The onscreen sparks between “One Life to Live’s” Melissa Archer (Natalie Buchanan) and Josh Kelly (Cutter Wentworth) have definitely been worth noticing, but could the actors truly see their characters forming a meaningful relationship? Or will their fling be over in a hot second? We caught up with the pair to find out!
“It’s a very fun exploration, and I’ve love to see what they are planning to do and where they want to take it,” confesses Archer of Natalie and Cutter’s attraction to one another. “We’ve had fun so far, and I definitely think it’s exciting; I think we have good chemistry.”
Last night at the Z100 relaunch party celebrating the returns of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” at the iHeart Radio Theater, fans were treated to a Q&A session and meet and greet with “AMC’s” Thorsten Kaye (Zach Slater) and Cady McClain (Dixie Cooney) as well as “OLTL’s” Melissa Archer (Natalie Buchanan), Corbin Bleu (Jeffrey King) and Erika Slezak (Victoria Lord).
Steven Bergman Photography
As evidenced by the first episode of “One Life to Live,” life in Llanview has continued long after the soap ended its ABC run in January 2012. No, we don’t mean that the soap has jumped ahead five years as sister soap “All My Children” has done in order to progress its storylines, we mean characters didn’t just walk upstairs to the attic and kept silent and still while the millions of fans mourned their reported last breaths. Scheduled to re-launch on Monday, April 29 via Hulu, Hulu Plus and iTunes, the soap is about to take things higher with the opening of Blair’s new night club, Shelter, as the backdrop to getting things moving once more.
Chapman Baehler/TOLN
Florencia Lozano‘s Tea Delgado is given the honor of saying the first curse word in the newly released “First Day of School” behind the scenes video by The OnLine Network, set to music by Raphael Lake/Ben Fisher with their song “Light It Up,” which was recently uploaded as an iTunes exclusive. In character, Lozano yells at Robert Gorrie‘s Matthew Buchanan on why he let her daughter do…
David M. Russell/Prospect Park
On April 14, 2011, ABC sent shockwaves throughout the daytime industry when it announced it had decided to cancel both “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” after 41 and 43 years on the air, respectively. Now two years to the day since that announcement, both soaps are in the process of not only returning to television but also to the world wide web courtesy of Prospect Park‘s The OnLine Network. With just two weeks to go before launch, we hope you’re ready for a new kind of soap and a new way to watch soaps.
The OnLine Network/TOLN
Donna Svennevik/ABC
Later this evening “One Life to Live’s” Melissa Archer (Natalie Buchanan) will be appearing on the red carpet for the SoHo Film Festival screening of her new movie, “West End,” which also stars Eric Roberts (“The Dark Knight,” Oscar®-nominated and Golden Globe®-nominated “Runaway Train,”), Neal Bledsoe (“Smash”, “Gossip Girl,” “Ugly Betty”), Peter Onorati (“Goodfellas,” “American Dream”), “Excuse Me For Living”), Joe Nieves (“How I Met Your Mother,” “24″) and Isabella Hoffman (“Burlesque,” “Providence”). Rounding out the cast are Paul Calderon, Wayne Duvall, Lou Martini, JR and Anthony Mangano.
Donna Svennevik/ABC
The OnLine Network (TOLN) has confirmed the following stars who have joined the cast of “One Life to Live.”
As previously reported, “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” began production on Monday, February 25 in Stamford, CT for new episodes scheduled to release later this spring on Hulu and iTunes. Today, The OnLine Network (TOLN) announced the following contract cast for the reboot of “OLTL”:
Donna Svennevik/ABC
Prospect Park first announced plans to move “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” to the web back in July 2011 after striking a license holding deal with Disney/ABC Domestic Television. Sadly, plans fell through by November 2011 after apparent financing and union discussions fell through. Since that dreadful time period, Prospect Park has resumed work on returning the soaps to your [computer] screens, only this time with financing said to be in place and union deals already signed with the DGA (directors), SAG-AFTRA (actors) and the WGA (writers). With more than a year gone by since “One Life to Live” last aired, we thought it would be a great opportunity to see which stars have (so far) signed on to return to “AMC” and “OLTL” compared to the list circling back in 2011.
Prospect Park today announced an initial listing of writers, producers and cast members who have signed on for the online reboots of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.” The company has formally announced Susie Bedsow Horgan and Thom Racina as head writers of “OLTL.” Thorsten Kaye and Jill Larson bring the “AMC” cast count to 7 stars signed. “OLTL” adds Erika Slezak, Tuc Watkins, Kassie DePaiva, Florencia Lozano, Melissa Archer, Hillary B. Smith, Kelley Missal, Josh Kelly and Andrew Trischitta, who join previously signed Robert S. Woods, Robin Strasser and Jerry verDorn. With the exception of Strasser, Woods, and Smith, Prospect Park has secured most of the actors signed on during the first round of plans to reboot the soaps back in 2011.
via Press Release
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Prospect Park
After five months of negotiations with various guilds, hundreds of presentations to potential financial and technology partners, and a hope that we could pioneer a new network for the future, it is with great disappointment that we are suspending our aspirations to revive “One Life to Live” and “All My Children” via online distribution. It is now becoming clear that mounting issues make our ability to meet our deadlines to get OLTL on the air in a reasonable time period following its January 13, 2012 ABC finale impossible.
We believed the timing was right to launch an Online TV Network anchored by these two iconic soap operas, but we always knew it would be an uphill battle to create something historical, and unfortunately we couldn’t ultimately secure the backing and clear all the hurdles in time. We believe we exhausted all reasonable options apparent to us, but despite enormous personal, as well as financial cost to ourselves, we failed to find a solution.
While we narrowed in on a financial infrastructure, the contractual demands of the guilds, which regulate our industry, coupled with the program’s inherent economic challenges ultimately led to this final decision. In the end, the constraints of the current marketplace, including the evolution and impact of new media on our industry simply proved too great a match for even our passion.
In our opinion, new models like this can only work with the cooperation of many people striving to make them happen, and we would like to thank and praise the numerous people who tried to help and showed us incredible support. We are extremely grateful to the fans and media who showed great support to us through this process, to ABC who did everything in their control to help, and we are especially grateful for the support and encouragement from many of the Soaps’ cast and crew themselves.
We hope that our efforts are not lost, and that we somehow created a dialogue and movement on the feasibility of first run, network quality content online.
Of special note, we would like to thank Frank Valentini (Executive Producer), Ron Carlivati (Head Writer of OLTL), Agnes Nixon, many of the cast of OLTL including Michael Easton, Ted King, Kelley Missal, Melissa Archer, and of course Erika Slezak all of whom signed on quickly and did all they could to help, as well as our own Christine Sacani. Cameron Mathison and Lindsay Hartley also get our sincerest thanks for their support. We feel terrible we couldn’t come through for them and we were very much looking forward to working together.
With appreciation,
Rich Frank
Jeffrey Kwatinetz