Q & A with Lorraine Broderick
AKA: Head writer of As the World Turns

Like baseball, apple pie and stuffing yourself silly at Thanksgiving dinner, As the World Turns is an American tradition. Led by Nancy Hughes (actress Helen Wagner), the soap has come into our living rooms, tugged at our heartstrings, served as our moral conscience and entertained us for almost 43 years. Perhaps that's why the soap's fans are so loyal; they've stuck with the show through thick (the first 20 years, let's say) and thin (remember the Black and Stern fiasco?), and are currently being rewarded with compelling intergenerational stories courtesy of head writer Lorraine Broderick.

Broderick, an Emmy-winning veteran scribe, is all too aware that it's up to her to create interesting, intelligent stories for beloved characters like Bob, Kim, Lisa, Jack and Carly, but she's up to the challenge. Her job isn't always easy, she says, but it's always rewarding, and that's what counts. — Jonathan Reiner

I'm very pleased with how we [Broderick and her writing team] were able to position the show from where it was when we came in a year ago. We think we've achieved a nice combination of using veterans who are beloved by the fan base that we already have and really want to hold onto, and successfully brought in new characters who are related to the veterans but who can help us carry the story forward and hopefully attract new viewers at the same time.

What about As the World Turns is different from the other shows you've written for?

I think World Turns has a very special family-oriented feeling to it, which is due to the incredible history of the show. We've worked very hard to honor the loyalty of the fans who have been with us for many, many years; that's something you can't take lightly. Sometimes when head writers come in they take the show into a whole different direction and history gets ignored. [Procter & Gamble executive in charge of production] Mickey Dwyer-Dobbin, who hired us, gave us the time to really get to know the show before we came aboard. We had the luxury of having the opportunity to explore that history and really familiarize ourselves with the show.

Initially, we did make some turns in character that were very deliberate. When we came in, Molly was on the front burner, causing mayhem between Holden and Lily. She was a pot-stirrer, but she wasn't liked. We deliberately took the character in a very different direction and moved her out of the Holden and Lily story and into a story of her own. The response that we've been getting has been very positive, along the lines of people saying that she's a character they never thought they would find themselves liking. We're even getting rooting interest of Molly and Andy as a couple, which was also something that we truly hoped would happen.

The Molly transformation, I think, is one of your success stories. I also love the Tom/Emily/Margo story and the way that it was slowly put into place. It's a situation where there is no bad guy, but it also uses history. Getting that story to this point must have been a Herculean task.

Well, we felt that Tom and Margo were two of the most underutilized actors on the show and that Emily was floundering a bit. She was in a romance with David that didn't really seem to be going anywhere, and she has, I think, a lot more chemistry with Tom. Ellen Dolan and Scott Homes [Margo and Tom] are both such fine actors with such history on the show, but there are really only two directions to go with them: keep them a happy couple on the back burner, or to inject some fire and conflict into the marriage, but to make that as believable as possible. That's why we took our time building the Eddie portion of the story. It was a way of introducing our new, young antihero, while at the same time causing disruption in Tom and Margo's marriage and keeping sympathy alive for all parties.

Does the fact that Tom and Margo were happily married mean that the old saying is true, that as soon as a couple is married they get a one-way ticket to the back burner?

No, in this case it's not true. Lily and Holden are, I think, the best example of that on this show, and we have a powerhouse story for them coming for the next year that does not involve breaking them up. They've been through too much, and it's time for them to face something together. We gave them a period of happiness, and it was nice that it coincided with Martha's [Byrne, who plays Lily] maternity leave. It's a challenge to come up with a story that keeps the couple together, but that's really what we wanted to do.

Margo and Tom, on the other hand, had been together for so long that in watching them it actually did feel as though there was a danger that they could just become boring. There is so much to explore in the family dynamic, with the two children, Adam and Casey, as well as with Tom's midlife crisis, his career change, and with Margo's frustrations on the job and with her mentoring of Eddie and her feeling that she wanted to make a difference in his life after having killed his mother. There was so much rich territory to explore... if anything, I think we wished we could have had the story go on even longer.

I think overlapping the Georgia/Eddie story with Margo and Tom is brilliant. It's a way of keeping both stories involved with each other. It's very rich, and I'm looking forward to seeing it played out. In fact, this is a perfect example of a story that your team had nothing to do with initially, but you're taking perfect advantage of something that Doug [Marland, ATWT's late head writer] did almost 10 years ago.

That's right — Doug left us with so much rich territory to explore. The legacy of this show is waiting to be explored, and that's one of the things that was exciting about coming into a show like this.

What are some of the things that you feel you haven't gotten to do yet, or that you haven't done to your liking?

There are stories waiting to be told, like the story of Camille's father, for example. Camille has a very troubled history with men. She has not been able to make a relationship work with a man, to the point where she had two men in love with her this year and ended up losing both of them through her own choice. But we're dealing with a lot of parental issues in other stories, and you can't have too many stories that are similar at the same time. She's also had plenty to deal with, with her breast cancer, so we wanted to take one thing at a time and explore it when the time is right.

There is a feeling among some fans that the show backed off of the interracial aspect of the Brad/Camille story.

I don't think so at all. You haven't seen that story play out completely yet.

By the way, I love Denise, and I think that she's such a great character. She's a great counterpoint to Camille, and I think it's a testament to [actress] Cassandra Creech's talent that she is so unlike Denise in real life. Cassandra's just such a little cutie.

She's enormously talented and we have very big story plans for her.

She's such a great find. In fact, almost all the characters you've created since you really dug your feet in have been characters that are connected to our old favorites.

That's been our goal. You only get so many chances to introduce new characters. You cannot make the mistake that has been made on this show in the past, and other shows as well, of introducing five new characters at once that the audience doesn't know and isn't invested in, and expect them to recognize their show. So what we've tried to do is introduce the new characters through the characters that are already known and loved, and to do it slowly. Even though Eddie is not biologically related to anyone on the canvas, he will always be a part of Margo's life. Margo will be his surrogate mother and will see him through a lot in the upcoming year.

But there are characters that aren't being used, and one that comes to mind is Barbara. I sometimes feel that I'm the keeper of the Barbara flame.

Yes, you are, and I think that's terrific. We actually have a story for Barbara! [Editor's note: Woo-hoo!] I couldn't wait to tell you and Colleen [Zenk Pinter, who plays Barbara], but one of the reasons that I wanted to wait for this phone call is that we just had a big story meeting on Tuesday with the network and I had to get the story approved, but it was approved.

I think it's very hard for some of the veteran actors and actresses who have been so valuable to the show over the years, because not everyone can be front-burner all the time. It is like repertory company in the sense that there will be periods of time where there is not much for them to do, but their time will come. It can be frustrating as a writer, too, when you know you have such talent available to you but you can only tell so many stories at a time. As Barbara eases onto the front burner, other characters who've been used more heavily will be moved back, but their turn will come again. It's really a cyclical thing.

The thing about Kim and Bob that was so frustrating to us was that it took a tremendously long time to cast the role of Chris. We'd been looking for over six months, and actually Ben Jorgensen [Chris] was not available when we first started the search, but all things happen for a reason and I'll be very happy, too, to see more of Kim and Bob. The intervention scenes with Andy were just a taste of things to come.

Those scenes almost brought me to tears, because when something works so well, when it really clicks, you feel like you're home.

Oh, yes. Scott DeFreitas [Andy] did a terrific job.

Unfortunately in this business there is so much attention paid to the 18-to-49 demographic. Do you subscribe to the belief that the 18- to 49-year-olds do not want to see people like Bob, Kim and Lisa?

No, I don't think that's true. The challenge is that we've been trying to use those characters who are known and loved, and at the same time we want to attract new viewers and, of course, younger viewers. I think there is a perception of this show that it's "the show my grandmother watched." Well, that's OK, and we'd like granddaughters to be watching it, too. But that doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that you can tell only "kids' stories." I think that when it's just the kids for the sake of the kids, the kids aren't even interested! The kids who are watching want to have a feeling of family, a place where they belong, a place where they look forward to each day. So the intergenerational element to this show is important to all of us.

On the other hand, the Carly/Jack/Julia story, which focuses on young people, has been a lot of fun, too.

They've been terrific, and we intend to keep them going. I was very happy with the casting of Annie [Parisse, who plays Julia]. The hardest thing in the world is to have a couple that the audience really enjoys, which Carly and Jack were, and to bring in somebody new and have it take off, but it's given us so much for Carly. She's on the outside looking in, thinking she has everything she wants and realizing she lost the one thing she wants more than anything.

What about mean ol' Johnny Dixon?

Wait till you see what we have coming up! The next month is going to be very interesting for John. This child [Parker] means a tremendous amount to John, and in the next month we will be settling Parker's custody in a very dramatic way. I would look for some big dramatic scenes for John, and the stuff Larry Bryggman [John] plays best. He's a rascal with a heart.

Will he be getting a new love interest?

Not immediately. He's been through a lot. John needs to take a step back and look at the choices he's made and not rush headlong into anything.

Speaking of the older generation, I loved last summer's love scenes with Lisa and Ralph Mitchell. Will Lisa have a lover return every summer?

She certainly has a roster of lovers to chose from! I love Lisa! Everyone loves Lisa! We're talking about how to keep Lisa the spunky, independent, adorable woman that she is and still show that she's a romantic at heart.

That's our Lisa! Will Nancy be involved in Christopher's story?

Nancy and the whole Hughes family will have more to do now that we have Christopher on the canvas and now that we have Andy in a front-burner story of his own. We're very pleased about that.

Except for the Bauers on Guiding Light, I can't think of a TV family that has been as beloved as the Hughes family has for so many years! Is that both a liability and an honor? You have this standard that Irna [Phillips] created that you have to uphold.