The characters are beautiful, and they have great hair. Viewers want to be that person; they want to inhabit their life, or at least they want to have their clothes.

Have you had much contact with rabid fans of the show?

One fan was madly in love with a character. For Christmas, she created gingerbread cookies of his face. He has very specific facial characteristics and they were astonishingly accurate.

Has anything happened recently that's elicited a particularly strong response from viewers?

Last summer [2004], Jack fell off a cliff and forgot who he was and fell in love with another woman. The Carly and Jack fans went nuts. You're hoping they'll go nuts and watch as opposed to going nuts and turning off the TV.

What do you like to watch or read in your free time?

I'm a Shakespeare freak—I majored in drama in college. In fact I ran into one of my former professors about a year ago. I sort of apologized to him. I told him there are many occasions where we borrow certain plots from Shakespeare, not really intentionally but you realize when you're writing:
Oh, this is that scene in Julius Caesar where his wife tells him not to go to the forum that day! And my professor said, "That's okay, Shakespeare stole all his stuff, too."