I had just arrived home from a busy day at work and was trying to take off my coat when I felt the vibrations from my cell phone. I hurriedly wrestled my arm from the clutches of my coat's sleeve and reached for the phone, wondering who it could be. Looking at the caller I.D., I saw the name Ilene Kristen - One Life to Live's colorful, crass, and cool Roxanne Balsom - and immediately felt like I was in a different dimension, even though I quickly realized why she was calling me. After all, it was only last year when I first spoke to Ilene on the phone for Soaptown.  And what a memorable conversation that was - several hours, in fact.  I was happy with the interview and even happier with Ilene's amazing candor and honesty in giving her opinions on the state of the soaps and specifically, One Life to Live.  I had recently been in touch with her "people" to set up a second interview - but we hadn't scheduled it yet. So why was this famous soap opera star calling me directly like this?

"My father just died," she said, after a brief greeting. I was blown away. Ilene Kristen had
called me to set up our interview, despite being crushed by her beloved father's passing. 
I felt honored that she even discussed it with me, and I was reminded of why everyone who has ever talked with, met, or hung out with Ilene thinks she is the coolest and most open person around. Ilene Kristen, I thought, wanted to get this interview underway perhaps to get her mind off of this tragic loss, and also, because the writer's strike had just ended and she seemed to have something important to get off of her chest regarding the state of the soaps. She was even willing to conduct the interview right then and there, but alas - I had other plans and also wanted to prepare a bit. We scheduled the interview for a couple nights later. 

When I called Ilene she had just gotten in from taking her mother to a movie - Michael Clayton - down in Florida, where she was gathering with family and friends to deal with her father's passing. It seemed surreal that this woman who I watch on television every week was revealing such intimate details about her family life. I was reminded that even the first time I spoke with her, she just seemed like the kind of person who couldn't be fake or surface. She just radiates realness, even over the phone. She said Michael Clayton was very sophisticated and well done, by the way. We talked about the rest of the Oscar movies; Juno, There Will Be Blood, and the rest. Then we got down to business. 

The writers' strike was coming to an end. Who is writing the shows? Who is taking credit?  Is Ron Carlivati coming back, or is Gary Tomlin sticking around, or both? Specifically, how has the cast morale been? Ilene responded to my barrage of questions. "It's been fine, actually. But I think we were all very happy that Ron Carlivati had taken over. We had just been through three years with Dena Higley, who nobody knew. And she didn't make any attempt to get to know any of us in the cast. I barely met her! And there was so much interesting stuff she could have done.”

Continuing, Ilene asserted that she (and Roxy) had also suffered under Josh Griffin's reign as head writer. I asked her if that was when the Roxy/Max relationship was cut off for no apparent reason, or had that been Dena Higley? I waited for Ilene to answer, but instead all I got for my trouble was a dial tone! Had Ilene Kristen hung up on me?

No, of course not  - it was just those damn cell phones. She wasn't getting great reception in her mother's house. Was this interview going to be interrupted by technical difficulties? Apparently not; the rest of the chat went off without a hitch. "You know, I really felt that Josh and Michael Malone wanted to write for me - but they weren't allowed to”, shares Kristen. Though she didn't bring up his name, I assumed she was implying that Brian Frons - the godfather of the ABC Daytime mafia (my words, not Ilene's!) - set out to stifle Roxy's storyline with Max Holden. Later, the same was done with Roxy/Nigel... and most recently, with Roxy/Miles. Once again, Kristen asserted her enthusiasm for Ron Carlivati. "Ron is a balanced writer”, she says. “He writes with fairness, and with a big heart. And he's around. He's there for you. Lorraine Broderick was like that too, she was very available. She brought me on the show, you know." I hadn't known. But I did concur with Kristen that as soon as Carlivati took over as head writer, the show became much more balanced and we began seeing the vets and their characters more and more, including Roxy Balsom. 

"Soaps at their best provide a certain kind of comfort-food environment, and this is a theory that I have, that we want our news from people like Peter Jennings, Charlie Gibson... people who are venerable and have been around, seen things and done things.  People don't want their news from some young kid. And sometimes they don't want to watch a show with just a bunch of young people when they've been watching that show for 30 years.  I think since Ron took over, the integration (on the canvas) has been great." In other words, I thought, we want soap stories delivered by Erika Slezak, Robin Strasser, and yes, Ilene Kristen! 

Speaking of the vets, Ilene's friend Barbara Garrick had just returned to the show with her riveting portrayal of psychotic Allison Perkins. I remembered from our first chat together, that Ilene held the actress in very high esteem. I was anxious to ask her about Garrick's latest - albeit brief - comeback. Had she seen the Allison/Roxy scenes that had only just begun airing at the time? "No. I haven't had a chance to watch yet. I've taped it but I haven't been able to see the show with what's been going on in my life. It seems strange to sit there and watch yourself on television when there's a much bigger drama going on in real life (referring to her father's passing). But I love Barbara. I've got to tell you that when I found out she was going to be back on, I was just so overjoyed. We held each others' hands in between takes because it means so much to us to work together again. I've had an association with Barbara outside of the show, before we ever started working on the show. It was a real coincidence that we wound up working on the show together, and it meant a lot to us because we felt like somehow there is a plan in the universe.  4-6 months before she came on the show, I never knew Barbara. We met some place completely different, out of the soap realm, then all of the sudden we end up working together!  It was just meant to be." I had asked her if Allison was being killed off since Garrick's departure had been announced, and she said she didn't think so. And she certainly hoped not! 

I questioned Ilene about all of the secrets going around Llanview now, particularly those dealing with Rex's paternity and Allison Perkins' secret. "It goes back to the baby switch," Ilene informs me, referring to when Allison switched Jessica and Natalie at birth (at least that was the story THEN). I brought up how I'd noticed that in a recent scene between Roxy and Natalie, Roxy seemed to encourage Natalie to sleep with Jared even though it had been revealed that he was Nat's uncle. Roxy doesn't know about Jared's scam, so why would she encourage Natalie to commit incest? I took that scene as a clue that perhaps Natalie wasn't a Buchanan after all. Perhaps Rex was the baby switched with Jessica? In some way, it seemed like TPTB were about to go back and revamp the baby switch storyline and re-write the paternities of Rex, Natalie, and Jessica somehow. "Yeah, but they're putting a lot of red herrings in. I honestly don't know”, admits the actress. “I try to find out this information and I can't get anything out of anyone!  It's pretty interesting, then, when you have to play a scene and you don't even know what it's about!  I figure that Roxy was just in a drunken haze back in the day!"

We laughed pretty hard at that and I switched the topic to the arrival of Rex's new "dad," Charlie "Balsom," as played by Broadway veteran Brian Kerwin. "I LOVE Brian Kerwin," Kristen enthused. "He's my neighbor, too. You know, life does very strange things. Brian moved down the block with his family. I'd seen him on a couple things on television, and then I'd see him walking down the street. I'd nod his way and he'd completely ignore me.  Completely!  Like I didn't even exist.” Kerwin eventually started saying "hello" to Ilene, and now she's thrilled to work with him and share a neighborhood with him. And that must be some neighborhood for soap fans - because Kristen and Kerwin aren't the only ones. "Tuc Watkins had worked with Brian on a television project, and Tuc ended up moving into my building, living on the same block as Brian. And now Brian's on the show! And it's so wonderful. I was anxious to work with him, but my first day of having a big scene with him was one of the scariest days I've had in 20 years. I so wanted to do well in the scene, and I had TONS of dialogue. I hired my nephew to run lines with me, which is something I usually don't do. I usually don't memorize ahead of time. So I nailed them - I had them down. But as the tape day went on, they were falling out of my head and leaving the building. I was really nervous about these scenes, and my mind was going blank. For the first fifteen minutes of the scene, I just couldn't remember anything other than my name. The last time that happened to me was the last time I memorized a script cold like that. And that was ages ago." I asked Ilene what her usual process is, then.  "What I do usually is, depending on when I have to have it ready, I gradually work up to it so that my mind is always grasping for it. Some scripts are very easy. Some scripts I could literally look at and go 'oh got it' and discard it. But when they put a lot of monologues in or a lot of things that involve history, or when I don't know what the actual storyline or the real history is... like the scene where I go to Brian (Kerwin) where I go and ask him to be Rex's father...for fifteen minutes, I had to try to find Roxy. It turned out to be good, but I had to stop several times and ask myself 'where am I?' Because it was a little too random for my taste. There was nothing to lead up to it, not just that one scene where Charlie came into Foxy Roxy's. I probably wouldn't have been so nervous or had trouble with the scene if there would have been something that lead into it more."

In other words, being a soap opera star is more stressful than it looks. And the veteran actors who've endured so many changes in the industry can probably relate to Kristen's statement: "My job can be very stressful. And if I'm there only once a week, and I've got so much story to tell in just one day, it's harder to flip into 'Roxy talk.' It's easier if I'm there three times a week - then it's just there. It's tough to get on camera. We barely rehearse. They've eliminated the dress rehearsal." Startled by this, I ask her how the more remedial actors on the show (I don't name them, of course) can get by like this. Her response intrigued me. "Some of them get by better than the better actors. Because the better actors have higher standards. They want it to be perfect." That makes sense, doesn't it? "Sometimes if you're a less experienced actor, you just try to mush through it. But I have a reputation to live up to. I have a lot of tricks I could rely on, but I don't want to.  Especially if I'm working with a person I haven't worked with before, I want to get those rehearsals in.  Rehearsals are extremely important to me. They just don't do them anymore."

I asked Ilene what she thought about my theory that Roxy thinks Mitch is Rex's father, but that she might be mistaken ultimately. "Yes, it's very possible," she responds.

And what if Charlie IS Rex's real father after all, but Roxy just doesn't remember having sex with him, and vice versa, since they were both such heavy drinkers at the time? "That could be," Ilene says. I get the feeling that I am on to something, but that Kristen actually doesn't know either way, just that she has already thought of this herself and probably likes the idea. "I have another scene coming up where Charlie asks me if I have any clue who Rex's real father is, and I say it could have been anybody who was passing through Atlantic City in 1980. So yeah, it could be him. And it's funny - I was looking at Rex and Jared next to each other, and I thought it's a real possibility. I think you might be right about that - but I don't know either way."  One aspect of this possibility that Kristen likes is having a man in between Roxy and Viki Davidson, as played by the venerable Erika Slezak. "Before Robin Strasser came back on the show, there were going to be more problems between Viki and Roxy - but then all of the sudden Roxy became her (Viki's) buddy. So it would be interesting." Ilene also asserted that she's really enjoying working with Farah Fath and her new on-screen grandson, as played by Austin Williams. I commented that I thought a nice little core family was developing. Ilene sort of agreed, but wasn't sure because of how actors are kept in the dark about storylines these days.

"You know, when I was on Ryan's Hope, Claire (Labine) would take us aside and say 'look - this is what's happening.' And she'd get all excited.  She'd tell you everything, all the things you needed to know as an actor. They don't do that anymore." I told her it's probably because of the internet. "I guess so," she continues, "but the audience is very smart - they would pick up things anyway. The other day I was listening to the show and I heard Roxy's name mentioned ten times. It was weird. They're filling in information on the character that I don't even know."  So what's coming up next for Roxy, I wonder?  Of course, Ilene Kristen doesn't know. She saw her increased airtime reduced once again, as her storyline seems to have been put somewhat on hold until the transition out of the writers' strike is complete.  "Sometimes the things that work the best are the things they run away from. I hope they don't (run away). Because I think the audience is interested.  I'm interested in Roxy. I definitely think she needs a love interest. And I'm concerned that they completely dropped the Miles angle." I told her that while I felt bad about her angle being dropped, I didn't get how TPTB expected the Miles story to work when they never really developed his character and kind of had written him into a bit of a corner from the get go. But Kristen countered that if Mitch Laurence returns, Miles' presence would be important. So I asked her what she knew about a possible Roscoe Born/Mitch Laurence comeback. "I've heard rumors."  But she hadn't heard anything definitive either way. "We'd all love it. But they put Miles on the back-burner, which is weird. I thought we had a lot of chemistry. They could have done something with us, and with Charlie coming into the act. But they don't ask my opinion about these things. I hope he (David Chisum) is going to be around. He was supposed to be on the show the other day, and they just wrote him out. I was going to call him, but then all this happened with my father."

I'm honored that Ilene felt comfortable enough talking to me so soon after a personal tragedy. And once again our conversation confirmed what I already knew, that Ilene Kristen is a truly unique and captivating person. She is open, honest, generous, dedicated, passionate, and probably just as much a character as Roxy Balsom is. How else could she bring such magic to the screen. 

I would like to thank Ilene very much for her time, and honor her wish to dedicate this interview to the memory of her beloved father, Arthur Schatz. 

Photos courtesy of JPI Studios and ABCWebpix and Soapteens