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CBS Daytime Interview
On a rainy day in
Manhattan when the subways shut down, our roving reporter and MARY KAY
ADAMS met for a late lunch at an Italian bistro. The morning gloom had
slowly given way to a slightly gray, cool day. Over gourmet pizzas and
mineral water, they discussed India's past and Mary Kay's hopes for her
future.
CBS.com: We have gotten tons of mail asking for more airtime
for India. Was it difficult waiting for a story to develop for
India?
MARY KAY ADAMS: It's had its own challenges. I was quoted
in Soap Digest a million years ago, I said, "When God was handing
out patience, I was out to lunch." [Laughs] By nature, I've always been a
bit of an impatient person. And it's been so different, because every
other time I've been on the show, I was always in the thick of it all,
working almost every day and involved with a whole lot of different
people. It's been, at times, challenging to make adjustments. But it's
also my understanding that I need to be patient and hope for something
that's going to pay off.
CBS.com: The story with you and Alan seemed to develop very
naturally.
MARY KAY ADAMS: It did. The characters have such
great history that goes back 13 years. Ron Raines as an actor and I get
along incredibly well. And the nature of what we bring to the work seems
to compliment one another. So, it made a lot of sense and I was really
pleased to see it. It also brings India back more into the core of the
Spaulding clan instead of satellite it. Every other time that I've been
right in the middle of it, I was always blackmailing or manipulating
somebody in the family. [Laughs] So, this sort of brings me in without
that manipulation factor.
CBS.com: Your scenes with Alan in the hospital were great.
What was it like filming those?
MARY KAY ADAMS: It was such a
mixed, wonderful opportunity because it reunited all of us that had a
great deal of history together. For me personally, just the hospital
setting, and being in that critical situation brought up a lot of things
that I experienced in my personal life. It
was like, oh my gosh, there's so much emotion, so easy to tap into. But
then to step back and watch some people I truly care about - you know, I
love Grant Aleksander [Phillip], I love Mikey O'Leary [Rick], I love these
people that I've known a long time, Beth Chamberlin [Beth], people that I
go way back with. I see us all then and I see us all now and we're all
adults. Grant Aleksander has just grown up so beautifully and other people
have just evolved. But there's something really, really wonderful about
it. We all know each other very well. It was really kind of nice. And then
I thought everybody in the storyline, Michael O'Leary, Grant, Ron,
everybody pulled together, everybody gave out 200% effort, and I think it
showed.
CBS.com: Weren't India and Alan romantically involved in
the past?
MARY KAY ADAMS: We flirted a lot. There was only one
kiss. We never went to bed. We had gone back to Andora, to my father's
castle, and I put out this big picnic in the middle of one of the castle
rooms because it was raining outside, and it got romantic. The decision
was that we worked together as allies, and if we were to become
romantically involved, it might be too much conflict, and then our shared
goal would be lost.
CBS.com: Do you see the pair coming together romantically
now?
MARY KAY ADAMS: I think it's a great possibility. Just for
Alan's sake, it would be a wonderful way of putting Annie to rest and kind
of getting to the next step after that kind of havoc. And for India, yes,
because it gives her a strong man that she can partner with. I think they
could be a really powerful couple. There's certainly enough physical
attraction that it would be feasible that they could be romantically
involved.
CBS.com: I liked the way your romance with Ross ended. So
many times on soaps we see women chasing men they know don't love them,
and yet India showed the maturity to walk away.
MARY KAY ADAMS:
I thought so, too. I thought that was a great, great intelligent, adult
woman way of handling it. I tried to play that there was disappointment,
that for all my talk of "oh, this was just [casual]," I cared for him on
certain levels. But it was also a really tremendous gift to be able then
to go to Blake and say, "He's yours. Wake up, take advantage, he's yours."
So that I wasn't going to be constantly catty with her and competitive
with her. I liked that. That was great. I just read a great quote last
night which is attributed to Alice James: "The success or failure of a
life... seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment
of escape." The wisdom to know when to walk away.
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